Epistemic Justification in Multiple Document Literacy: A Refutation Text Intervention

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of a refutation text intervention on Norwegian teacher education students’ (n = 150) beliefs about justification for knowing and their subsequent performance on a multiple document literacy task. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions in which they read a refutation text that promoted the conception that an appropriate way to judge the trustworthiness of information about educational topics is to rely on personal understanding and practical experience, the expertise of the author, or comparison of multiple sources. Results showed that participants’ beliefs about epistemic justification were strongly influenced by the intervention. Beyond effects on self-reported justification beliefs, effects on participants’ selection of documents varying in terms of the expertise of the author and the stance toward the issue discussed across the documents were observed, as well as effects on how participants justified their document selections, processed the selected documents, and finally used them in their written task products. As such, the effects of the intervention targeting beliefs about epistemic justification transferred to various stages of the multiple document task.