Cathedrals and doghouses: a conversation

This paper sets up an imaginary dialogue between an intrepid critical theorist and several interrogators. The dialogical form allows the author to explore the idea that all of society is a vat school, and that adult educators have a crucial intellectual role to play in the great debates of our age.     

Dealing with a disagreeing partner: Relational and epistemic conflict elaboration

This experiment examined the effects of epistemic vs. relational conflicts on the relationship with a partner. Students participated to a fictitious computer-mediated interaction about a text with a bogus partner who introduced either an epistemic conflict (a conflict that referred to the content of the text), or a relational conflict (a conflict that questioned participants’ competence). Results indicated that compared to the epistemic conflict, the relational conflict enhanced threat and reduced the perceived contribution of the partner. Moreover, after a relational conflict, participants were more assertive in their answers, justified them to a lower extent, and expressed less doubt than after an epistemic conflict. Results also indicated that the intensity of disagreement predicted different modes of regulation depending on the conflict type. Finally, epistemic conflict elicited better learning than relational conflict.     

Learning to integrate divergent information sources: the interplay of epistemic cognition and epistemic metacognition

Learning to integrate multiple information sources is vital for advancing learners’ digital literacy. Previous studies have found that learners’ epistemic metacognitive knowledge about the nature of knowledge and knowing is related to their strategic integration performance. The purpose of this study was to understand how these relations come into play as students learn to integrate divergent information sources. To do so, we examined the contribution of scaffolds addressing the epistemic strategy of integration and epistemic metastrategic knowledge about this strategy. Participants were 99 high-achieving Arab Israeli ninth graders. All participants engaged in writing arguments based on divergent information sources. Students in the control condition received no scaffolds; students in the strategic condition received a strategic scaffold; and students in the metastrategic condition received both strategic and metastrategic scaffolds. Integration performance, epistemic metastrategic knowledge about integration, and absolutist, multiplist, and evaluativist epistemic perspectives were measured before, immediately after, and one month after the intervention. At pre-test, both epistemic metastrategic knowledge about integration and evaluativism were positive predictors of integration performance. The strategic scaffold led to a significant increase in integration performance and epistemic metastrategic knowledge. Adding the metastrategic scaffold led to greater improvement in epistemic metastrategic knowledge, but did not result in additional gains in strategic performance. An immediate decrease in absolutism occurred among all participants but was not sustained over time. A decrease in multiplism occurred only in the experimental groups and was sustained over time. The results suggest that epistemic growth can occur in both bottom-up and top-down directions.     

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.     

The match matters: Examining student epistemic preferences in relation to epistemic beliefs about chemistry

Student epistemic preferences have been found to be important in student learning and achievement. The present study proposed a new conceptualization of student epistemic preferences in the epistemic match model, assessed the match between student epistemic beliefs about chemistry and their epistemic preferences, and, most importantly, examined how this epistemic match may be associated with chemistry course achievement. We adopted latent class analysis and found three distinct profiles of epistemic preferences based on the dimensions of simple and certain knowledge, attainable truth, and alternative knowledge claims. Students in Latent Class 3 (Moderate Preferences) demonstrated the closest match between chemistry epistemic beliefs and epistemic preferences, and had more students who obtained higher grades and fewer students who had lower grades in an introductory chemistry course compared to the other two classes. Students in Latent Classes 1 (All Preferred) and 2 (Alternative-Claim Disliked), however, demonstrated certain degrees of epistemic mismatch between chemistry epistemic beliefs and epistemic preferences, and had noticeably lower achievement in the chemistry course. The study findings highlight the importance of achieving a close match between epistemic beliefs and epistemic preferences for higher achievement in a subject domain.     

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.     

