Student-Perceived Epistemic Authority of Associate Professors in Institutions of Higher Education

The article analyses the topical social epistemology issue of transmission and sharing of knowledge in the context of social psychology. Essential is focusing on authority as an attitude and, within this context, also focusing on an analysis of the structure of authority, situational structuring of authority. Therefore, the aim of the study is to explore the epistemic authority of associate professors in institutions of higher education as perceived by the students of various study areas. The concept of epistemic authority has been used to pursue the aim (Raviv, Bar-Tal, Ravi & Abin, 1993; Kruglanski, 1989; Hepburn, 2006; Asmuß & Svennevig, 2009; Glenn & LeBaron, 2011). Exploring epistemic authority is related to exploring the degree of trust in epistemic authority (Kruglanski et al., 2005). An epistemic authority study methodology including three interrelated surveys has been used in the study (Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv & Abin, 1993). The study sample consisted of students of various institutions of higher education in Riga (N=307). The article analyses the results of the descriptive statistics of student-perceived epistemic authority of associate professors; statistically significant differences between the evaluations given by students of various areas for their perception of the epistemic authority of associate professors. The article includes key conclusions which show that students rate the epistemic authority of associate professors as medium high, it is comparatively higher in the cognitive aspect - evaluation of the authority’s level of knowledge and the cognitively emotional, i.e., trust in knowledge. The students have given a lower rating to the epistemic authority of associate professors in the cognitive behaviour aspect.