STUDYING EPISTEMIC COGNITION IN THE HISTORY CLASSROOM: CASES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING TO THINK HISTORICALLY

Building on the literature on epistemic cognition, epistemic beliefs, and historical thinking, three class-level case studies were conducted to investigate features of historical thinking and history-specific epistemic beliefs of high-school students and their teachers. These cases also considered teachers' pedagogical practices and the potential effects of those practices on students' historical thinking and epistemic beliefs. Two junior honors and one freshman US History classes were selected from a school system that fostered the preparation of students for AP History courses by encouraging the use of a variety of primary sources and analysis of documents in teaching history. Preliminary visits indicated that these classes' teachers used different pedagogical practices. Class observations spanned one semester of instruction. History-specific epistemic beliefs were explored using interviews structured around the items of the Beliefs about History Questionnaire (BHQ) and historical thinking was assessed through analysis of think-alouds collected while student informants (4 from each class) and their teachers read a set of 6 documents and responded to a constructed response task (CRT). Specifically, student data were collected at the middle and end of the semester, while teachers were interviewed only once, at the end of the semester. In one of the junior classes, 27 additional juniors responded in writing to the BHQ and to the CRTs. Additional questionnaires and interviews explored teachers' goals, rationales for their practice, and interest in history. In regard to history-specific epistemic beliefs, results indicated that students and teachers manifested ideas indicative of different developmental levels, suggesting that their epistemic beliefs are a complex system, not necessarily characterized by a high level of integration. Differences across students tended to be greater in regard to epistemic beliefs than to historical thinking. In addition, comparison of initial and follow-up data suggested different trajectories of change in regard to students' epistemic beliefs while changes in historical thinking were modest and not consistently suggesting progression in competence. These trends were confirmed by the analysis of students' written responses to the BHQ and the CRTs. The study identified a set of ideas and behaviors that tended to produce cognitive impasse and hindered the development of historical thinking and a series of pedagogical practices, mostly aligned with teachers' goals and beliefs, which might have fostered such outcomes

The Epistemic Dimension of Competence in the Social Sciences

To investigate competence in the social sciences, we propose to define competence as a particular configuration of the learner’s cognition, strategic repertoire, motivation, and orientation toward knowing. Specifically, we focus on epistemic beliefs and on the changes that a view of knowing as a complex, effortful, generative, evidence-seeking, and reflective enterprise entails. In this context, we discuss how familiarity with the processes used to justify knowledge claims within specific disciplinary communities can provide useful tools to develop the kind of adaptive and consistent thinking that characterize competence in different domains and how this focus may aid the identification of characteristics common across domains. We use our empirical exploration of adolescents’ development of competence in the domain of history to illustrate the implications of this theoretical framework, to highlight the relations between domain-specific epistemic beliefs and kind of understanding that students built as a result of reading multiple texts, and to suggest what pedagogical practices may have influenced students’ orientations toward knowing in these three history classes

Studying epistemic cognition in the history classroom: Cases of teaching and learning to think historically

Building on the literature on epistemic cognition, epistemic beliefs, and historical thinking, three class-level case studies were conducted to investigate features of historical thinking and history-specific epistemic beliefs of high-school students and their teachers. These cases also considered teachers’ pedagogical practices and the potential effects of those practices on students’ historical thinking and epistemic beliefs. Two junior honors and one freshman US History classes were selected from a school system that fostered the preparation of students for AP History courses by encouraging the use of a variety of primary sources and analysis of documents in teaching history. Preliminary visits indicated that these classes’ teachers used different pedagogical practices. Class observations spanned one semester of instruction. History-specific epistemic beliefs were explored using interviews structured around the items of the Beliefs about History Questionnaire (BHQ) and historical thinking was assessed through analysis of think-alouds collected while student informants (4 from each class) and their teachers read a set of 6 documents and responded to a constructed response task (CRT). Specifically, student data were collected at the middle and end of the semester, while teachers were interviewed only once, at the end of the semester. In one of the junior classes, 27 additional juniors responded in writing to the BHQ and to the CRTs. Additional questionnaires and interviews explored teachers’ goals, rationales for their practice, and interest in history. In regard to history-specific epistemic beliefs, results indicated that students and teachers manifested ideas indicative of different developmental levels, suggesting that their epistemic beliefs are a complex system, not necessarily characterized by a high level of integration. Differences across students tended to be greater in regard to epistemic beliefs than to historical thinking. In addition, comparison of initial and follow-up data suggested different trajectories of change in regard to students’ epistemic beliefs while changes in historical thinking were modest and not consistently suggesting progression in competence. These trends were confirmed by the analysis of students’ written responses to the BHQ and the CRTs. The study identified a set of ideas and behaviors that tended to produce cognitive impasse and hindered the development of historical thinking and a series of pedagogical practices, mostly aligned with teachers’ goals and beliefs, which might have fostered such outcomes

Effects of once-weekly exenatide on cardiovascular outcomes in type 2 diabetes

BACKGROUND: The cardiovascular effects of adding once-weekly treatment with exenatide to usual care in patients with type 2 diabetes are unknown. METHODS: We randomly assigned patients with type 2 diabetes, with or without previous cardiovascular disease, to receive subcutaneous injections of extended-release exenatide at a dose of 2 mg or matching placebo once weekly. The primary composite outcome was the first occurrence of death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke. The coprimary hypotheses were that exenatide, administered once weekly, would be noninferior to placebo with respect to safety and superior to placebo with respect to efficacy. RESULTS: In all, 14,752 patients (of whom 10,782 [73.1%] had previous cardiovascular disease) were followed for a median of 3.2 years (interquartile range, 2.2 to 4.4). A primary composite outcome event occurred in 839 of 7356 patients (11.4%; 3.7 events per 100 person-years) in the exenatide group and in 905 of 7396 patients (12.2%; 4.0 events per 100 person-years) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83 to 1.00), with the intention-to-treat analysis indicating that exenatide, administered once weekly, was noninferior to placebo with respect to safety (P<0.001 for noninferiority) but was not superior to placebo with respect to efficacy (P=0.06 for superiority). The rates of death from cardiovascular causes, fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction, fatal or nonfatal stroke, hospitalization for heart failure, and hospitalization for acute coronary syndrome, and the incidence of acute pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, medullary thyroid carcinoma, and serious adverse events did not differ significantly between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with type 2 diabetes with or without previous cardiovascular disease, the incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events did not differ significantly between patients who received exenatide and those who received placebo