Belief, Knowledge, and Science Education

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Educational Psychology Review [jepr] PP250-344728 September 3, 2001 8:18 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2001 ( c© 2001)

Belief, Knowledge, and Science Education

Sherry A. Southerland,1,4 Gale M. Sinatra,2 and Michael R. Matthews3

Epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge and belief underliemany of the controversial issues fundamental to research and practice in sci-ence teaching and learning. In an effort to bring some clarity to questions ofknowledge and belief embedded within science education research and teach-ing, we first describe the distinctions drawn between knowledge and beliefin both philosophy and educational psychology, each of which have shapedthe various definitions employed within science education. This discussionis followed by an examination of the distinctions drawn between knowledgeand belief employed by three groups of science educators: the traditional dis-tinctions of the foundationalists that are co-opted by researchers focusingon teacher thinking/cognition, the nonfoundational epistemology of the fal-libilists and the evolution educators working from this framework, and theradical constructivists who react to and attempt to move past the limitations ofthese other positions. In this analysis, we explicate the different ways in whichknowledge and belief are understood and operationalized in a broad spec-trum of research, we describe the theoretical and philosophical assumptionsunderlying these approaches, and we explore the important areas of contention(both theoretical and empirical) surrounding each of these distinctions.

KEY WORDS: belief; knowledge; epistemology.

What does it mean to know? To believe? Where does knowledge end andbelief begin? Can one legitimately distinguish between these two constructs?What are the implications of such distinctions? Questions such as these are at

1Department of Teaching and Learning, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.2Department of Educational Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.3School of Education Studies, University of New South Wales.4Correspondence should be addressed to Sherry Southerland, Teaching and Learning,1705 E. Campus Center Drive, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112; e-mail:southe [email protected].

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the very heart of science education teaching and research. Constructivism,a theory of personal and social knowledge, has contributed to such queries.Questions about how students come to gain and test knowledge and whatconstitutes knowledge have been the staple of constructivist research andpedagogical practice. But other pressures have also contributed to the ele-vation of epistemological matters in contemporary science education. Re-current outbreaks of the science/religion tension, seen so dramatically inthe 1999 Kansas debates, bring to the fore questions about the basic natureof scientific knowledge and religious belief and the status of both. Multi-cultural concerns also raise the issue of the status of knowledge in variouscultural groups. In the United States, the adoption of the highly controversialPortland Baseline Essays (an Afro-Centric approach to educational curric-ula) has catapulted epistemology onto the center stage of many school dis-tricts. Do various beliefs about the natural world all constitute knowledge?How do such beliefs, and belief systems, compare with Western science?Should schools privilege one over the other?

Fundamental epistemological questions about the nature of knowledgeand belief underlie controversial issues such as these found currently withinscience education. Unfortunately, the wide variation in the use of the termsknowledge and belief is indicative of a general state of confusion about theseconstructs within science education. In an effort to bring some clarity to theseconversations, we describe the distinctions drawn between knowledge andbelief within the science education community, and within two importantareas of theory and research that have shaped these distinctions: philosophyand educational psychology. We then examine how these constructs are ap-plied in science education. We hope to explicate the different ways in whichknowledge and belief are understood and operationalized in a broad spec-trum of research, to describe the assumptions underlying these approaches,and to explore the important areas of contention surrounding the contrastingdistinctions. The arguments regarding knowledge and belief are so funda-mental that they cannot be resolved here and now. Instead, we hope bypointing out the need for greater clarity on this issue, we can inspire re-searchers to provide definitions of these constructs in their writing and toconduct empirical investigations aimed at understanding their relation.

INSIGHTS FROM PHILOSOPHY

As many, following Whitehead, have remarked, the history of Westernphilosophy is a footnote to Plato. This is especially so in the field of epis-temology or theory of knowledge. The basic philosophical questions con-cerning people’s beliefs, opinions, and knowledge that are debated today

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Belief, Knowledge, and Science Education 327

were formulated by Plato 2500 years ago. Plato has cast a very long epis-temological shadow. And as education is fundamentally involved with thetransformation of beliefs and the cultivation of knowledge and understand-ing, it is not surprising that educators have conducted a good deal of theirepistemological discussion in Plato’s shadow.

The Platonic Heritage

In answering contemporary questions regarding knowledge and belief,it is sensible to return to their Platonic origins to see how they were formu-lated and what structure was initially given to their answer. Plato first en-tertains epistemology in his famous dialogue, The Meno, which was writtenin about 400 B.C. The dialogue contains the well-known episode of Socratesquestioning a slaveboy about how he might double the area of a square, andthen leading him by questions alone to a knowledge of Pythagorus’ theorem(that the square on the hypotenuse of a triangle is equal to the sum of thesquares on the other two sides) (Guthrie, 1956). This episode has long beenregarded as the exemplar of the Socratic method in pedagogy. However,Plato draws epistemological, not pedagogical, lessons from the story. Themost important lesson he draws concerns the core epistemological distinc-tion between true belief and knowledge. The boy has been led to the truebelief that the square on the hypotenuese is equal to the sum of the squareson the other two sides; however, Plato asks whether his true belief constitutesknowledge. He observes that

At the present these opinions, being newly aroused, have a dream-like quality. But ifthe same questions are put to him on many occasions and in different ways, you cansee that in the end he will have a knowledge on the subject as accurate as anybody’s.(Guthrie, 1956, p. 138)

What then is the difference between “dream-like” true opinions and“knowledgeable” true opinions? This is the standard teacher’s and exam-iner’s question. Later in the dialogue Plato answers the question in a waythat has framed epistemological debate to the present time:

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in theirplace; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man’s mind, so they are notworth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tieddown, they become knowledge, and are stable. That is why knowledge is somethingmore valuable than right opinion. What distinguishes one from the other is the tether.(Guthrie, 1956, p. 154)

Plato elaborates this view in a later dialogue, The Theaetetus, whereagain after going through some examples of true belief or correct opinionthat seem to lack something, he says,

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So when a man gets hold of the true notion of something without an account, hismind does think truly of it, but he does not know it; for if one cannot give and receivean account of a thing, one has no knowledge of that thing. But when he has also gothold of an account, all this becomes possible to him and he is fully equipped withknowledge. (Cornford, 1935, p. 143)

Plato holds a reasoned true belief account of knowledge that requiresany proposition to meet three conditions: truth, belief, and evidence. Thetruth condition is a measure of whether the proposition accords with reality.The belief condition denotes whether the individual believes the proposi-tion is true. To meet the evidence condition, the individual must have goodreasons to believe that the proposition is true. This view, in one form oranother—that knowledge is justified true belief—has been epistemologicalorthodoxy since Plato’s time and has dominated twentieth-century Anglophilosophy. Expressions of this position can be found almost verbatim in thewritings of Ayer (1956), Armstrong (1973), and Scheffler (1965), to namejust a representative few. Hirst (1979), the influential British educationalphilosopher, wrote of Plato’s analysis that

In spite of much debate about the precise wording of these conditions, they do seemto me to express the nub of the matter and all I have to say about knowledge . . . isbased on this approach.

