A Novel Framework for Characterizing Scientific Epistemic Discourse

• In Event: Following the Thread From Planning to High-Quality Discourse About Science

Abstract

Research in science education increasingly demonstrates that context influences the ways in which students engage in sensemaking practices. That is, students’ enacted epistemologies are context sensitive. This paper explores how attention to context influences our characterization of students’ epistemologies, providing a categorization scheme for conceptualizing the students’ epistemic discourse. In this work, we define epistemic discourse as the discussions that occur when individuals engage in sensemaking practices. While these discussions do not necessarily make the underlying epistemologies explicit, they emerge out of the individuals’ understandings of how to engage in that work.

We begin with the understanding that epistemologies consist of “epistemological resources,” or “cognitive resources for understanding knowledge” (Louca, Elby, Hammer, & Kagey, 2004, p. 58). Moreover, individuals have a range of epistemological resources that are differentially activated depending on the context (Redish, 2004; Wickman, 2004). This range of resources is important because it enables the range of knowledge construction tasks that are each necessary to scientific sensemaking.

This understanding of epistemology has transformative implications regarding how we characterize epistemic discourse: If we understand that one’s epistemological approach will vary with context, and if we view all epistemological approaches as valid in some contexts then our goal cannot be for students to have one understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed. Neither can we take a relativist stance that assumes that all epistemological approaches are equally valid and useful in all contexts.

Thus, we propose a novel approach to characterizing the epistemologies underlying students’ epistemic discourse—one that allows us to depict the qualities of that discourse in a way that accounts for context. In particular, we propose characterizing students’ epistemic discourse along two dimensions:
1. The epistemic ideas they are enacting. We have identified four epistemic considerations, and each of these has an associated rubric (summarized in Table 1) (Author, n.d.).
2. Their rationales for enacting the particular epistemic ideas. These rationales typically occur as the students discuss problem-solving approaches (summarized in Table 2) (Author, in press).
Using this approach, we first characterize the epistemic aspects of the students’ sensemaking work in the current context (i.e., the epistemic ideas). We then characterize the quality of the epistemic discourse in terms of whether and how students discuss these epistemic ideas (i.e., their rationales). Using this scheme, epistemic discourse improves not as it comes into alignment with some externally identified epistemological expectation (i.e., not as the epistemic ideas change), but as the students increasingly articulate their decisions and explore the epistemological implications of those decisions (i.e., as their rationales become increasingly sophisticated).

The full paper provides theoretical justification for this approach to characterizing epistemic discourse and examples of how we use it.

Table 1. Summary of the epistemic considerations used to characterize the epistemic aspects of the students’ work

Table 2. Summary of the rationales students might use for the epistemic ideas they enact

Authors

• Leema G. Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Christina R. Krist, Northwestern University