Ways of knowing and appraisals of intellectual activities

This study explored implications of individual differences in epistemological approaches to knowledge and learning. We examine the relationship between "separate" and "connected" ways of knowing and assessments of how enjoyable and how important different intellectual activities are. In Study 1, undergraduates (n = 108) completed the Attitudes Toward Learning and Thinking Survey (ATTLS) and a new instrument, the Intellectual Activities Ratings (IAR) survey, listing 12 intellectual activities, including both academic tasks, such as "writing a proof of a theorem," and nonacademic tasks, such as "keeping a personal journal." Study 2 was conducted online with a larger sample (n = 200) of undergraduates from across the United States, with the same 12 IAR tasks but expanding the number of ratings of each task. Study 3 also was conducted online, again with a sample of 200, correlating ATTLS scores with various ratings of ongoing learning tasks: acquiring knowledge of different aspects of a new location-based augmented reality game, Pokémon Go. Our results replicated previous findings of gender differences in separate knowing (SK) and connected knowing (CK) scores in all three studies. SK and CK scores showed different and strong patterns of correlation with individuals' enjoyment ratings of academic and extracurricular tasks and with different aspects of learning the augmented reality game. Moreover, SK and CK scores showed different patterns of correlation with how important students perceived different intellectual tasks to be in their own self-definition.

Duke Scholars

Author Anna Smith