Hirst understates things when he says that much debate has attendedthe “precise wording” of the conditions. It is not just the wording, but alsothe adequacy and meaning of the conditions that have long been debated.Notwithstanding, it is important to acknowledge that the epistemologicaldebate has, for the most part, taken place on terrain demarcated by Plato.

Foundationalism in Epistemology

Of the three conditions of knowledge, most philosophical effort hasbeen expended on the evidence condition. It has generated numerous ver-sions of skepticism: if the tether cannot be tied securely, if there are no goodreasons or warrants for the true opinion, then knowledge is impossible. Platoin the Theaetetus recognized the first problem with the evidence condition—it appears to be circular. The claim that a person knows a proposition entailsthat she knows a reason that justifies her belief. But, this implies an infiniteregress in that she must also have justification for her initial justification, andso on. The response of those wanting to avoid the skeptical implication ofthis analysis has been to search for some item of noninferential knowledgethat might anchor the tether as Plato’s metaphor suggests.

For empiricists this noninferential foundation has been some form orother of direct experience, usually sense impressions (the seventeenth

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century term) or sense data (the twentieth century equivalent). David Hume,famously, or infamously, said that if we entertained doubts about the sound-ness of any idea we need only ask from what impression it is derived; ifthere be none, then the idea is nonsense. Three centuries later the positivistsused Hume’s argument to consign all knowledge claims in ethics, politics,aesthetics, and religion to the intellectual scrap heap. For example, BertrandRussell, an empiricist, said that scientific claims about light waves could notcount as knowledge until they have been “expressed as functions of thecolors and other sense-data” (Russell, 1963, p. 109).

For rationalists this noninferential foundation has been some form ofclear and distinct idea (as with Descartes’ cogito), or synthetic a priori claim(as with Kant), or some kind of theologically privileged claim (as in bothmystical and fundamentalist religious traditions). Kant was the first mod-ern philosopher to recognize that Newton’s monumental achievement inphysics—specifically his formulation of the law of universal gravitation—required the recasting of philosophical inquiry about knowledge. As geome-try was Plato’s paradigm through which he explored the nature of knowledge,Newtonian physics was Kant’s. He regarded aspects of Newtonian theory asnecessarily true—specifically the assumption of universal causation, and thereality of space and time. But he also agreed with David Hume that such ne-cessity was not given, or seen, in experience. Thus Newton’s truths—Kant’sparadigm of a knowledge claim—could not be accounted for by saying thatthe mind conformed to reality, rather the mind had to provide these necessi-ties. This is the beginning of Kant’s famous, or for some infamous, intrusion ofthe knowing subject into the object of knowledge. This part of Kant’s theoryhas been the impetus for some contemporary psychological views of knowl-edge representation and the root of constructivist epistemology in education.

It is important to note that the empiricist/rationalist debate about whohas the best justification for knowledge is really a family dispute within thePlatonic foundationalist epistemological tradition. Both sides accept the ba-sic framework laid down by Plato: there is a cognizing subject, some claim ofknowledge, and a train of reasons that ground the knowledge claim. Empiri-cism and rationalism are just two sides of one epistemological coin, a coinengraved with Plato’s image that has had wide circulation in education.

Educators’ acceptance of foundationalist epistemology has not, ofcourse, gone unnoticed. Toulmin (1972, p. 37) in Human Understanding wrote

From Locke to Russell, and from Descartes to Chomsky, orthodox epistemologistshave interpreted the problem of knowledge as requiring them to explain, at theoutset, how an individual thinker or observer can arrive single-handed at valid ideas,truths, or grammatical forms; and this choice of priorities has given rise to gravedifficulties, by distracting attention from the social character of language and thecommunal criteria of validity.

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It is precisely the social character of language and the communal crite-ria of validity that are brought to the fore in the analysis of scientific knowl-edge. If, on Plato’s scheme, the subject purports to know a scientific claimsuch as “the valency of sodium is plus one,” “the force on an acceleratingbody is 20 Newtons,” “continents have drifted apart,” “modern species haveevolved from common ancestral species,” and so on, then it is clear that theseknowledge claims could not arise from the subject simply confronting theworld and inducing these claims. There is obviously a very large communalcomponent—language, technology, methodology, research traditions, testi-mony, trust, and so on (dare one say “faith”)—that underwrites and entersinto the claims. As Paulo Freire, following Hegel, used to say, “The ‘Wethink’ determines the ‘I think.’ ” The communal component is submerged inthe essentially individualistic, Platonic, orthodox formulation of the prob-lem of knowledge and its relationship to belief. It is so submerged that somephilosophers have suggested that epistemology be recast with primacy givento investigating the conditions for communal, public, “objective” knowledge,and individual knowledge states be relegated to secondary status.

Objectivist Epistemology

Karl Popper instigated the first major break with orthodox epistemol-ogy in his 1934 book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It is here that hefirst formulated his objectivist account of knowledge, or what he provoca-tively called, “knowledge without a knowing subject.” In 1934 he (Popper,1934/1959, p. 105) wrote

. . . I admit, again, that the decision to accept a basic statement, and to be satisfiedwith it, is causally connected with our experiences—especially with our perceptualexperiences. But we do not attempt to justify basic statements by these experiences.Experiences can motivate a decision, and hence an acceptance or a rejection of a state-ment, but a basic statement cannot be justified by them—no more than by thumpingthe table.

Much later he (Popper, 1972, p. 108) would say

Traditional epistemology has studied knowledge or thought in a subjective sense—inthe sense of the ordinary usage of the words “I know” or “I am thinking.” This, Iassert, has led students of epistemology into irrelevances: while intending to studyscientific knowledge, they studied in fact something which is of no relevance toscientific knowledge. For scientific knowledge simply is not knowledge in the sense ofthe ordinary usage of the words “I know.” While knowledge in the sense of “I know”belongs to what I call the “second world,” the world of subjects, scientific knowledgebelongs to the third world, to the world of objective theories, objective problems,and objective arguments.

Most objectivists share Popper’s convictions that the growth of scientificknowledge is the core subject matter of epistemology; and that knowledge is

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something other than beliefs or psychological states, that is, it transcends in-dividual consciousness. Popper delineated three worlds: the first is the worldof objects, processes, and events (material and otherwise); the second is theworld of subjective, individual, mental operations (the life of the mind orprivate consciousness); and the third is the world of scientific, and other,theories. Although third world epistemological entities are created by peo-ple, they nevertheless exist independently of first and second world events(Musgrave, 1974; Popper, 1972).

One need not give an ontological interpretation of Popper’s threeworlds. To say that the propositional content of beliefs is distinct from psy-chological states of belief, is not to say that they exist independently. Rather,it is to say that they have different kinds of properties and are subject todifferent forms of analysis. The third world can be interpreted as logically,not physically, distinct from the first and second worlds (Irzik, 1995, p. 84).

