Promoting elementary students’ epistemology of science through computer-supported knowledge-building discourse and epistemic reflection

This study examined the role of computer-supported knowledge-building discourse and epistemic reflection in promoting elementary-school students’ scientific epistemology and science learning. The participants were 39 Grade 5 students who were collectively pursuing ideas and inquiry for knowledge advance using Knowledge Forum (KF) while studying a unit on electricity; they also reflected on the epistemic nature of their discourse. A comparison class of 22 students, taught by the same teacher, studied the same unit using the school’s established scientific investigation method. We hypothesised that engaging students in idea-driven and theory-building discourse, as well as scaffolding them to reflect on the epistemic nature of their discourse, would help them understand their own scientific collaborative discourse as a theory-building process, and therefore understand scientific inquiry as an idea-driven and theory-building process. As hypothesised, we found that students engaged in knowledge-building discourse and reflection outperformed comparison students in scientific epistemology and science learning, and that students’ understanding of collaborative discourse predicted their post-test scientific epistemology and science learning. To further understand the epistemic change process among knowledge-building students, we analysed their KF discourse to understand whether and how their epistemic practice had changed after epistemic reflection. The implications on ways of promoting epistemic change are discussed.     

Searching the Web to learn about a controversial topic: are students epistemically active?

Students are making an increased use of the Web as a source for solving information problems for academic assignments. To extend current research about search behavior during navigation on the Web, this study examined whether students are able to spontaneously reflect, from an epistemic perspective, on the information accessed, and whether their epistemic metacognition is related to individual characteristics, such as prior knowledge of the topic and the need for cognition. In addition, we investigated whether Internet-based learning is influenced by the activation of spontaneous epistemic metacognition in the search context. Forty-six psychology and engineering university students were asked to research information about a controversial subject in order to write an essay. They were also asked to think aloud during their research. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. As revealed by their spontaneous reflections, all participants were epistemically active, although to different extents and levels. As expected, there was evidence that students activated beliefs about the four epistemic dimensions identified in the literature, especially about the credibility of an electronic source and the criteria for justification of knowledge. Prior knowledge was not related to activation of epistemic beliefs in the search context, while the need for cognition significantly associated with aspects of source and its content evaluation. Two patterns of epistemic metacognition were identified and they significantly influenced Internet-based learning. Students who spontaneously generated more sophisticated reflections about the sources as well as the information provided, outperformed students who were active only at the first epistemic level. Educational implications are drawn.     

Science teachers' sensemaking of the use of epistemic tools to scaffold students' knowledge (re)construction in classrooms

This study explores the process of teacher scaffolding student engagement in epistemic tools from the critical sensemaking perspective. Epistemic tools are contextual artifacts manipulated to investigate and evaluate ideas to construct knowledge within the constraints of a disciplines' representational means. The main sources of our data are ~50 min-long semistructured, responsive interviews with the 14 secondary school science teachers who participated in our professional learning environment (PLE) and implemented the activities from the PLE in their classrooms. We utilized the tools of discourse analysis to explore teacher sensemaking while they learned to teach science with epistemic tools. We then looked at intertextualities of meaning across multiple sets of data such as students' artifacts, pre/postsurveys, audio and video recordings of the workshops, and teachers' written implementation feedback forms. As a result, we recognized a pattern across different classrooms. Teachers would begin with a contextualized goal, and use a pedagogical strategy to scaffold their students as they worked to achieve that goal. Then, all teachers reported they faced some sort of ambiguity (such as grappling with failure, different levels of students). When faced with an ambiguity, teachers would then revise either their contextualized goal or their initial pedagogical strategy to help their students to reach their goals. Finally, we utilized constant-comparative analysis to identify themes for teachers' contextualized goals. Four major themes emerged, including communicating connections to core ideas of science, making sense of how science works, assessing students' learning process outcomes, and fostering students' epistemic agency. The findings of the study have implications for future research and professional development activities on the use of epistemic practices and tools in classrooms with unique contextual characteristics.     

