Growing Together and Knowing Together: Epistemological Practices in Everyday Family Activities Like Gardening

• In Event: Gearing Up: New Technologies for Participant-Collected Data

Abstract

Traditionally, epistemological development—that is, the sense of how we know what we know—has been studied from either a psychological perspective, as in laboratory work (Kuhn, Cheney, & Weinstock, 2000) or by educational researchers, as during curricular enactments in classrooms (Elby, 2009; Elby & Hammer, 2010; Sandoval, 2005). The first body of work generally results in characterizations of stable, stage-like epistemologies, while the second tends to demonstrate people’s epistemic flexibilities and the effect of context on epistemological commitments. Neither paradigm explores the source of epistemological development, or addresses how it occurs or what it looks like outside of classrooms and laboratories. The research reported in this presentation seeks to do just that by looking at the epistemological practices (Collins & Ferguson, 1993) within everyday family activities.
Ten families with children ages 7-12 participated in a natural experiment made possible by new recording technologies. Parents in these families wore POV.1.5 body-mounted digital video cameras and children wore Sony MP3 ICD digital audio recorders while doing some of their everyday practices (Lave & Wenger, 2005) together. All families were self-described gardeners and recorded themselves (1) gardening together, (2) doing a science kit about garden soil, and (3) doing another family practice (e.g. hiking, family game night, etc.). Each family recorded 7-10 hours of video/audio on their own with no researcher present. Because of the wireless and wearable capabilities of these technologies, parents and children engaged in joint activities were also individually free to roam, relax, and roughhouse around their homes, yards, and neighborhoods—just as they genuinely would in everyday life.
The recordings they made of themselves are analyzed for epistemological practices (e.g. asking/answering questions, conflicts over intellectual authority, managing access to intellectual resources, etc.), including analyses of variation across conditions within and between families. One important finding is that parents in every family model intellectual uncertainty in front of their children. That is, they routinely say, “I don’t/didn’t know…” with the expectation that other family members, including children, will pick up the conversation thread and build a joint understanding.
While this species of “wild” data is incredibly rich, it also presents some very serious challenges. On a practical level, integrating the multiple and messy video and audio streams from each recording session (parents and children often physically separate and engage in different, overlapping conversations and subactivities, asynchronously turn equipment on/off to use the bathroom, etc.) into coherent pieces of data required sophisticated software. Theoretically, the physical freedom afforded participants in this work was intended to boost ecological validity. Happily, participants appear to forget they are recording themselves for long stretches. However, there are also sporadic moments where abrupt reminders or returning awareness of the camera/microphone interrupts the action. The resulting self-censorship and unevenness of spontaneity present persistent conundrums in determining how to interpret this data. Moments like this where participants’ own epistemic framing of the activity shifts, as well as when they show their native epistemic practices with one another present some of the most thrilling clips of this data.

Author

• Jessica Umphress, Northwestern University