For instance, Christiaan Huygens’ assertion that “the cycloid is an iso-chronous curve” is different from the physical letters on that page that con-stitute the claim (first world things), and it is also different from belief statesof Huygens, or whoever else might entertain it (second world things). Ques-tions of truth or falsity, and evidence or lack of it, can be asked of the scien-tific claim; these questions cannot be asked of first and second world entities.Thus, Popper, and objectivists more generally, say that propositional claims,and scientific theories, occupy a distinct logical niche—each with their ownappropriate questions and puzzles. Analogies can be drawn to how insti-tutions exist apart from, but not alongside, their embodiment. A universityexists apart from it buildings, faculty, and students, but it does not exist along-side them; a marriage exists apart from a husband and wife, but it does notexist alongside them.

It should be noted that the objectivist tradition of Popper (1959, 1972)(and also Althusser, Suchting, Baltas, Sneed, and Mittelstrass) emphasizes,first, the separation of cognitive or theoretical discourse from the real world.Discourse and the world are each autonomous. In this sense, theory existsindependently of individuals. Thus, scientific knowledge—according to ob-jectivists and contrary to the claims of many constructivists—is external toindividuals. Within this framework, what an individual thinks—the contentof his or her thoughts—is understood to be housed in Popper’s second world,the world of private consciousness. Thought cannot be considered scientificknowledge (as this is a third world entity). Instead individuals’ thoughtsare equated with beliefs. Using this framework, there is a fundamental dis-tinction between scientific knowledge (a third world entity) and personalknowledge (clearly a second world entity). Although this is a clean distinc-tion, this does not aid in understanding the nature of one’s thoughts in termsof warrants, epistemological strengths, and the like. Thus, it fails to shed

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much light on the more commonplace distinctions between knowledge andbeliefs.

There is, however, a second sense of “objectivism” especially commonin critics of science found in the science education literature. This is thesense of “objective truth.” This is fundamentally different from Popper’s(1972) objectivism (indeed Popper denied the possibility of absolute truth).Harding, for instance, writes that “The notion [of truth] is inextricably linkedto objectivism and its absolutist standards” (Harding, 1994, p. 100). Hardingasserts that traditional science sees knowledge production as divorced fromthe community or culture that produces it. However, this is a classic strawman argument as the overwhelming majority of science education researchersrecognize the role of social and cultural influences in the production of “thirdworld” scientific knowledge.

What would objectivists make of the distinction between knowledge andbelief? Within Popper’s (1972) framework, there are understood to be manystates of mind—wishes, hopes, fears, dreams, and beliefs. Objectivists wouldconsider beliefs to be one such cognitive state. As such, cognitive states canbe true or false. That is, there can be true beliefs and false beliefs—or moreaccurately the propositional content of beliefs can be true or false. In turn,true beliefs can be divided into two categories, justified true beliefs—thosefor which the individual has adequate reasons for holding—and acciden-tal true beliefs—those for which the individual has inadequate reasons forholding. Justified true beliefs are “knowledge states of minds,” or individualknowledge. Just what constitutes adequate justification is clearly a pressingmatter—Because my mother told me? Because it is in the textbook? Becausemy intuitions tell me? Because it is in the Bible? Because I experienced it?Because our cultural authorities tell us? Because it is viable in my experien-tial world? There are many possibilities and the philosophical tradition ofepistemology has long considered them.

INSIGHTS FROM EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

It is undeniable that the study of the nature of knowledge has long beenconsidered the purview of philosophers. However, in the later part of thetwentieth century, scientists began to weigh in on the matter of knowledge.According to Plokin (1994), “science has now reached the point where it toohas interesting and significant things to say about knowledge—indeed weare coming to the end of philosophy’s reign in this area” (p. 3).

What does the scientific study of knowledge bring to epistemologicalthinking? When philosophers talk about knowledge, they are generally refer-ring to bodies of information such as scientific knowledge (as described pre-viously in the objectivist discussion). Philosophical accounts of knowledge

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deal with theoretical and definitional matters such as what counts as evi-dence, and the basis on which beliefs can justifiably be called knowledge.In contrast, scientists who study knowledge are bound by the empirical andrational methods of their discipline to explore the nature of knowledge.Scientists who study knowledge are primarily grounded in biology and psy-chology. The biological study of knowledge, or “evolutionary epistemology”as it is called, is “the study and understanding of knowledge through the useof evolutionary theory” (Plokin, 1994, p. 2). According to this perspective,knowledge is understood to be an outcome of adaptations that have devel-oped through the mechanisms of evolution, just like the ability of humans towalk upright. Thus, biological studies of epistemology provide what might becalled distal explanations of knowledge, that is, explanations for the originsof knowledge in our distant past.

In contrast to the biological approach to knowledge, psychological stud-ies of knowledge provide explanations of the “proximate causes of knowl-edge” (Plokin, 1994, p. 20). More specifically, “they tell us about the lawsand mechanisms that govern individual perception, learning and memory,and the embodiment of individual knowledge” (Plokin, 1994, p. 20). The keyto understanding the psychological approach to the study of knowledge isthat scientists of human behavior view knowledge and beliefs as psychologi-cal constructs (clearly within Popper’s (1972) second world). A psychologicalconstruct is a hypothesized mental state, trait, or ability (such as intelligence,memory, personality). As with any construct, the questions educational psy-chologists raise about knowledge and beliefs are, “how can we operationallydefine these constructs in our research,” “how can they be measured or as-sessed,” “are they predictive of human learning and behavior,” and “are theypsychologically distinct?”

The constructs of knowledge and beliefs play a powerful role in educa-tional research and practice and, thus, the scientific study of knowledge hasbecome very influential in these circles. Educational psychologists are con-cerned about the definitions of knowledge and beliefs, how knowledge andbeliefs develop, and how these constructs affect the learning process. Also,like the evolutionary epistemologists, they are concerned with the impact ofthe physical, social, and cultural environments (both past and present) onknowledge construction.

It is safe to say that of the two terms, knowledge has received the lion’sshare of attention in educational psychology research. Indeed, one couldargue that the study of knowledge acquisition and change are quintessen-tial fodder for the psychological study of memory and learning. In general,knowledge has been conceptualized as representations of information inmemory. The form of these representations has been variously described asschemata, frameworks, networks, mental models, and so forth (See Reynolds

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et al., 1996, for a discussion of different theoretical views of knowledge rep-resentation within educational psychology.)

Despite the centrality of knowledge to the research agenda in edu-cational psychology, researchers have been struggling to construct explicitdefinitions of knowledge and beliefs since the inception of the field. Evenpapers examining the role of knowledge and beliefs in learning from notedjournals in educational psychology do not always provide definitions of theconstructs under study. Hofer and Pintrich (1997) note that beliefs is a “par-ticularly slippery term in the psychological literature” (p. 112). Alexanderand Dochy concur, saying that “explicit definitions or explanations of theseterms are rarely offered” (1995, p. 414). They acknowledge the inherentdifficulty by noting that “it is unclear where the boundaries of these twofundamental concepts lie. Are knowledge and beliefs, in actuality, synonymsmarking the same semantic territory, or are they antonyms denoting orthog-onal dimensions of human understanding?” (p. 415).

