Epistemological Trade-Offs: One Student's Efforts to Fulfill Epistemological Criteria Within Classroom Constraints

• In Event: 66.067 - Learning Sciences: Processes of Learning and Interaction in Context

Abstract

While science education has long argued for epistemological understandings of scientific knowledge construction, research reveals that student scientific knowledge construction work is inconsistently connected to their explicit epistemological understandings. Using an in-depth analysis of one student’s efforts in class and in an interview, this study explores the relationships between her understandings of scientific practices, her framing of her own, situated, knowledge construction work, and her participation therein, to understand this gap. Through this, we demonstrate that the student’s epistemological criteria were influenced by her attention to logistical constraints. As such, this study provides clear evidence of the influence context has on the epistemological resources that students apply to their knowledge construction work. We conclude with pedagogical and research implications.

Authors

• Leema G. Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kathleen Crucet-Villavicencio, University of Wisconsin - Madison