Abstract:

Recent studies have begun to show that epistemic thinking, thinking about knowledge and knowing, may play an important role in online learning processes such as searching, evaluating, and integrating multiple online sources. The purpose of this study is to characterize the epistemic thinking of elementary school students as they study online. This goal is achieved by using the Epistemic Understanding Questionnaire (Kuhn et al., 2000), and thinking aloud during two open-ended online tasks, followed by retrospective interviews (Hofer, 2004). The participants of this study are 42 Israeli sixth graders. Preliminary results show that epistemic thinking is related to performance of key online learning strategies such as evaluation, integration, and construction and justification of arguments based on multiple online sources. The study analyzes the interplay between epistemic metacognition and strategic performance.