Despite the inherent difficulty of the task, Alexander and her colleaguesare noteworthy for their efforts toward defining knowledge and beliefs.Alexander et al. (1991) define knowledge as “an individual’s personal stockof information, skills, experiences, beliefs and memories” (p. 317). Therefore,for some educational psychologists, knowledge is the overarching categoryand beliefs are just one segment of an individual’s knowledge base. Thisdefinition stands in contrast to philosophical definitions of knowledge asjustified true beliefs because it does not demand the justification and truthrequirements for knowledge. In fact, Alexander et al. (1991) acknowledgedthis when they noted that “knowledge encompasses all that a person knowsor believes to be true, whether or not it is verified as true in some sort ofobjective or external way” (p. 317). This view suggests that knowledge isinherently incomplete, flawed, and fallible.

Although this view seems to blur the lines between knowledge andbeliefs, some educational psychologists do draw distinctions between theconstructs, often relying on the philosophical definition of knowledge asjustified true belief. In their study of how educational researchers in theUnited States and the Netherlands viewed knowledge and beliefs, Alexanderand Dochy (1995) found that, like philosophers, most educational psychol-ogists described knowledge as needing justification, or external validation,but viewed beliefs as less epistemologically accountable. In general, edu-cational researchers saw the two constructs as having overlapping dimen-sions. Both knowledge and beliefs were seen as arising from experience,but knowledge was seen as emanating from school or formal experience,whereas beliefs were seen as developing from everyday experiences. Thatis, knowledge was described as factual or objective information that comesabout as a result of formal learning, and beliefs were seen as subjective,

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idiosyncratic, personal, and involving feelings (Alexander and Dochy, 1995).Indeed educational researchers who distinguished the two constructs heldthat an important difference was that beliefs were more subjective andaffective than knowledge. This view is consistent with other educationalepistemologists such as Schommer (1994) who has described beliefs as “bydefinition . . . emotion-laden” (p. 37).

It is important to note, however, that the use of affect to distinguishbetween knowledge and beliefs has been called into question by philoso-phers as well as those within the field of educational psychology. Pintrichet al. (1993) critiqued traditional psychological views of knowledge as “coldcognition” because these views failed to acknowledge the affective compo-nent. The affective nature of knowledge acquisition and change has becomea central aspect of educational psychology research in both motivation andconceptual change (see for example, Schnotz et al., 1999).

Establishing a clear distinction between knowledge and beliefs is com-plicated by empirical research on the two constructs, which suggests thatthey have related effects on measures of comprehension, understanding,and learning. For example, both beliefs and knowledge have been shownto influence the processing and recall of text information. Anderson and hiscolleagues showed that students’ interpretation and recall of ambiguous pas-sages depended on their background knowledge (see for example, Andersonet al., 1977). Similarly, Kardash and Scholes (1996) demonstrated that stu-dents’ text interpretations were influenced by their prior beliefs, and Garnerand Alexander (1991) showed that what readers recalled from persuasivetexts depended on their initial beliefs.

Researchers investigating conceptual change have demonstrated thatknowledge and beliefs are both resistant to change. In a meta-analysis oftexts designed to promote conceptual change, Guzzetti et al. (1993) showedthat unless texts are explicitly designed to refute misconceptions, they areunlikely to promote change. Chambliss (1994) showed the parallel findingwith beliefs. Readers tend not to change their initial beliefs even after readinga text designed to be persuasive.

Empirical studies such as these and many others have led conceptualchange researchers to develop new models of knowledge restructuring thatacknowledge that beliefs and knowledge have related effects on conceptualchange. Vosniadou and Brewer (1994) suggest that both conceptual knowl-edge and epistemological beliefs can either facilitate or constrain the con-ceptual change process. Pintrich (1999) and Dole and Sinatra (1998) havealso argued that motivational beliefs as well as prior knowledge are keyfactors influencing the likelihood of change.

In sum, research in educational psychology to date has shown thatknowledge and beliefs both affect learning. However, the influence of these

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two constructs is not always parallel. Murphy and Alexander (in press) ex-amined the effects of reading persuasive texts on changes in students’ knowl-edge and beliefs. They found that measures of knowledge and beliefs takenprior to reading a persuasive text had opposite effects on beliefs measuredafter reading. This suggests that while both constructs affect comprehensionand learning, when different measures are used, differences in their influencecan be observed.

There are several possible explanations that may account for the com-mon finding that knowledge and beliefs exert related influences on learning.First, as Murphy and Alexander (in press) clearly demonstrated, care mustbe taken to develop distinct measures of knowledge and beliefs in order totap subtle differences between the two constructs. Second, it is possible thatthe distinction between knowledge and beliefs may be less critical psycholog-ically than it is philosophically. Educational researchers must ask questionssuch as, does it matter psychologically if a learner knows a particular whalespecies is endangered, or believes it is, to their perception of a report aboutInuit ritualistic hunting? If knowledge and beliefs have related effects onlearning, thinking, and remembering, psychologists may need further evi-dence to justify drawing clear distinctions between the two constructs. Doleand Sinatra raise this concern when they note that “whether we call it knowl-edge or beliefs does not seem to us to be central to the research agenda” inknowledge acquisition and change (1994, p. 261).

However, a third interpretation is possible. That is, even though it maybe difficult to consistently demonstrate that knowledge and beliefs differen-tially affect learning, the two constructs may indeed be different in importantways psychologically. For example, psychologists may still want to draw a dis-tinction between knowledge and beliefs if it can be demonstrated that thetwo constructs are justified with different epistemological standards—justas philosophers have suggested. In other words, it might be possible to dis-tinguish whether a piece of information should be considered knowledge orbelief by examining the type and number of warrants an individual holdsfor the information. If the information is well warranted from an epistemo-logical standpoint, we may want to consider it knowledge. If there are fewwarrants or if the warrants are based on justifications not recognized by thescientific community (i.e., I think this is true because my parents told meit was true) then we may want to consider it a belief. This would help toexplain why one person’s knowledge may be another person’s belief. Sucha phenomena is possible because of differences in how the information is“tethered.”

If it is possible to demonstrate that individuals hold different epistemo-logical standards for their knowledge than their beliefs, this does not suggestthey are necessarily represented differently in the mind of the individual.

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Both types of information may be represented in similar forms (perhapsmental models or schemata). A common structure for knowledge and be-liefs in memory could account for the similar effects of these constructson comprehension and learning, even if individuals justify their knowledgequite differently than their beliefs.

Clearly, an important goal for educational psychologists is to establishwhether there are psychological differences between knowledge and beliefsand whether these can be consistently demonstrated empirically. It is im-portant to determine whether such distinctions are useful and whether theycontribute to our understanding of learning in science and other domains.

BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE IN SCIENCE EDUCATIONRESEARCH

The science education community’s conceptualization of belief andknowledge has been heavily influenced by both the foundationalist andobjectivist epistemologies inherited from philosophy. In the past, scienceeducation researchers have tended to employ the definitions of belief andknowledge in the tradition of the foundationalists described in the first sec-tion, echoing the approach to these two constructs employed in some circlesin educational psychology. In one current example of this foundationalist ap-proach in science education, knowledge is described as “evidential, dynamic,emotionally-neutral, internally structured, and develop(ed) with age and ex-perience” (Gess-Newsome, 1999, p. 55). Alternatively, belief is described as“both evidential and nonevidential, static, emotionally-bound, organizedinto systems, and develop(ed) episodically” (Gess-Newsome, 1999, p. 55).

What are some of the important distinctions inherent in these defini-tions? Like the views of some educational psychologists described earlier,knowledge is thought to be derived from rational activity and thus is consid-ered to be extraemotional in nature, whereas belief is understood to have asignificant affective component. However, as noted, philosophers and edu-cational psychologists are now recognizing the limitation of using emotionas part of the knowledge/belief distinction. There are many instances wheninaccurate information is assimilated by a learner without the benefit of a sig-nificant emotional investment. Alternatively, there are many examples fromthe sociology of science in which affect is shown to play an important rolein the construction of scientific knowledge—both in the areas of discoveryand justification.

Another important distinction of the traditional science education def-initions is that knowledge is understood to be based on an assessment ofevidence (in the case of scientific knowledge, the evidence would be judged

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using scientific epistemic criteria), whereas belief does not have the sameempirical requirement. As Smith (1994) describes, often belief implies aconviction of the truth of a statement “in spite of all evidence to the con-trary” (p. 592), that is, a conviction based on faith. This contrast is not tosuggest that belief is a weak form of empiricism; instead, it is understoodto be a form of understanding that may not have an empirical basis at all.Knowledge is understood to be a dynamic construct that is developed bythe learner through experience and is open to continual refinement. In con-trast, belief is understood to be a more firmly structured, static construct,one that is acquired through significant episodes of experience and is notswayed by or dependent on continued evaluation of empirical evidence. Forexample, a student might have knowledge about the mechanism of evolu-tionary change, derived from a specific unit of instruction, including labora-tory experiences and activities, targeting this concept. This knowledge maybe modified through future instruction and experiences. That same studentmight have a belief in a young earth, derived from religious teachings. Thisbelief is not easily changed, even in the face of empirical evidence. Attemptsto demonstrate the scientific shortcomings of this idea can be met with astrong negative reaction by the student.

Using the traditional foundationalist distinctions, science educatorstend to think of a knowledge proposition as being certain (or as certainas the methods of science can reasonably allow). In contrast, a belief failsto carry that same epistemological weight (Smith, 1994). It is important tonote, however, that many acknowledge that beliefs can often be personallyuseful and socially relevant (National Research Council, 1996).

Although these are the distinctions traditionally accepted by the scienceeducation community, they are neither clear-cut nor universally employed.Indeed, challenges to objectivism (in the sense of certain knowledge, notto Popper’s (1972) third world sense of objectivism) in science educationhave caused many to reconceptualize the relationship between knowledgeand belief (Cobern, 2000). In no area of science education research is theargument more important, and thus more heated, than in discussions of evo-lution education. Because the discourse of evolution education has providedthe context for many of the controversies within science education, we drawheavily from the work in this area to characterize the first position.

Drawing Strong Distinctions Between Knowledge and Belief: TheFallibilists and a Nonfoundational Epistemology

Although much of science education research has been characterizedas relying on an objectivist (absolutist, nonrelativist) epistemology (Cobern,2000), it would probably be more accurate to characterize such research as

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having a fallibilist basis. Siegel (1998) and Matthews (1994) have describedfallibilism as an epistemology based on the idea that even though humanknowledge of the world is imperfect, useful comparisons can be made be-tween competing theories or descriptions, and one judged better than an-other. Thus, within a fallibilist epistemology, certainty is not a condition ofknowledge, we can never know anything to be absolutely true, although use-ful comparisons between propositions can be made. Because certainty is nota condition of knowledge, the fallibilist position is a nonfoundationalist epis-temology, that is, an epistemology that rejects both the rational or empiricalgrounds of the foundationalists as an absolute bedrock upon which knowl-edge is grounded. However, it is important to note that despite the rejectionof certainty, fallibilists do assert that it is possible to make useful compar-isons between competing propositions. It is instructive to contrast fallibilismwith relativism, which argues that because of difficulties in achieving ob-jectivity it is impossible to make reliable comparisons between competingviews. Fallibilism can also be contrasted with absolutism, which maintainsthat present understandings are absolute and cannot be improved upon.

Science educators using a fallibilist epistemology of science attemptto draw tight distinctions between knowledge and belief, distinctions thatare directly influenced by their philosophical position. Using the fallibilistframework, to qualify as knowledge, a proposition must represent the best,albeit limited, description of reality employed by a wider community, andthe learner must have reasons that justify or provide warrant for the propo-sition (typically relying on an objective, rational appraisal of supportingclaims). According to fallibilists, there is no room for “subjective,” intrap-ersonal knowledge claims within science. Because of the very nature of sci-ence, its methodological requirements, and assumptions—it is open to publicscrutiny and examination, uses agreed upon methodological criteria for theirevaluation, and recognizes nature as the final arbiter—scientific knowledgeis considered to be as objective as possible (Smith et al., 1995; Smith andScharmann, 1999).

On the other hand, for the fallibilists, beliefs are understood to be amore subjective way of knowing. They are considered to be personal truthsas opposed to truths about the world (Smith et al., 1995). As such, these“personal truths” are not held to the same epistemic criteria as knowledge.Instead, beliefs can be extrarational—meaning that they are not based onevaluation of empirical evidence—thus they may have little correspondencewith the outside world. They are subjective, and they are often intertwinedwith affect.

In terms of evolution education, an educator that employs a fallibilist,nonfoundational epistemology would understand descriptions of speciationby natural selection to be part of a wider knowledge framework. In contrast,

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the notion of a spontaneous production of species by a creator would beseen as a component of a larger belief system. The former is based on arational evaluation of scientific evidence and the latter is a matter of faith,an extraempirical conviction (Smith and Scharmann, 1999). The problemhere lies in the definition of “scientific,” as the radical constructivist arguesfor a much broader definition than that recognized by the fallibilists. This isan argument that is central to the distinction between knowledge and beliefsdrawn by both of these groups that is discussed in the following section.

Even between those using the fallibilist approach in evolution educa-tion there lies a matter of contention. Some of those using this frameworkwould say that most biologists “believe” in the theory of evolution, meaningthat they understand this theory to reliably describe the operation of someaspects of the natural world (Harding and Hare, 2000; Meadows et al., 2000).Such a use of belief draws heavily on the everyday meaning of the term. Butas Cobern (2000) points out, use of the term belief can imply doubt. Thus,laypersons can take the phrase “biologists believe evolution” to mean thatthey recognize evolution’s validity in a tentative, uncertain, and doubtfulmanner. Smith and many of his colleagues (Smith, 1994; Smith et al., 1995;Smith and Scharmann, 1999) and the National Academy of Sciences (1998)strongly argue that this everyday usage of belief leads to a mischaracteriza-tion of the way scientists approach theories.

