Shifting Students' Epistemic Roles in Science Classrooms Using Epistemic Tools

• In Event: 34.037 - Using Epistemic Tools to Support Reasoning, Student Agency, and Equity

Abstract

Objective
There is little agreement about students’ epistemic roles in classrooms. For example, students could be positioned as technicians, conducting tasks designed by an authority figure (Shapin, 1989).
However, technicians are not permitted to create and shape the epistemic practices of a science community. I argue that students should take on roles as epistemic agents – those who can shape knowledge production and practices of a community (Damsa, et al., 2010).
In this study, I partnered with an entomologist and 6th grade teacher to provide students with opportunities to take up epistemic agency during a three-week unit about moth ecology - students learned about moths through the co-design and enactment research projects. To shift students’ roles from
technicians to epistemic agents, the researchers and teacher planned to co-design epistemic tools with students. By epistemic tools, I mean physical or conceptual resources that facilitate the knowledge production in a setting. Specifically, I asked:
· How does the co-design of epistemic tools facilitate students’ epistemic agency?
· How do actors use epistemic tools differently over time?
Framework
I used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as a theoretical framework to analyze epistemic agency and tools. A key feature of CHAT is the co-configuration of activity, in which actors negotiate new forms of work and solutions to solve novel problems (Engeström, 2004). I propose that co-configuration hinges on all actors developing epistemic agency in order to negotiate the norms and tools of knowledge production.
Methods
This study was a co-design experiment, meaning that I simultaneously engineered particular forms of learning while engaged in a systematic study of that learning (e.g., Penuel et al., 2011). This study occurred in a 6th grade science classroom close to a midwestern university. I co-taught three 55-minute classes with the teacher each day for three weeks (15 instructional days), interacting with 90
students (30 per class).
Data Sources
I collected and analyzed data from three different types of episodes: planning sessions, classroom
observations (45 video-recorded observations), and artifacts (teacher and student-created documents). To analyze the data, I coded for four possible opportunities in which students could act with epistemic agency (Author, in press):
Opportunities to solicit and build on student knowledge as a resource for learning
Opportunities to build knowledge through participation in practices
Opportunities to build a knowledge product that is useful to students
Opportunities to change structures that constrain and support action
I also conducted member checks with all participants, and engaged in triangulation of the data.
Results
As the research team purposefully positioned students as epistemic agents, the students and research team co-developed three tools co-developed by researchers, the teacher, and students (data collection sheets, a display board of moth samples, and a daily research plan). The co-development of the tools prompted the constant negotiation of the purpose of the unit and students’ epistemic roles.
Scholarly Significance
Students – who are typically marginalized from epistemic agency– can co-develop
epistemic tools with a research team to support them as they take on new epistemic roles in classrooms.

Author

• David Stroupe, Michigan State University