Cross talk: How students' epistemological beliefs impact the learning process in a constructivist course


Book: 
American Educational Research Association
Authors: 
Haseman, A. L.
Category: 
Year: 
1999
Place: 
Montreal, Canada
Abstract: 

This qualitative study examined students' experiences with the constructivist approach to learning in an introductory statistics university course. An overview of students' difficulties and frustrations were addressed for three pedagogical aspects. Findings suggested that students' difficulties were related to their epistemological beliefs of the nature of statistical knowledge, the simplicity of knowledge, and the source of knowledge. Therefore, students' frustrations seems to be connected to the agreement between their epistemological beliefs and those of the professor.

The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education