Among the metacognitive concepts available to explore, epistemology in learning — sometimes called personal epistemology or epistemic cognition — is perhaps the least discussed in everyday teaching practice, yet it underpins all the others. Self-regulated learners, critical analysts, and concept-mappers all rely, implicitly, on beliefs about the nature of knowledge itself: what it is, where it comes from, how certain it can be, and who is authorised to produce it. Making those beliefs visible and teachable is what epistemology in learning is about.

Definition: Epistemology in learning refers to a learner's beliefs about the nature, sources, certainty, and justification of knowledge — and the degree to which those beliefs are made conscious, examined, and refined as part of the learning process itself. Learners with sophisticated personal epistemologies understand that knowledge is constructed, context-dependent, and open to revision; learners with naive epistemologies treat knowledge as fixed facts delivered by authorities. The metacognitive dimension is the act of reflecting on and deliberately developing those beliefs.

The psychological study of personal epistemology begins with William Perry's 1970 work on the intellectual development of Harvard undergraduates. Perry identified a developmental progression from dualism (knowledge is either right or wrong; authorities have the answers) through multiplicity (all opinions are equally valid) to committed relativism (some views are better-evidenced than others, and I can evaluate them). Later frameworks by Belenky et al. (1986), Baxter Magolda (1992), and Hofer & Pintrich (1997) refined and expanded Perry's model across four dimensions: the certainty of knowledge, the simplicity of knowledge, the source of knowledge, and the justification for knowing.

References:

Perry, W.G. (1970). Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Hofer, B.K. & Pintrich, P.R. (1997). The development of epistemological theories. Review of Educational Research, 67(1). https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543067001088
Hofer, B.K. (2004). Epistemological understanding as a metacognitive process. Educational Psychologist, 39(1). https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3901_7
Wineburg, S. et al. (2022). Civic Online Reasoning. Stanford History Education Group. https://cor.stanford.edu
Baxter Magolda, M.B. (1992). Knowing and Reasoning in College. Jossey-Bass.

Epistemology in Learning: Teaching Learners to Ask "How Do I Know What I Know?"