To better represent the nature of science, Smith and others argue for amore specific distinction between constructs of belief and acceptance. Usingthis distinction, these authors explain that scientists accept the validity ofthe theory of evolution as the best scientific explanation currently available,implying that this acceptance is dependent on systematic evaluation of evi-dence. They claim that the proposition that a scientist believes in evolutionimplies that judgment of the validity of the theory is based on personal con-victions, opinions, and degree of congruence with other belief systems. Thus,a layperson can then understand a scientist’s belief of evolution as a religiousbelief. The layperson could argue that scientists do not know evolution to betrue, they cannot prove evolution to be true, they can only believe it. Such ause of belief has the potential for wiping away distinctions between scientificknowledge and religious belief. Drawing a distinction between belief in a the-ory and acceptance of a theory as the best scientific explanation currentlyavailable emphasizes the fundamental, but sometimes subtle, distinctionsbetween belief and acceptance.

In contrast to the fine distinction proposed by Smith and others (Smithet al., 1995), other researchers within evolution education have continuedto use the term believe to characterize students’ personal evaluation ofthe validity of a construct. Bishop and Anderson (1990), Demastes et al.(1995), and Lawson and Worsnop (1992) discuss the relationship of students’

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belief in evolution and their understanding of this construct. As in the previ-ous discussion, this usage of belief is perhaps at odds with Smith’s definitionof acceptance, but only if the personal evaluation in question is based onsome rational, systematic criteria. However, compared to that of scientists,students’ evaluations of the validity of a theory are more likely to be basedon nonrational, nonempirical criteria. Although educators can hope thatstudents’ personal evaluation of evolution is a form of academic acceptance,such an evaluation could be more of a belief than Smith and others mighthope.

Although the characterization of beliefs may seem like an esoteric point,for many educators involved in evolution education, it is not. As Smith(1994) argues, understanding the distinction between belief in the absence ofobjective evidence and acceptance that is based on the evaluation of evidenceis a crucial aspect of understanding evolution. Indeed, understanding thedifference between belief and acceptance as Smith describes it may helpstudents understand the very nature of science and how scientific knowledgediffers from other ways of understanding the world. By using acceptance of atheory as the best scientific explanation currently available, one is emphasizingthat the recognition of the validity of a scientific theory is not simply a matterof personal opinion, thus providing a strong contrast with belief.

Perhaps more importantly, drawing attention to this subtle distinctionbetween belief and acceptance has a moral implication. Smith and his col-leagues (1994, 1995), Southerland (2000), and the National Academy of Sci-ences (1998) each suggest that it is important for teachers to target studentunderstanding of evolutionary theory, without requiring student acceptanceor belief of this theory. Thus, they distinguish students’ understandings of aconcept from their evaluation (empirically driven or not) of the concept’svalidity. Understanding, it is argued, is not the same as accepting or believing(Rutledge and Warden, 2000). As has been demonstrated, understanding ofevolution can be accomplished without requiring students to discard or aban-don important aspects of their cultural knowledge (Demastes-Southerlandet al., 1995, 1996). Requiring student belief in evolution, on the other hand,may require some students to abandon important aspects of their personalbelief systems (such as creationist accounts of species origins) and signifiesthat the student has not appropriately examined the evidence. This require-ment, it is argued, is dogmatic and scientistic (Cobern, 1994; Poole, 1995);therefore, it could be considered morally and politically inappropriate. Onthe other hand, acceptance of evolution as the best scientific explanationcurrently available is perhaps more morally defensible, as this phrase sig-nifies a close examination of evidence and recognizes some agency on thepart of the learner. We argue, however, that requiring acceptance from stu-dents as a result of instruction is still a morally questionable expectation.

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Instead, it seems that acceptance should be a goal of instruction—not arequirement of students—as acceptance would require a deep understand-ing of rival theories and their warrants.

Following this argument, the Platonic heritage did well to insist on theseparation of knowledge and belief, even knowledge and true belief, if thebelief is held without personal examination of the evidence. Arguably, it isreasonable to teach for understanding but inappropriate to require eitheracceptance or belief to result from instruction. Educators lose sight of thisdistinction at their pupils’ peril. The pursuit of true beliefs, without goodreasons for holding them, quickly becomes indoctrination. It is unfortunatethat often science education, especially conceptual change research, equatesstudents’ knowledge with students’ beliefs. Indeed, in the original formula-tion of the conceptual change model posed by Posner et al. (1982), studentswere considered to have undergone true conceptual change only after theiroriginal conception was completely replaced with the scientific conception.Thus, for learning about evolution, this model requires not only understand-ing but also acceptance as the best scientific explanation. We would arguethat the first is an epistemological matter and the second is a personal matter.There are criteria that the first has to meet, especially of the reason-givingkind, which may not be relevant to the latter.

It is important to note that not all evolution educators, not even allthose operating out of a fallibilist epistemology, agree with this more mod-est instructional goal of understanding. Instead, some continue to seek un-derstanding, acceptance, and belief. For instance, in a study by Lawson andWeser (1992), one of their stated goals for instruction was students’ rejectionof “non-scientific beliefs” such as beliefs in God and the soul. Indeed, othershave argued that the scientific and religious world-views are fundamentallyincompatible, a position that we reject. Therefore, according to these edu-cators a science teacher must teach for student understanding and ultimateacceptance of scientific knowledge—and a rejection of religious world views(Mahner and Bunge, 1996). It is important to note, however, that despite theclear disagreements about the appropriateness of the goal for science instruc-tion (understanding vs. acceptance vs. belief), each of the researchers usinga fallibilist epistemology recognizes the distinction between understandinga concept and acceptance of or belief in the concept.

There is one last caveat in the discussion of the fallibilist, nonfounda-tional approach to knowledge and belief. Many authors use belief to referto a student’s use of a nonscientific idea. For example, the idea that giraffesgrow long necks as a result of their need for food would be consideredby some to be a naıve or experiential belief (Gilbert et al., 1982), for oth-ers such a proposition would be considered to be an alternative conception(or misconception) (Wandersee et al., 1994). Both sets of terms are used to

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indicate that the proposition conflicts with current scientific explanations ofthe phenomena. However, use of the term belief is congruent with the falli-bilist explanation that knowledge adequately describes reality and providesmore trustworthy explanations than competitive claims. Thus, the less use-ful rival explanation is considered by some to be a belief. In contrast, otherresearchers opt for the term alternative conception. Why alternative concep-tion? For these researchers, belief refers not so much to the truth or falsityof the statement; instead, belief indicates that the proposition has a nonem-pirical basis or that it may have a religious or meta-physical nature. By usingalternative conception, the authors are trying to make clear that the proposi-tion could be an empirically based, rationally held, but inaccurate idea—thusan evaluation of the scientific validity of the proposition remains.

