Overview of research of personal epistemologies: Analysis of research metaphors

This paper presents developmental, cognitive and psychometric tradition in research of personal epistemologies. Instead of a 'neutral' approach, we offer the analysis of research metaphors underlying the studying of personal epistemologies. Metaphor 'pilgrim's progress' assumes understanding epistemological development as a 'temptation' leading towards 'enlightenment' and abandoning faith in Absolute truth. Metaphor 'regulatory software' narrows down researcher's subject of interest to epistemic cognition in the specific problem situation, whereby evaluation of functioning of 'regulatory software' and its improvement are observed as the most important tasks. Finally, within the metaphor 'decent outfit' the starting assumption is that epistemological beliefs are relatively fixed and that personal epistemologies which are 'balanced' and 'decent' are privileged. By analyzing research metaphors, light was shed on basic assumptions and implications of research of personal epistemologies. The following questions were explored: which ways of 'seeing' were pledged in the approaches to research of personal epistemologies, which methodological choices arise from those ways of 'seeing', as well as which are the functions or effects of different ways of 'seeing'. In this way, a new perspective was offered for the assessment of multiple conceptualizations in research of personal epistemologies