The focus of this study is to examine personal epistemology and its relation to the use of self-regulated strategies across different academic domains under the cultural context of higher education in Taiwan. And this study went further to clarify the relative contribution of epistemological beliefs, gender and grade levels to the strategy use in different domains.
The participants were 488 students from academic domains of Liberal Arts, Law, Bussiness, Science and Education, and each domain of student samples was consisted of two different grade levels(freshman and senior). All of the students responded to the revised"Epistemological Belief Scale"and"Motivated Strategies for Learning "Questionnaire(MSLQ)". Based on MANOVA analysis, the result indicated that undergraduates with different domains showed different patterns of epistemological beliefs; in particular, beliefs about justification of knowledge and fixed ability appeared to be significant dimensions in different domains. Moreover, hierarchical regression analysis showed epistemological beliefs has a unique contribution of to the use of learning strategies across different domains, after controlled the effect of gender and grade levels. The findings were discussed through a socio-cultural lens, and compared with results from western research.