ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1599442
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Learning through Cognitive and Social Inclusion Practices in EducationView all 19 articles
How do chemical epistemological beliefs affect Chinese students' chemistry disciplinary competence? A structural equation modelling analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of education, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- 2College of Teacher Education, Capital Normal University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
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The shift in focus from knowledge dissemination to the cultivation of disciplinary competence has become a pivotal topic in K-12 science education reform. Scientific epistemological beliefs play a crucial role in students' learning processes and overall development. Although chemistry represents a vital component of science, little is known about how chemical epistemological beliefs affect students' chemistry disciplinary competence. This study aimed to explore the mechanisms by which epistemological beliefs influence students' chemistry disciplinary competence and to provide suggestions for fostering it. A sample of 182 11th-grade students participated in the formal evaluation. The results showed that (1) among the four dimensions of chemical epistemological beliefs—Source, Certainty, Justification, and Simplicity—the source and certainty beliefs substantially influenced chemistry disciplinary competence; (2) critical thinking disposition and chemistry learning approaches played separate mediating role in the influence of chemical epistemological beliefs on competence, and (3) the chain mediating effects of chemical epistemological beliefs, critical thinking disposition, chemistry learning approaches, and chemistry disciplinary competence were also significant.
Keywords: chemical epistemological beliefs, chemistry disciplinary competence, Critical thinking disposition, chemistry learning approaches, structural equation modelling
Received: 25 Mar 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Huang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanning Huang, yanningh@126.com
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