Why another epistemological assessment?
The Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX), developed by the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Maryland, and the Views about Science Survey (VASS), developed by Halloun and Hestenes at Arizona State University, probe a combination of students’ epistemological beliefs and their course-specific expectations and study habits. In addition, those surveys work best if students’ intuitive epistemologies take the form of consistent and articulate beliefs. Although epistemology and expectations cannot be completely disentangled, EBAPS attempts to focus on epistemology to the extent possible, and also attempts to probe tacit, contextualized epistemological knowledge that may affect students’ learning behavior. For more details, including the justification for, development of and validation of EBAPS, please see the Idea Behind EBAPS, a mini-paper. Section 3 of that paper discusses validity and reliability. Subscales EBAPS probes students’ views along five non-orthogonal d