To reiterate, for some researchers belief is used to imply a lack of va-lidity of a proposition. For others, however, belief may be understood asimplying a religious or meta-physical origin of the student’s thought. Re-searchers in this second group, therefore, avoid the term belief and insteaduse alternative conceptions to refer to empirically based, but scientifically in-accurate propositions (Bishop and Anderson, 1990; Demastes-Southerlandet al., 1995, 1996; Settlage, 1994).

Equating Knowledge and Belief: The Radical Constructivists

Just as the sharp distinction drawn between knowledge and belief madeby the fallibilists was based on an underlying nonfoundational philosophicalposition, so too is the view that equates knowledge and belief. According toa radical constructivists’ framework, knowledge and belief are so closely re-lated that they cannot be unambiguously separated. This argument is basedon a critique of the fallibilist position. Radical constructivists argue thatthere is no immediate epistemic access to the external world. Therefore, allcognitive claims must be filtered through the experiences and lenses of thelearner. Even the content of the knowledge produced through systematic in-quiry is as much (or more) a product of the active knower and the influenceof the knower’s culture as it is a reflection of the physical world (which forsome plays a minor role if any in knowledge construction). Radical construc-tivists argue that even the knowledge produced through science is based ona number of untestable assumptions (i.e., there is a reality, the world is or-derly and knowable). Because of this, science is, at some level, dependent onbelief. Thus, for a radical constructivist, the direct or undiluted knowledge ofthe physical world traditionally sought by scientists is simply not attainable(Matthews, 1994).

Cobern (2000) reminds us that it is important to recognize that peopledo not hold beliefs for no reasons. There is almost always a rationale, a set

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of reasons, for a person’s belief, although for many aspects of life, includingscience, these reasons are not always empirically based. Thus, “for all prac-tical reasons, belief and knowledge both represent what one has reasons tobelieve to be true” (Cobern, 1993, p. 62). Using a previous example, a studentmay hold a belief in a young earth because such an idea is an obvious conclu-sion from a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Because trusted authorityfigures explain that such a literal interpretation is a necessary componentof valued religious practice, the student agrees and adopts this belief. Thereasons for belief here, then, are reliance on authority, a prominent featurewithin a valued belief system. These are clearly reasons; they are simply notempirical ones.

How can one draw a distinction between knowledge and belief if knowl-edge is understood to be largely a social construction, if there is no unmiti-gated pathway to truth about the physical world? Cobern (1993, 2000) andothers using a radical constructivist framework, argue that given the mit-igated nature of our knowledge of the world, the assumptions on whichscience is constructed, and the reasoned nature of beliefs, there is at besta very ambiguous line between belief and knowledge and the distinctionbetween the two must be abandoned.

Moreover, Cobern (2000) suggests that it is counterproductive to con-tinue the distinction. To insist on a distinction between belief and knowledgeis to imply that people hold beliefs for no reasons. Thus, beliefs continue tobe viewed as epistemologically weak constructs that are of little import ina science classroom. Cobern argues that such a dismissal seriously under-mines science instruction. To relegate beliefs to the outskirts of instructionis to fail to search for and understand the reasons students hold beliefs. Inthis approach, the scope of reasons to be discussed in a classroom becomesartificially limited to those of science, and we must recognize that the scien-tific reasons and reasoning the teacher employs may be worlds away fromthe reasoning employed by her students. Such teaching could have nega-tive consequences: students are not aided in understanding how scientificreasoning works and may find answers derived from science as fundamen-tally unsatisfactory. They could raise the question “if science can’t answermy question about this, what is it good for?” It is Cobern’s assertion thatthis approach could therefore fail to develop in students a positive attitudetoward science and the knowledge it produces.

Within the broader science education community, there are responsesto the radical constructivist position, in terms of the methodological assump-tions, scientific versus nonscientific reasoning, and the consequences for in-struction. Each of these issues is discussed, in turn. The radical constructivistsuggests that because of the first premises or presuppositions that are pri-mary features of the nature of science, that all scientific knowledge is a matter

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of faith, knowledge and belief are indistinguishable. A fallibilist response isthat although science is based on a set of first premises (such as nature isknowable and predictable), this does not necessarily lead one to assert thatknowledge and belief are indistinguishable. Indeed, as M. U. Smith (personalcommunication, October 16, 2000) would argue, a scientific assertion of “theearth is spherical” does not have the same epistemological characteristics asthe assertion of “there is a god.” For the first, there is a great deal of empir-ical evidence; for the latter, there is no physical evidence. (It is importantto note here that this is NOT to say that science would assert that there isno god; instead, such questions are beyond the methodological assumptionsdriving science. Thus, science has nothing to say on the matter.) The falli-bilist position would assert that each of these propositions meet differentepistemological criteria, the first as knowledge and the second as belief.

Now we must address the second part of the radical constructivist po-sition, that individuals do hold reasons for their beliefs. As in the previousdiscussion, the fallibilist would agree that beliefs are reasoned, and therefore,in part, rational constructs. However, fallibilist maintain that there are verydifferent epistemological warrants supporting knowledge propositions thansupport beliefs. What is at issue here is the adequacy and nature of the justi-fication of a proposition. As in the previous discussion, again the distinctioncenters on methodological characteristics of science and other ways of know-ing. So, too, the debate between Galileo and the church was a methodologicalone—what is the appropriate type of justification required for astronomi-cal claims? Again, the fallibilist response to radical constructivists would bethat although individuals have reasons for their beliefs, these reasons havedifferent epistemological characteristics than those used for knowledge.

Finally, in contrast to the broad definitions of science championed bythe radical constructivist, the fallibilists assert that it is important to empha-size to our students that science cannot answer all questions. Indeed, thefallibilists argue that recognizing the limitations and boundaries of science(caused, in part, by its particular methodological and philosophical assump-tions) is a central premise of the nature of science that students must cometo understand (Smith and Scharmann, 1999; Southerland, 2000).

In contrast, the radical constructivist argue that attention to the bound-aries of science makes it less interesting to student than instruction that em-ploys broader definitions of science. They claim this places students in theposition to be disappointed when science has little meaningful to say aboutparticular situations, and it leaves students fundamentally perplexed and un-able to reason through a clash of competing and contradictory knowledgeclaims. However, a large body of science educators argue that it is imperativefor scientifically literate students to know when to turn to science for answersand when science is unable to address particular questions.

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As Cobern (2000) describes, the final drawback to science teachingbased on a firm distinction between belief and knowledge is found in the tacitconflation of understanding and acceptance. If only knowledge is addressedin a classroom (with belief being out of the bounds of the discussion), andthe reasons for its status as knowledge are delivered in instruction, thenteachers may tacitly assume that student understanding comes hand-in-handwith acceptance. Alternatively, if the student fails to accept a proposition,this is interpreted by the teacher as a failure in understanding. Accordingto this perspective, to remove student beliefs from the realm of discussionis to miss a vital aspect of the learning process. On this point, we argue thatCobern (2000) has set up nonrelativistic approaches to science instructionas a straw man. Indeed, most science educators working from a fallibilistepistemology would argue that the recognition of student beliefs, particularlyabout controversial topics, is an indispensable aspect of sound pedagogy(Smith, 1994; Smith and Scharmann, 1999; Southerland, 2000). Clearly, therelativists are not the only group to assert the necessity of recognizing andbuilding from student beliefs in instruction.