Post-qualitative line of flight and the confabulative conversation: a methodological ethnography

This paper is a methodological ethnography aiming to highlight the difficulties in using conventional methods in connection with an explorative philosophy; Deleuze and Guattari’s. Taking an empirical point of departure in conversations about the future with students in upper secondary school, the struggle to find a scientifically valid label through the focus group interview is outlined. However, combining the particular philosophy with a conventional qualitative method turned out to be an impossible aim since the ideals of the focus group interview departures in the image of stable subject simultaneously as the method is blemished by positivistic language and standards. By turning to post-qualitative research, which encourages new concepts and methods, the confabulative conversation was produced. Within these confabulative conversations, the aim has been to create a methodologically smooth space in order to enable movements beyond manifested knowledge in favor of the virtual and the not-yet-seen, and thus producing possibilities for something new.     

Continuing the conversation: British and Japanese progressivism

This paper offers an account of the historic and ongoing international interchange between Britain and Japan in the field of progressive education. Concentrating on the last half-century, it takes two reference points from Roy Lowe’s writings in 1977 and 2006. Eveline Lowe Primary was a newly built model progressive school when documented by him in a seminal work on school architecture, later becoming a key point of interest for Japanese educationists. The British educational policy context against which this exchange of ideas and practices occurred was later documented by Lowe in a major book. Contemporaneous debates and events within Japanese society and government meanwhile provided the impetus for networks of research and transmission of progressive practices. The most recent turn in the narrative presented here demonstrates Japanese support for independent progressive practice continuing in the UK. Responding to an extensive historical research literature on transnational migration of educational ideals and practices this paper constitutes a micro-study that draws on personal memory, oral testimony, records of classroom observation on site and by means of video-conferencing, in addition to more formal documentation of conference proceedings and policy-making.     

Seeing epistemic order: construction and transmission of evaluative criteria

This paper focuses on formative assessment in the field of higher education. It examines Bernstein’s work on vertical discourses and knowledge structures with the view to deepening understanding of the concept of assessment for learning. The first part of the paper draws on Vygotsky’s work on concept development and Bernstein’s work on knowledge structures to explain why ‘generalisation’ and ‘hierarchy’ are central in knowledge acquisition. It then explores Bernstein’s claim that, within the vertical discourse, different knowledge structures (hierarchical and horizontal) afford greater or lesser visibility of their epistemic structure, and thus of their evaluation criteria of what counts as a legitimate text. The second part of the paper investigates the ways epistemic expectations are signalled through the practice of evaluation to first‐year university students in a professional education course and proposes that markers do not offer students stuffiest access to recognition rules necessary for producing legitimate texts in the future. Drawing on Maton’s distinction between semantic gravity and semantic density, the paper offers an example of how markers could recast what is present in students’ work to offer students access to key ordering principles in vertical discourses.     

Connected design rationale: a model for measuring design learning using epistemic network analysis

Instructional Science - Virtual learning environments have the potential to support students’ development of design skills in engineering education. However, few approaches exist for modeling...     

Developing instruments concerning scientific epistemic beliefs and goal orientations in learning science: a validation study

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate two survey instruments to evaluate high school students' scientific epistemic beliefs and goal orientations in learning science. The initial relationships between the sampled students' scientific epistemic beliefs and goal orientations in learning science were also investigated. A final valid sample of 600 volunteer Taiwanese high school students participated in this survey by responding to the Scientific Epistemic Beliefs Instrument (SEBI) and the Goal Orientations in Learning Science Instrument (GOLSI). Through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the SEBI and GOLSI were proven to be valid and reliable for assessing the participants' scientific epistemic beliefs and goal orientations in learning science. The path analysis results indicated that, by and large, the students with more sophisticated epistemic beliefs in various dimensions such as Development of Knowledge, Justification for Knowing, and Purpose of Knowing tended to adopt both Mastery-approach and Mastery-avoidance goals. Some interesting results were also found. For example, the students tended to set a learning goal to outperform others or merely demonstrate competence (Performance-approach) if they had more informed epistemic beliefs in the dimensions of Multiplicity of Knowledge, Uncertainty of Knowledge, and Purpose of Knowing.     

