The contribution of epistemological beliefs to informal reasoning regarding health socio-scientific issues.

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to investigate whether pre-service primary teachers’ epistemological beliefs predict their informal reasoning, while trying to manage health Socio-Scientific Issues. We used dual-process theories to represent the underlying cognitive process. These theories postulate two distinct processes of reasoning –heuristic/spontaneous processes and analytic/reflective processes- that compete for the control of the response constructed by participants during reasoning tasks. 243 pre-service primary teachers were asked to construct, during spontaneous and analytical thinking, different types of arguments − social, economic, ecological, scientific and ethical− as well as counterarguments and rebuttals after they had read scenarios on a health socio-scientific topic. To assess participants’ epistemological beliefs, we used the multidimensional perspective. The results indicated that relatively sophisticated epistemological beliefs, especially relatively sophisticated beliefs about the structure of knowledge, positively predicted the number and quality of arguments, counter-arguments and rebuttals as well as the scientific and ethical arguments related to health socio-scientific issues that the pre-service primary teachers constructed, during spontaneous and analytical thinking. We discuss the significance and health educational implications of these findings.