Folding Together Knowledge and Belief: Teacher Thinking Research

Adding to the complexity of science educators’ uses of knowledge andbelief already described is a third position, that of the teacher thinking/cognition researchers. Science educators working within this domain, likethe radical constructivists, often use belief and knowledge in interchange-able ways. However, it is important to recognize that this equivalency has adifferent basis.

As mentioned previously, the radical constructivists deliberately equateknowledge and belief as a direct result of the particular philosophical positionthey assume. A review of some of the teacher education literature would leadone to surmise that these researchers are also working from the deliberateassumption that belief and knowledge are indistinguishable. Teacher think-ing researchers often use knowledge and belief to label what appear to besimilar, if not the same, constructs (Roth, 1993; Taylor, 1993). However, thisinterchangeability is not deliberately chosen as a resolution of their own par-ticular philosophical dilemma. Indeed, many teacher thinking researchersacknowledge theoretical differences between knowledge and belief. The in-terchangeable use of the two constructs in the teacher thinking literatureis based on the recognition of the inherent difficulties in cleanly separatingknowledge and belief. We understand this group not to be explicitly argu-ing for the equation of belief and knowledge based on theoretical grounds,as was seen with the radical constructivists. Instead, in recognition of the

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complexity and the inability to distinguish these constructs on an empiricalbasis, teacher thinking researchers simply opt to fold these terms togetherin their practice.

Gess-Newsome’s position, as described in “Knowledge and Beliefsabout Subject Matter,” is reflective of the argument of many science educa-tion researchers working in the area of teacher belief (Gess-Newsome, 1999).Gess-Newsome describes knowledge as being empirically based, nonemo-tional, rational, gradually developed, and well structured. Alternatively, shedescribes beliefs as being highly subjective, as having a significant emotionalcomponent, and derived from significant episodes one experiences.

What distinguishes, then, the definitions of the teacher thinking re-searchers from that of the fallibilists? Teacher education researchers focuson the intersection of classroom practice and teacher thinking about practice.As such, much of the thinking they focus on—what a teacher knows of herpractice—must be defined in highly subjective, personal terms (Kagan, 1990)and thus would be considered beliefs. However, teacher thinking can alsohave a significant empirical component and so could be considered knowl-edge. Recognizing this complexity, teacher education researchers describeteacher thinking as having a basis in both knowledge and belief and recog-nize that these two constructs are “intertwined in ways that may not be pre-cisely disentangled but should never-the-less be acknowledged” (Woodbury,Submitted). Although some researchers in this area reserve the terms con-ception and knowing for thinking that has an empirical, nonemotional basisand reserve belief and believing for thinking that has a nonempirical, highlyemotional basis (Woodbury, Submitted), (a position that most philosophersfind highly problematic), in practice most teacher thinking researchers in sci-ence education tend to use the term belief to refer to both of these constructs(Cronin-Jones, 1991; Taylor, 1993).

It is important to note that compounding the philosophical critiquesof the use of affect as a primary distinction between knowledge and belief,an artifact of such a distinction is the moving boundaries between the twoconstructs. As is particularly true when considering potentially emotionalconstructs—such as teacher expectations of learners’ abilities—one teacher’sknowledge (nonemotional, empirically derived, based on outside researchand personal data) can appear largely equivalent to another teacher’s be-lief (emotionally laden, subjectively derived, based on significant teachingepisodes). Thus, to compound the difficulty of the questionable distinc-tion between knowledge and belief, it seems that the nature of the issueor topic in question affects the relationship. Although this difficulty pro-vides a practical rational for teacher educators’ blending of the two con-structs, it does little to offer a sound theoretical or empirical rationale for theconflation.

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CONCLUSIONS

Questions about what it means to know and believe have long been thesubject of human inquiry. Philosophical approaches tend to wrestle with is-sues such as what can we know, and how can we know that we know it. Theseissues have far more practical import than their esoteric nature suggests. Sci-ence educators come face to face with the relation between knowledge andbeliefs every day in their classrooms. Students enter science classrooms withstrongly held ideas that conflict with scientific explanations of the world. Thequestion of whether knowledge and beliefs are the same, similar, or differ-ent constructs is crucial to understanding how to approach teaching scienceconcepts. As we stated at the outset, our intent was to explicate the differ-ent ways that knowledge and belief are understood and operationalized ina broad spectrum of research, to describe the assumptions underlying theseapproaches, and to explore the important areas of contention surroundingthe contrasting distinctions. By pointing out the need for greater clarity onthis issue, we hope to inspire researchers to provide definitions of theseconstructs in their writing and more importantly, to conduct empirical inves-tigations aimed at understanding the relation between these two constructs.

As we have discussed, the distinctions drawn between knowledge andbelief have both philosophical and empirical components. One’s epistemo-logical position whether foundationalist, objectivist, nonfoundational falli-bilist, or radical constructivist has a vast impact on how knowledge is definedand belief is contrasted. Indeed, one’s epistemological position may play amore central role than the actual field of one’s research (philosophy, educa-tional psychology, or science education). Distinctions between knowledgeand belief, complex and confusing at the theoretical level, seem to becomehopelessly blurred at the empirical level.

Philosophers may be able to make strong arguments for the distinctionbetween knowledge and beliefs based on reason. Many science educators,too, elect to draw strong distinctions as both a convenience and a moralnecessity within science classroom. These distinctions allow the science ed-ucator to say, “My goal is to change students’ knowledge, not their beliefs.”However, in spite of the fact that this stance may allow for some degreeof teacher comfort when addressing students’ alternative views, it must benoted that educational researchers have not yet convincingly demonstratedthat the two constructs are clearly distinct. Specifically, it has not been shownthat knowledge and beliefs have differential justifications in the minds of stu-dents or that students’ knowledge and beliefs clearly have different effectson the learning process. It remains for educational psychologists to demon-strate whether the theoretical distinctions between the constructs have anypsychological reality.

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Until these issues are clarified, we argue that those that wish to makea strong distinction between knowledge and beliefs are on shaky groundfrom a psychological standpoint as no empirical distinction has been demon-strated. Perhaps such a stance places us squarely in the empiricist camp of thefoundationalists. However, appealing only to the distinctions made throughphilosophical argument places one in the rationalist camp of the founda-tionalists. We could avoid such categorization by acknowledging—as do thepostpositivist fallibilists (see Philips and Burbules, 2000)—that there are noabsolute foundations for this issue. Indeed, we must shed light on this sub-ject from a variety of sources—theoretical and empirical, philosophical andpsychological—to advance our understanding of knowledge and beliefs andtheir influence on science learning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors thank Pat Alexander, Harvey Siegel, and Mike Smith fortheir extensive and insightful comments on this manuscript.

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Belief, Knowledge, and Science Education