College student epistemological perspectives across knowledge domains: A proposed grounded theory

Scholars have studied epistemological development - or how one understands knowledge and knowing - of college students for many years. Research in this domain has included benchmarking studies of epistemological development, examinations of how curricular innovations impact epistemology, and some studies of differences in epistemological development based on disciplinary areas. The latter group of studies has generally focused on differences in epistemological beliefs for students who are studying in two different domains ( e. g., nursing students versus physics students). In this study, we qualitatively investigate whether the epistemological perspectives of 60 science/engineering college students differs across the disciplinary areas of the sciences and the humanities. Our results indicate that such differences do exist and include a proposed grounded theory that describes how students' epistemologies may vary across knowledge domains.