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Are They Ready Yet? Developmental Issues
Naïve students here are not interested in the history of a problem or the multiple
solutions created by different methodologies. They just want to know which solu-
tion is the right one.
3 Beliefs about the source of knowledge: These range from believing that knowledge
comes from omniscient authority (and thus learning means listening and memoriz-
ing), to a more sophisticated understanding that knowledge is constructed within
communities and contexts using reason and empirical evidence.
Beliefs about the nature of learning include:
1 Beliefs about the speed of learning: These can range from immediate or not at all
(which means thinking that if you do not understand something right away, there
is no use trying to understand it), to a more sophisticated notion that learning is a
gradual process that often involves sustained effort. This belief has implications for
a student’s willingness to persevere on difficult tasks.
2 Beliefs about one’s ability to learn: These can range from something that is immu-
table and fixed at birth (one has it, or doesn’t—some people are just born smart), to
a more sophisticated understanding that one’s ability to learn can be improved.
This belief may be related to issues of locus of control, rather than to theories of
intelligence. For example, naïve students may assume they just “aren’t good at math”
and thus not put in the necessary work in a statistics class. The poor statistics grade
and mediocre understanding that result may confirm their assumptions about their
math ability.
These multiple epistemological beliefs lead to asynchronous development possibilities,
and thus a more nuanced understanding of how students differ in what they know about
knowing is available. For example, it is possible for a student to believe knowledge is
highly complex and interwoven, yet also to believe knowledge is eternal and unchanging.
The implication of this referent is that to have a better understanding of our students’
cognitive developmental needs, we need to consider a more complex model that examines
all of these different belief systems.
Pedagogical Implications
Research on these beliefs does support the notion of relatively autonomous belief systems
as well as their importance in educational outcomes (Bendixen & Rule, 2004; Hofer,
2004b; Schommer-Aikens, 2004; Schommer-Aikens & Easter, 2006). For example, the
more students believe knowledge is simple, the more they think they have achieved under-
standing when they can recall a list of facts, while more sophisticated thinkers want to see
connections and be able to apply their knowledge (Schommer-Aikens, 2004). Students
who believe in simple knowledge think less deeply about texts, have poorer text compre-
hension, and are less likely to use integrative study strategies; students who believe in
certain knowledge are more likely to misinterpret tentative information; students who