教师的认识信念系统及其对教学的影响

教师的认识信念系统是一个涉及知识信念、认知信念、文化信念、学习信念以及对信念的自我调节等因素的复杂结构。教师认识信念的形成受到个体的学习活动经验、科学观和社会环境的影响。教师的认识信念会对自我的教学理念、教学设计、教学行为、教学组织以及教学评价产生直接影响,同时又会通过教学过程将自己的认识信念传达给学生,对学生的学习产生间接影响。     

The glue that makes it “hang together”: A framework for identifying how metadiscourse facilitates uncertainty navigation during knowledge building discussions

Classroom discussions have become a centerpiece of reform efforts in science education because talk mediates the joint co-constructing of knowledge in science classrooms. Although decades of research underscore the importance of talk in supporting science learning, the science education community continues to grapple with how to support teachers and students in navigating the uncertainty that is associated with doing knowledge building work. To address these challenges, we must examine not just what gets constructed (the scientific ideas), but how knowledge is co-constructed by teachers and students (the process of building those ideas) amidst uncertainty. In this study, we propose a conceptual tool for identifying organizational, epistemic, and interpretive metadiscourse markers (MDMs) in science talk. We highlight how teachers and students use these three types of MDMs as they navigate uncertainty while connecting ideas within and across multiple turns of talk, leveraging resources for knowledge building, and making interpretations about one another's ideas. We conclude with a set of suggestions for how researchers and teachers can utilize this framework to attend to the ways that MDMs index the organizational, epistemic, and interpretive dimensions of uncertainty in the knowledge building process.     

An Exploratory Investigation of 12-Year-Old Students' Ability to Appreciate Certain Aspects of the Nature of Science through a Specially Designed Approach in the Context of Energy

We describe the implementation of a specially designed teaching innovation, embedded in the context of energy, for the promotion of specific aspects of the nature of science (NOS). We present empirical results from the implementation of the teaching and learning materials in three intact sixth-grade classes that involved a total of 64 students. We report on students' learning gains and we discuss the ensuing implications for teaching and learning with an emphasis on epistemic ideas. The integration of activities promoting understandings of energy and specific aspects of the NOS seems to work well in impacting on students' epistemic awareness. The findings reveal interesting aspects about the interplay between understandings of energy and the NOS. The article also illustrates that it is possible to teach productively specific aspects of a consensus view of the NOS from a fairly young age without having to rely on advanced science knowledge or explore the intricacies and differentiations across science disciplines.     

Experience,Intersubjectivity, and Reflection: A Human Science Perspective on Preparation of Future Professionals in Adaptive Physical Activity

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to show that and how philosophy and philosophical thinking can be of relevance for the preparation of future professionals in adaptive physical activity. To this end we utilize philosophical insights from the human science perspective on two central issues, namely experience and intersubjectivity, which are weaved together in an analysis of a reflective journal produced by an adaptive physical activity student. More specifically, by drawing on phenomenological and pragmatist philosophy, we show how the meaning of adaptive physical activity—as adaptive—is created through a complexity of individual and shared meaning making processes between adaptive physical activity educators, students, and the people they meet in their practicum. Through this article, we will show how the human science perspective can provide tools to understand the students, their learning, and their involvement in the educational program.     

Active classroom participation in a Group Scribbles primary science classroom

A key stimulus of learning efficacy for students in the classroom is active participation and engagement in the learning process. This study examines the nature of teacher–student and student–student discourse when leveraged by an interactive technology—Group Scribbles (GS) in a Primary 5 Science classroom in Singapore which supports rapid collaborative knowledge building (RCKB). We envisaged nine design principles for RCKB in the design of lessons and postulated a logic model that links and explains the effects of our design principles to the ultimate goal of learning efficacy. We presented a case study of a GS lesson which shows that GS affordances leveraged by good lesson and activity design could enable the students to have more epistemic agency. Students had opportunities to participate spontaneously in class discussions by fully expressing their ideas without inhibition. The technology effect is used to support instant formative feedback and interactions among students effectively.     

Tactical Knowledge in Team Sports From a Constructivist and Cognitivist Perspective

Traditionally, teaching team sports has been based on a strategy that puts forward the mastery of motor skills prior to actual involvement in the game, thus emphasizing physical capacities more than an understanding of the game. Supporting a constmctivist and a cognitivist perspective to the teaching—learning process, this paper focuses on tactical knowledge constructed by the students. In order to shed light on the nature of tactical knowledge envisioned for the students, the systemic and therefore dynamic view of team sports is presented. Categories of knowledge are thereafter illustrated, and three main steps that students go through to construct and stabilize their tactical knowledge are identified. Finally, some similarities and differences between the constructivist and cognitivist perspective presented in this paper and the knowledge-based literature on motor expertise are discussed.     

