Personal Epistemology and Sophomore Civil Engineering Students

This paper reports early findings of a larger, longitudinal study on civil engineering students’ personal epistemologies. Though much research has been done in exploring student personal epistemologies in general, limited research has been done exploring student beliefs about knowing in the domain of engineering. In this study, ten sophomore-level students participated in multiple, semi-structured interviews throughout a 200-level Statics course. These interviews were analyzed for indications of change in personal epistemologies, using frameworks developed by previous personal epistemology researchers. While many of the interviewed students showed expected progression through these frameworks, others show changes not accounted for in these frameworks. We believe these fluctuations emphasize the need to explore domain-specific epistemologies and call for further research in this area. Based on our findings, we believe engineering education will benefit from a greater understanding of domain-specific personal epistemologies and student progression through established personal epistemology development frameworks. We also believe that further study of changes in students’ personal epistemologies is necessary to understand epistemologies of students who do not progress as predicted through these frameworks.