Translating Scholarship on Epistemic Cognition: Fostering Public Knowledge and Knowing

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The proliferation of information in the 21st century, coupled with the increasing complexity and interconnectivity of the modern world, requires broadening the goals of education from knowing what, to also knowing why and how. Educational policy in language arts, mathematics, science, and history has emphasized that students must become critical consumers, and producers, of information in diverse democracies. Epistemic cognition researchers have identified key catalysts, and barriers, to the adaptive skills, dispositions, and knowledge necessary for effective public inquiry and social reform, yet this work has not been sufficiently disseminated to education practitioners or the public. In this symposium, six prominent scholars will share how to make public all that has been learned in this burgeoning field of epistemic cognition.

Sub Unit

• Division C - Learning and Instruction / Division C - Section 2a: Cognitive and Motivational Processes

Chair

• Lisa D. Bendixen, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

Papers

• Challenges for Epistemic Cognition Researchers: Translation, Dissemination, and Relevance - Barbara K. Hofer, Middlebury College

• Positioning Epistemic Cognition Within the Educational and Psychological Literatures: Relational Complements and Complexities - Patricia A. Alexander, University of Maryland - College Park

• Epistemic Cognition Within and About the Disciplines - William A. Sandoval, University of California - Los Angeles

• The Social Aspects of Epistemic Cognition: Informing Models and Interventions About Knowledge and Knowing - Jeff A. Greene, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Epistemic Cognition Interventions - Ivar Braten, University of Oslo

• Measuring and Modeling Epistemic Cognition in Service of Translational Research - Gale M. Sinatra, University of Southern California