Engineering Preference: Exploring the Material, Social, and Cultural Origins of Epistemic Practices and Dispositions

• In Event: 16.062 - Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: 16.062-3 - Research in Mathematics Education

Abstract

This paper explores the development of three epistemic practices (representing, measuring, and modeling) from the perspective of individual children in the context of two mathematics classrooms. Students’ retrospective narratives of epistemic activity were analyzed to identify changes in students’ understandings of classroom events, how they saw those changes as occurring, and why they came to prefer particular forms of epistemic practice. The paper argues that when children are positioned as central actors in epistemic practices, they become increasingly disposed to view epistemic practices as complex material, social and cultural systems of knowing. Moreover, epistemic dispositions tend to originate in particular forms of interaction (e.g., comparing or yoking) and to become preferred for particular reasons (e.g., epistemic payoff or personal affinity).

Authors

• Mayumi Shinohara, Vanderbilt University

• Richard Lehrer, Vanderbilt University