The Social Aspects of Epistemic Cognition: Informing Models and Interventions About Knowledge and Knowing

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

Abstract

As in any area of scholarly focus, the breadth and depth of epistemic cognition research has grown over time to include not just the beliefs learners have about knowledge and knowing, but also their behaviors, practices, and dispositions toward the epistemic (Chinn, Buckland, & Samarapungavan, 2011; Greene, Azevedo, & Torney-Purta, 2008; Sinatra, in press). This helpful and necessary expansion of the scholarly problem space has been accompanied by the growing realization that epistemic cognition occurs in, and interacts with, social contexts. Within the field of philosophical epistemology, there has been a commensurate recognition of the social aspects of knowledge and knowing, and the ways contexts shape how knowledge is determined and disseminated (Goldman, 1999). By explicating how epistemic cognition exists within, and across, social contexts, I will demonstrate ways that empirical and theoretical work in this area can assist learners, education practitioners, policy makers, and the public in their navigation of the complexities, and affordances, of public inquiry in diverse democracies.
Research regarding epistemic cognition in contexts outside of the classroom, including the home (Bell, Bricker, Reeve, Zimmerman, & Tzou, 2012), the courtroom (Warren, Kuhn, & Weinstock, 2010), the internet (Strømsø, & Bråten, 2010), and teacher preparation (Fives & Buehl, 2010), among other contexts, has reaffirmed certain aspects of models of epistemic cognition, and helpfully challenged others. Reconciling these challenges, and synthesizing epistemic cognition research within and beyond the classroom, requires frameworks that can account for the social aspects of knowledge. The philosophical work on social epistemology proves one such framework that can productively position research within and beyond classrooms. In this presentation, I will review the work on the social epistemology concept of testimony (i.e., how people vet and rely upon others as justification for knowledge) also called source evaluation (Bråten, Britt, Strømsø, & Rouet, 2011; Porsch & Bromme, 2011), to illustrate how the reliance upon others for knowledge is not necessarily naïve, and is in fact often adaptive and even necessary. In addition, I will discuss Goldman’s (2011) idea of epistemic systems, which are groups of people who coalesce into organizations that establish norms and epistemic practices. These epistemic systems can influence what is taught (e.g., science educators creating the Next Generation Science Standards; NGSS Lead States, 2013), as well as how people behave within those systems (e.g., the United States’ legal system). In particular, I will explore how learners’ classroom experiences can be influenced by multiple epistemic systems simultaneously, and how collisions between incompatible aspects of those systems can lead to learner difficulty. In short, context matters, and epistemic cognition models and interventions would benefit from taking into account what learners are asked to think about, in what setting, with what tools, and under what conditions. By better understanding how multiple epistemic systems and sources of testimony interact within and among contexts, epistemic cognition researchers will be able to develop more powerful models of critical consumption and production of knowledge that can inform how educators, policy makers, and the public understand and shape their world.

Author

• Jeff A. Greene, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill