VALIDATING THE PERSIAN VERSION OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL BELIEFS AND PROBING IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS' EPISTEMOLOGIES

The present study aimed at validating the Persian versions of epistemological beliefs scale among Iranian EFL learners. Epistemological beliefs questionnaire (EBQ) designed and validated by Chan and Elliot (2004) includes 30 items and employs a 5-point Likert scale which measure students' epistemological beliefs. On this scale, there are four dimensions: 1) “Innate/Fixed Ability” which refers to ability being innate and fixed, 2) “Learning Effort/Process” referring to hard work, and effort spent in drilling, 3)“Authority/Expert Knowledge” concerning knowledge being handed down by authority figures and experts, and 4) “Certainty Knowledge” denoting whether knowledge is certain, permanent, and unchanged. The present study also set out to investigate whether these epistemological beliefs vary by learner’s gender, Grade point average (GPA) and contextual factor. To do so, 206 EFL learners were selected according to convenience sampling among EFL learners in language institutes and universities in Mashhad, a city in northeast of Iran. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the validity and reliability of the translated versions of scale in Iranian context. It was also found that these epistemological beliefs vary by GPA not by gender and contextual factor