Contagious ideas: vulnerability,epistemic injustice and counter-terrorism in education

Abstract

The article addresses the implications of Prevent and Channel for epistemic justice. The first section outlines the background of Prevent. It draws upon Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd’s concept of the collective imaginary, alongside Lorraine Code’s concept of epistemologies of mastery, in order to outline some of the images and imaginaries that inform and orient contemporary counter-terrorist preventative initiatives, in particular those affecting education. Of interest here is the way in which vulnerability (to radicalisation) is conceptualised in Prevent and Channel, in particular the way in which those deemed ‘at risk of radicalisation’ are constituted as vulnerable and requiring intervention. The imaginary underpinning such preventative initiatives is, I argue, a therapeutic/epidemiological one. If attention is paid to the language associated with these interventions, one finds reference to terms such as contagion, immunity, resilience, grooming, virus, susceptibility, therapy, autonomy, vulnerability and risk—a constellation of images/concepts resonant with therapeutic and epidemiological theories and practices. I outline some of the implications of this therapeutic/epidemiological imaginary for epistemic injustice. If people, in this case, students, teachers and parents, feel that their voice will not be given credence, this leads to testimonial injustice. If one group is constituted as a suspect community, this risks hermeneutical injustice for that group—a situation facing Muslims at present. Given the requirements for educators and educational institutions to enact this particular iteration of preventative counter-terrorist legislation, the way in which vulnerability (to radicalisation) is understood and operationalised has direct bearing upon education and the educational experience of all stakeholders, in particular in relation to the conditions for epistemic justice.     

Everyday conversation as a context for professional learning and development

Because conversation is a constant in our personal and professional lives, we are not inclined to stop and think about it as a phenomenon. However, that is what I have found myself doing. In particular, I have become much more self‐conscious, and hopefully more thoughtful, about the conversations that constitute an inevitable aspect of my day to day work in an academic staff development role. Drawing on my own reflections and a body of related literature, I have thought about the features of conversation that may make it conducive for professional learning; how “valued” conversation is as a context for professional learning; the possible ingredients of a conversation and the extent to which they can be controlled or influenced without disturbing, or even destroying, the defining essence of conversation; and the competencies and sensitivities that may be required if conversation is to become an occasion for learning. In this article, I present the outcomes of my reflections and inquiry with the hope that they will prompt conversation about conversation as a context for professional learning and development.

Puisque la conversation est une constante dans nos vies personnelle et professionnelle, nous sommes peu enclins à nous arrêter et à y réfléchir en tant que phénomène. Cependant, c’est ce à quoi je me suis affairé. Plus particulièrement, je suis devenu davantage conscient et, je l’espère, davantage réfléchi, en ce qui a trait aux conversations qui constituent un aspect inévitable de mon travail quotidien en tant que conseiller pédagogique. Puisant dans mes réflexions et dans un ensemble de connaissances connexes, j’ai réfléchi aux aspects de la conversation qui la rendent propice à un apprentissage professionnel; dans quelle mesure la conversation constitue‐t‐elle un contexte valorisé d’apprentissage professionnel; les ingrédients possibles d’une conversation, ainsi que la mesure dans laquelle ceux‐ci peuvent être contrôlés ou influencés sans déranger, ou même détruire, l’essence même de la conversation; de même que les compétences et les habiletés pouvant être requises pour que la conversation constitue une occasion d’apprendre. Dans cet article, je présente le résultat de mes réflexions et interrogations dans l’espoir de susciter une conversation au sujet de la conversation en tant que contexte d’apprentissage et de développement professionnel.     

Community and conversation: tackling beginning teacher doubt and disillusion

Margaret Somerville has suggested that a new methodology of postmodern emergence might allow researchers to disrupt the taken-for-granted and provide fresh insight into familiar problems. One such familiar problem is the doubt and disillusion many early-career teachers experience, both during their teacher education and in their first years. Attrition rates are high. This paper, co-authored by two teacher educators and two early-career secondary teachers, draws on Somerville’s ideas by creating multiple modes of creative expression in order to allow fresh insight to emerge from the relationship between the multiple parts of the paper. Different readers will draw their own conclusions from the rich material presented, but for the authors the research reminds us of the regenerative potency of relationships and conversations in which doubts and disillusion can be expressed and heard. The implications for teacher education, at a time when direct face-to-face time with students is being eroded, are explored.