Developing secondary students’ epistemic agency in a knowledge-building community

A key educational objective for the twenty-first century is developing students’ epistemic agency. Epistemic agency is the active process of choosing when, what, where one learns and how one knows, as well as the capacity to create knowledge in a community. The knowledge-building communities model developed by Scardamalia and Bereiter was used in a New Zealand Year 13 distance art history class to support the development of students’ epistemic agency in 2013. In this study, students were given more control in the learning process, and were able to exercise epistemic agency through identifying their knowledge gaps, sharing information and ideas, developing ideas and creating communal knowledge. A number of factors that increased students’ development of epistemic agency are also discussed in this article.     

Analysis of students’ ideas and conceptual artifacts in knowledge-building discourse

This study proposes a new methodological approach to evaluate students’ knowledge-building discourse. First, we discuss the knowledge–creation metaphor of learning. In the metaphor, theories mention that learners should consider their collective knowledge objects or artifacts that materialize as a result of their collaborative discourse. Second, we argue the necessity of developing new analytics to evaluate student learning. We describe how students’ ideas and their conceptual artifacts can be examined in discourse analysis. Third, we demonstrate the application of our analytics to real discourse data. We conducted a new type of social network analysis of discourse to examine how students continuously improve their ideas. Further, we conducted another network analysis of discourse, called the Epistemic Network Analysis, by coding students’ epistemic actions as conceptual artifacts to create and examine their ideas.     

The curious case of climate change: Testing a theoretical model of epistemic beliefs,epistemic emotions,and complex learning

We propose a theoretical model linking students' epistemic beliefs, epistemic emotions, learning strategies, and learning outcomes. The model was tested across two studies with 439 post-secondary students from Canada, the United States, and Germany for Study 1, and 56 students from Canada for Study 2. For Study 1, students self-reported their epistemic beliefs about climate change, read four conflicting documents about the causes and consequences of climate change, self-reported their epistemic emotions and learning strategies used to learn the content, and were given an inference verification test to measure learning. Study 2 used the same procedure but added a think aloud protocol to capture self-regulatory processes and emotions as they occurred. Path analyses revealed that epistemic beliefs served as important antecedents to the epistemic emotions students experienced during learning. Students who believed that the justification of knowledge about climate change requires critical evaluation of multiple sources experienced higher levels of enjoyment and curiosity, and lower levels of boredom when confronted with conflicting information. A belief in the complexity of this knowledge was related to lower levels of confusion, anxiety, and boredom. A belief in the uncertainty of this knowledge predicted lower levels of anxiety and frustration, and a belief in the active construction of knowledge predicted lower levels of confusion. Epistemic emotions predicted the types of learning strategies students used to learn the content and mediated relations between epistemic beliefs and learning strategies. Learning strategies predicted learning outcomes and mediated relations between epistemic emotions and learning outcomes. Implications for research on epistemic beliefs, epistemic emotions, and students' self-regulated learning are discussed.     

Model-based teaching and learning about inheritance in third-grade science

ABSTRACT

Research suggests that it is challenging for elementary students to develop conceptual understanding of trait variation, inheritance of traits, and life cycles. In this study, we report on an effort to promote elementary students’ learning of hereditary-related concepts through scientific modelling, which affords opportunities for elementary students to generate visual representations of structure and function associated with heredity. This study is part of a four-year design-based research project aimed at supporting students’ learning about life science concepts using corn as a model organism. Study data were collected during the implementation of a project-developed, multi-week, model-based curriculum module in eight third-grade classrooms located in the Midwestern United States. Through mixed methods research, we analysed video recorded observations of curriculum implementation, student artefacts, and student interviews. Results illustrate epistemic dimensions of model-based explanations (MBEs) for heredity that students prioritised, as well as significant variation in students’ MBEs in 2 of the 8 classrooms. While findings show neither students’ content knowledge nor model-based instruction associated with their MBEs, qualitative differences in teachers’ curriculum enactment, and more general approaches to science instruction, may help explain observed differences. Implications are discussed for curriculum and instruction in support of students’ MBE for heredity-related concepts.     

