Abstract
Building on a study by Conley, Pintrich, Vekiri, and Harrison (2004), the survey at hand
aimed at investigating two hypotheses regarding the epistemological beliefs of 5th graders in
biology. One stated scientifically gifted 5th graders’ beliefs would advance significantly more
over a period of three months in a hands-on teaching unit than these of their non-gifted peers.
The other claimed scientifically gifted students have more advanced epistemological beliefs in
general when compared to non-gifted students of the same age. The teaching unit examined in
this study was on the topic off light of birds and was designed in a very interactive way,
meaning that the students worked in groups most of the time and the teacher acted as a
facilitator of the learning process. The study was conducted in a pre-post-design with a
multiple-choice questionnaire. Due to several reasons, both hypotheses could only be proven
in parts, thus creating interesting questions for future studies.
Claas Wegner, Phillip Weber, Stephanie Ohlberger. (2017) Changing Epistemological Beliefs: How Hands-on Teaching Units in Biology Influence 5th Graders , Journal of Elementary Education, Volume-27, Issue-1.
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