Challenges for Epistemic Cognition Researchers: Translation, Dissemination, and Relevance

• In Event: Translating Scholarship on Epistemic Cognition: Fostering Public Knowledge and Knowing

Abstract

What individuals believe about knowledge and knowing and how they think and reason about what they know are all part of a psychological construct now being called epistemic cognition. These cognitive processes have a deeply influential role in learning, as well as in everyday encounters with new information, and are critical to an educated citizenry with the competence to assess the abundant information available on complex topics. Recent examples of public confusion about such topics as climate change, vaccinations, and evolution suggest the problems posed when individuals have difficulty weighing competing claims (Bromme & Goldman, 2014; Sinatra, Kienhues, & Hofer, 2014) – with implications for communities, educational systems, and the planet. The need for clear thinking becomes ever more evident, and those who study epistemic cognition have a critical role to play in asserting the value of the construct and its place in education.
Researchers are to be commended for considerable advancements in epistemic cognition research in recent years (Hofer, in press). However, for a topic that is the subject of thousands of articles and multiple books, there is very little visibility in teacher education, the field of information literacy, or science education. Given what researchers know about the role of epistemic cognition in the learning process, as well as the influence of teachers’ epistemic beliefs (Buehl & Fives, in press), we need to make this a construct teachers would know how and why to foster in their classes. Yet related research has appeared only intermittently and briefly in top education and educational psychology texts. Do we need to do more to make it clear why it matters? Or are we writing in ways that make research findings less than accessible to the educational community? We need to go beyond writing for other researchers and academics and learn to write for those who can use this information.
Secondly, we need to make it clear to a larger audience why it matters to understand epistemic cognition. Epistemic cognition can offer an explanatory mechanism not only for student learning processes, but for why laypersons may have divergent beliefs about well established scientific claims (Sinatra et al., 2014). Scientists are beginning to address issues of science denial (Rosenau, 2012), seeking psychological explanations for rejection of scientific consensus on central principles and topical issues that have been largely resolved by scientists but remain questionable for much of the public. Epistemic cognition researchers have much to offer to help with such understanding. Those who communicate about science in the media could also benefit from knowledge of how individuals may misinterpret the tentative nature of science.
Those of us engaged in epistemic cognition research can help make it clear to others that epistemic cognition is not only an educational concern but also involves the development and application of a critically useful set of skills that can be applied, and which continue to develop, throughout life. In this talk I will outline several suggestions for addressing these particular issues and raise questions for general discussion with the audience.

Author

• Barbara K. Hofer, Middlebury College