Epistemological Beliefs

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of teaching critical thinking on meta-cognitive awareness and epistemological beliefs of high school students. Method: The present study was a semi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test and follow up with a control group. The statistical population of this study was all second-grade high school students in Zahedan. The sample consisted of 30 subjects who were selected by randomized cluster sampling and were randomly assigned to either experimental (15 subjects) or control (15 People). The data collection tool was a meta-cognitive awareness questionnaire by Shrow and Denison (1994) and an epistemological questionnaire (EQ) (Schumer, 1990, 1993). At first, subjects of both groups were pre-test and then the experimental group received 12 critical thinking training sessions. While the control group did not receive any intervention. Finding: for analyzing the data, covariance analysis was used by SPSS software. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the mean scores of meta-cognitive awareness and epistemological beliefs in the experimental and control groups in the post-test (P <0.01). The effect of teaching critical thinking on metacognitive awareness and epistemological beliefs of students in the follow-up phase has continued. Conclusion: teaching critical thinking was effective on metacognitive awareness and the epistemological beliefs of students. Teaching students to improve the effective use of abilities, improve their performance and provide them with reasonable decision making and thinking.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop a program for teaching philosophy in a narrative manner and to evaluate its effectiveness on moral intelligence, epistemological beliefs and emotional self-awareness in adolescents. Methodology: The method of quasi-experimental research was pre-test-post-test design with control and follow-up group, also in terms of exploratory data type. The statistical population in the qualitative section consisted of 15 specialists in educational sciences and philosophy who were selected by purposive sampling method. Also, the statistical population in the quantitative part included 30 students in 2019 who were tested in two groups of 15 using stepwise cluster sampling. The experimental group underwent 8 sessions of 90-minute philosophy training in a narrative manner. The data collection tool was exploratory in the qualitative part of semi-structured individual interviews. In the quantitative part, Lenick and Kiel (2011) Moral Intelligence Questionnaire, Biles (2009) and Grant et al. (2002) Emotional Self-Awareness Questionnaire were used. Qualitative data analysis was used for content analysis and in quantitative part for confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of variance with repeated measures was used. Findings: The findings showed that among the components of teaching philosophy in a narrative way were responsibility, forgiveness, honesty, courageous behavior, moral values and communication skills. The results also showed that teaching philosophy in a narrative way is effective on moral intelligence, epistemological beliefs and emotional self-awareness of adolescents. Conclusion: Therefore, paying attention to the mentioned variables in prevention and designing more appropriate treatments will help researchers and therapists in the field of adolescents.