Culture and Increase in Formal Education as Factors in Shifting Epistemic Perspective

• In Event: Motivational and Cognitive Processes in Understudied and Minoritized Student Populations: Centering Voices and Experiences

Abstract

Studies of people’s epistemologies in educational and developmental contexts have commonly seen schooling as key to epistemic development. Much less studied is the role of cultural or social processes outside of school as a factor in epistemic development. The studies presented here look at how social change might influence shifts in epistemology. They look at culture, which includes types of learning environments as a factor in epistemic development. The first study finds generational shifts in epistemology in a community—formerly semi-nomadic Bedouins—that have undergone rapid social change. The second study finds differences between adolescents in this community in which there are substantial numbers from the same community who either are or are not attending high school.

Authors

• Michael P. Weinstock, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Turky Abu Aleon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Patricia Greenfield