An exploratory study of epistemological stances among teachers and secondary IV history students in Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
An analysis of the history curriculum (MEES, 2007, 2017) as taught in Quebec Secondary schools shows that it encourages the development of a constructivist view of history, focused on the historical method and on developing skills and competencies in students (Boutonnet, 2017; Cardin, Éthier & Meunier, 2010; Duquette, 2020; Éthier, Boutonnet, Demers & Lefrançois, 2017; Éthier, Cardin & Lefrançois, 2014). Yet some scholars (Demers, 2012; Moisan, 2010; Yelle, 2016) have noted the conflicting presence of two epistemological stances toward history among Quebec teachers: history that serves as a “memory reservoir”, or history as a science that develops intellectual qualities. These diverging views of history can lead to different teaching styles and usage in the classroom. Given tensions in the educational community between the Quebec ministerial exam (Blouin, 2020; Déry, 2016)—which is predicated on the concept that there can only be one correct answer—and the constructivst curriculum, between the stances of the teachers themselves and the representations of history among the general public (Éthier, Lefrançois & Joly-Lavoie, 2018; Rosenzweig, 2000) some questions remain: how do students view the learning of history? How do teachers react to these representations when confronted with them? To answer these questions, we conducted an exploratory study in which 332 students completed a questionnaire (Maggioni, 2010; Maggioni, VanSledright & Alexander, 2009; Miguel Revilla, Carril Merino & Sánchez Agustí, 2017) on their representations of history. We also held interviews with eight teachers to further explore how beliefs and epistemology are constructed in history class. We used these questionnaires and interviews to gain insight into part of this construction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".