Philippine E-Journals

Understanding the beliefs that individuals have about knowledge and knowing, and how these conceptions relate to learning, has been a rapidly growing research field in the past two decades. Although the work on personal epistemology originated in the U.S. (Perry, 1970; Schommer, 1970), research in this area has grown extensively in Europe in the past decade, with significant influence by several very active teams of researchers (e.g., Bråten, Strømø, Samuelstuen, 2008; Mason, Gavin, & Boldrin, 2008; Pieschl, Stahl, & Bromme, 2008), and the research has been spreading widely in other cultural contexts (Hofer, 2008). This special issue heralds the proliferation of such research in multiple Asian countries. A December 2009 conference on "Personal Epistemology and Learning" at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology suggests that these particular manuscripts represent a growing interest in this field throughout the region. It is a privilege and an honor to have both been invited to speak at that conference and to serve as a discussant on this impressive array of papers. My goal in this commentary is to look across these articles to see common themes and to help point out the way to future research.

As Wong and Chai (2010) note on their introduction to this special issue, it is both "important and timely" for researchers to develop a deeper understanding of personal epistemology within the cultural context of Asian societies. Also important is the need to identify both the commonalities across cultures and the cultural variations, within Asia as well as between Asian countries and the other parts of the world. These ten papers represent six different cultural contexts, including Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Korea, and China, and a broad range of research.

Several key issues emerge in the collective reading of these papers and in surveying their contributions to the literature: definition and dimensionality of the construct, the measures and methods employed, the populations studied, the research questions and connections to other constructs, and cultural connections.