Introduction

Since the publication in 1983 of Schoenfeld's seminal article “Beyond the purely cognitive: Belief systems, social cognition, and metacognitions as driving forces in intellectual performance,” a substantial amount of research has been carried out aiming at a better understanding of the nature and the structure of students’ mathematics-related beliefs and their relationships with student learning and performance (see Leder et al., 2002; Muis, 2004). Whereas this work paralleled the broader domain of inquiry on epistemological beliefs or personal epistemology (Bendixen and Rule, 2004; Hofer and Pintrich, 1997, 2002; Hofer, 2004; Schommer-Aikins, 2002), it was mostly conducted separately from the latter strand of research.

According to the most common definition, epistemological beliefs are conceptions about the nature of knowledge and the nature of knowing (e.g., Hofer and Pintrich, 2002). Acknowledging that there are in the literature differences in conceptualization and in terminology, a widely accepted view defines the following dimensions of epistemological beliefs:

• beliefs about the nature of knowledge involving the dimensions “certainty” (fixed or more fluid) and “simplicity” (discrete, concrete versus complex, contextual) of knowledge;

• beliefs about the nature of knowing containing the dimensions “source” (external versus self-constructed) and “justification” (criteria for knowledge claims, use of evidence) of knowledge (Hofer and Pintrich, 1997).

Although this view is supported by some empirical evidence (Hofer, 2000), it is obvious that the definition of epistemological beliefs remains controversial among scholars in the field.