ARE EPISTEMOLOGICAL BELIEFS SIMILAR ACROSS DOMAINS

Investigators of students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and l earning, or epistemological beliefs, have generally assumed that epist emological beliefs are domain independent (i.e., they generalize acros s domains). The purpose of this research is to test this assumption. C ollege students completed an epistemological questionnaire with a spec ific domain in mind (either social sciences or mathematics), read a pa ssage (either social sciences or mathematics), answered a passage test , and completed another epistemological questionnaire with the alterna tive domain in mind. Results supported the idea that individuals' epis temological beliefs tend to be domain independent. Mathematical episte mological factors correlated with the corresponding social science epi stemological factors. Epistemological beliefs in both domains predicte d passage comprehension similarly, and most students showed a consiste nt level of epistemological sophistication across domains.