Investigation Questions as Epistemic Tools That Shape Epistemic Agency in Physics Discussions

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

Abstract

Objective
National science reform and standards embody a commitment to “science-as-practice” (Manz, 2015) that frames science learning as continuous, evidence-based, and cultural processes focused on finding out. Therefore, learning environments must include carefully designed “epistemic tools”: pedagogical strategies, objects, and/or learning activities that create opportunities for students to meaningfully and agentively engage in epistemic practices (Berland et al., 2016), like publicly co-constructing evidence-based models. To avoid pseudoargumentation (Berland & Hammer, 2012), where students re-prove “right” answers, curricula could guide students through sequences of learning activities, posing investigation questions that open opportunities for agentively engaging in epistemic practices. This study focuses on how investigation questions in an inquiry-based physics curriculum – epistemic tools that guided students’ epistemic work – shaped interactions during whole-group discussions, supporting or constraining students’ epistemic agency. It addresses these questions: (1) What teacher- and student-initiated interactions shape how students’ epistemic agency emerges?; (2) How did the units’ investigation questions shape who are positioned as epistemic agents?
Theoretical Perspective
Epistemic agency, which emerges and is negotiated during collaborative knowledge-building (Damşa, Kirschner, Andriessen, Erkens, & Sins, 2010), can help us understand how epistemic tools support students co-construct knowledge, highlighting how they are “positioned with, perceiving, and acting on, opportunities to shape the knowledge building work” (Miller, Manz, Russ, Stroupe, & Berland, 2018, p. 6).
Methods
This study takes place in a high school physics course where students engaged in disciplinary practices to investigate physical phenomena. I leverage interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) to understand how students and teachers negotiated epistemic agency. The coding scheme includes a priori codes for identifying the epistemic practices students engaged in, and inductive codes that focused on emerging participation patterns. Additionally, the coding scheme includes second-cycle codes that determine how epistemic agency was negotiated, based on these questions: (i) who proposes ideas?; (ii) who evaluates ideas?; (iii) who is invited to propose/evaluate ideas?; (iv) who is being addressed?
Data Sources
The data source was video recordings of classrooms activities, focusing on six 45-minute videos of whole-group discussions about: Energy Transfer (September); Newton’s Laws (February); and Electrostatics (May). Some units predominantly included investigation questions that asked students to reproduce laws; other units primarily asked students to co-construct mechanistic models.
Results
During the “Energy Transfer” and “Newton’s Laws” units, students proposed and confirmed laws from classical mechanics, and interactions during whole-group discussions positioned the teacher to lead the epistemic work: teacher’s questioning primarily led to Initiate-Respond-Evaluate interactions, and students hardly addressed each other. Conversely, the “Electrostatics” unit asked students to co-construct models of how objects become electrostatically (dis)charged, and the interactions during discussions positioned students as epistemic agents: students initiated most of the interactions and addressed each other twice more often than in previous units.
Scholarly Significance
These preliminary findings suggest epistemic tools, like investigation questions, that asked students to co-construct evidence-based models support interactions during while-group discussions that position students as epistemic agents. Conversely, confirmatory investigation questions may serve to focus students’ work on replicating existing knowledge and limit their epistemic agency.

Author

• Enrique (Henry) Suarez, University of Washington - Seattle