Epistemic Ripple Effects: Strategically Opening Up Space in Curriculum Materials to Redistribute Epistemic Agency

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

Abstract

Objective
This study proposes a framework to guide teachers' curriculum adaptation, planning, and enactment as a strategic lever for re-distributing epistemic agency. Our framework explicates different “levels” within the curriculum at which teachers might decide to open up space for student decision-making. These decisions may have a differential impact, or “ripple effect”, on students’ subsequent participation in science practices. We view this framework as an epistemic tool for engaging teachers in conversation about how they can begin to position students as partners in epistemic decisions that drive classroom activity.
Theoretical Perspective
This framework is grounded in curriculum theory. Curricular materials have historically been used as tools for shaping learning environments and supporting teacher learning. They influence teaching by specifying the activities that cohere to a set of learning objectives or student performances. However, teachers are constantly adapting and improvising on these materials (Sawyer, 2004). How teachers frame, launch, and enact curricula can directly influence the epistemic goals and knowledge building processes that students engage in during instruction (Kang, Windschitl, Stroupe, & Thompson, 2016), making teachers’ ongoing curricular decision-making a productive site for introducing consideration of students’ epistemic agency.
Methods
This poster presents three paradigmatic cases (Mills, Durepos, & Wiebe, 2010) from expert teachers who “opened up” their curriculum materials at various levels in order to empirically ground the framework. For each case, we engaged in iterative rounds of rich description, using epistemic agency (Damsa et al., 2010) and epistemologies in practice (Berland et al., 2016) as sensitizing concepts (Blumer, 1954). We then developed comparative tables (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014) describing what aspect(s) of the activity were opened up and the resulting epistemic “ripple effect” on student participation.
Data Sources
The cases come from a corpus of video of middle school science classrooms enacting the same reform-based curriculum (Krajcik, Reiser, Sutherland, & Fortus, 2013). To be considered a case, each episode included: (1) something written as taken-for-granted in the curriculum materials that was presented in class as problematic, uncertain, or open to negotiation, AND (2) students responding by engaging in sophisticated epistemic work (e.g., generating multiple claims and providing rationales for those possibilities).
Results
The paradigmatic cases presented showcase variations in what teachers opened up, and in turn, differences in how epistemic agency was redistributed in each classroom. These variations highlight how both small and large openings created space for students’ meaningful participation, though the “ripple effect” of that participation also varied. The poster will discuss each case in more detail, as well as the tensions and trade-offs involved in each case.
Scholarly Significance
When teachers are introduced to reform-oriented strategies that seek to shift power to students, they often interpret those strategies as requiring them to give up all control (Chazan & Ball, 1999). Instead, we propose that thinking in terms of strategic “levels” for opening up space and the resulting “ripple effects” can provide teachers with an entry point for making principled decisions about curricular adaptations that support students’ epistemic agency.

Authors

• Christina Krist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Mon-Lin (Monica) Ko, University of Illinois at Chicago