Understanding knowledge genesis by means of multivariate factor analysis of epistemological belief structures

Students attending University come as a unique package complete with a variety of learning styles and experiences. Prior knowledge, understanding and personal epistemological beliefs play critical roles in how students understand and philosophise concepts surrounding information proffered by educators. The purpose of this study is to construct an epistemological beliefs survey instrument by extending an existing and accepted model and conducting a confirmatory analysis, comparing the results gathered using this new instrument with those reported results obtained by the original study. The new instrument would then be used to conduct an exploratory analysis on newly acquired data in an attempt to analyse, interpret and understand epistemological beliefs currently maintained by a group of first year university undergraduate students. The survey instrument was distributed during the first fifteen minutes of their first lecture of the semester for each group of participants, prior to any teaching being conducted. From a total of approximately 515 first year undergraduate Computer Science, Information Systems, Nursing and Health students approached, 435 completed the survey forms (84.4%). The data was then naïve response recoded and a sequence of multivariate factor analyses applied. The results proved that there was indeed a hierarchical structure of prior epistemological beliefs held by the participants. Developing an understanding of what these beliefs are, how they are formed, and how they are influenced is of significant value as during this study it became apparent that these initial epistemological belief structures could be identified, isolated and developed by educators, enabling improvements in future educational outcomes. This research shows that learners’ do in fact, maintain a unique set of epistemological beliefs that are constantly being constructed and modified by individual as well as social interaction within their learning environment. Studies of epistemological beliefs are still very much at the embryonic stage, but development of enabling tools such as the EBS allows easier and more fluid understanding of the ontological knowledge genesis processes.