High-School Students’ Epistemic Knowledge of Science and Its Relation to Learner Factors in Science Learning

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an online contextualized test for assessing students’ understanding of epistemic knowledge of science. In addition, how students’ understanding of epistemic knowledge of science interacts with learner factors, including time spent on science learning, interest, self-efficacy, and gender, was also explored. The participants were 489 senior high school students (244 males and 245 females) from eight different schools in Taiwan. Based on the result of an extensive literature review, we first identified six factors of epistemic knowledge of science, such as status of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific enterprise, measurement in science, and so on. An online test was then created for assessing students’ understanding of the epistemic knowledge of science. Also, a learner-factor survey was developed by adopting previous PISA survey items to measure the abovementioned learner factors. The results of this study show that; (1) by factor analysis, the six factors of epistemic knowledge of science could be grouped into two dimensions which reflect the nature of scientific knowledge and knowing in science, respectively; (2) there was a gender difference in the participants’ understanding of the epistemic knowledge of science; and (3) students’ interest in science learning and the time spent on science learning were positively correlated to their understanding of the epistemic knowledge of science.     

Modeling and measuring epistemic cognition: A qualitative re-investigation

Since Perry first proposed that students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing were an important aspect of learning, there has been a proliferation of models of epistemic cognition, and empirical studies of how epistemic cognition relates to learning. Unfortunately, the dominant means of measuring epistemic cognition, self-report instruments, have numerous psychometric problems. These problems prompted us to return to interview methods used by Perry and other seminal researchers, to investigate the degree to which current epistemic cognition models aligned with novices’ and experts’ cognition. Using an exploratory, multiple case qualitative design, we interviewed middle school students and university professors from two domains, biology and history. We found numerous ways in which the current conceptualizations and measures of beliefs about knowledge and knowing may need to be altered. Our recommendations range from the revision of item wordings to a complete rethinking of the very idea of domain-specificity in epistemic cognition research.     

The Rationale for a Teaching Innovation About the Interrelationship Between Science and Technology

This paper refers to the development of a teaching innovation for the nature of science (NOS), for students aged 11–15, which specifically focuses on the interrelationship between science and technology. The development of the teaching and learning materials relied on inputs from three sources: the history and philosophy of science and technology, existing knowledge concerning the teaching and learning about the NOS, empirical data on students’ initial ideas and difficulties about this topic. The first served to provide an account for the various forms of interaction between science and technology, which, in turn, guided the formulation of epistemologically coherent learning objectives. The second provided the pedagogical grounds on which to base the design of the activities. The third facilitated the design of activities that build on students’ productive initial ideas, while providing them with guidance to resolve the difficulties they tend to encounter. In this paper, we describe the rationale underlying the teaching and learning materials and we describe the activity sequence they embody.     

Self-regulated learning processes vary as a function of epistemic beliefs and contexts: Mixed method evidence from eye tracking and concurrent and retrospective reports

The objective of the current studies was to investigate how epistemic cognition related to specific phases and components of self-regulated learning and its adaptation to learning conditions of varying quality. In a multi-study, mixed method design, we presented university students with science content that relayed conceptual discrepancies and collected quantitative and qualitative data to study how students responded to discrepancies. In Study 1 (n = 42), we collected eye tracking patterns, study times, and metacognitive ratings and found that participants adapted their behavioral processing as a function of their epistemic cognition and discrepancy type. In Study 2 (n = 20), we collected concurrent think-aloud protocols and retrospective interviews to further explore why discrepancies were noticed (or not) and how they were resolved. Results revealed that prior knowledge and epistemic self-efficacy in oneself as an evaluator of knowledge emerged as important themes to detecting and efficiently resolving discrepancies. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and methodological implications.     

DISCUSSION, COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE WORK AND EPISTEMIC FLUENCY

ABSTRACT:   This paper argues for an action-oriented conception of learning in higher education: one which marries higher order learning (coming to understand) with apprenticeship in knowledge work. It introduces epistemic tasks, forms and fluency as constructs that are useful in giving a more precise meaning to ideas about collaboration in knowledge construction. Discussion is seen as central to collaborative knowledge work and we examine the role of discussion in supporting weaker and stronger interpretations of collaborative knowledge construction.