Relationships of students’ epistemological beliefs with social interactions and epistemic actions in collaborative inquiry learning

Students’ epistemological beliefs (EBs) about how knowledge develops play a pivotal role in their engagement in knowledge co-construction within collaborative learning environments. Previous studies have not systematically examined the relationships of students’ EBs with social interactions and epistemic actions from a temporal dynamic perspective, where social interaction refers to how students engage with others, and epistemic actions encompass students’ cognitive and metacognitive contributions to collaborative knowledge creation. Participants included 28 Grade 5 primary students who participated in a science inquiry project on the topic of light within an online collaborative learning environment. Analysis was conducted to examine students’ EBs as they relate to social interactions and epistemic actions. Social network analysis indicated that students with high EBs tended to be at the centre of the social network as the learning phases progressed, while ordered-epistemic network analysis revealed that students with high EBs tended to engage in co-occurrence actions that advanced community knowledge. Students with high EBs also actively participated in collective inquiry practices, interacted with peers’ ideas, and contributed diverse perspectives that improved collective knowledge. Implications for how students understand knowledge co-construction and its relations with social interactions and epistemic actions within collaborative inquiry settings are discussed.