Addressing the Elephant: Epistemic Agency via Student Research

• In Event: Opening the Black Box of Science Experiences for Preservice Teachers

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives
In research labs, not even the PI knows precisely what will be learned or how knowledge will be developed; novel disciplinary practices, techniques and representations are created to develop scientific claims. This stands in contrast to science classrooms, where learning is frequently “limited to processes of acquisition of skills, knowledge and behaviors, already mastered and codified by educational institutions” (Engestrom, 2000, p. 526), and in which the “competent ‘teacher’ … knows what is to be learned.” Author (20XX) highlight this as a tension inherent in NGSS: the “epistemic elephant” in the room. “While we want students to do science, we seem to mean that students should mimic practices others have selected as important to learn, and content others have selected” (p. 1).
The research described here proposes that doing science will support PSTs in noticing and responding to their students’ engagement in scientific inquiry, particularly when that engagement does not align neatly with the “skills, knowledge and behaviors” anticipated by NGSS or prescribed in typical classrooms. That is, we anticipate that experience doing science will support PSTs in becoming a “competent teacher” who does not know entirely what is to be learned, and nonetheless can support emergent disciplinary practices and content, and thus students’ epistemic agency.
However, undergraduate experiences in research labs often mirror those described by Lave & Wenger (1991), where newcomers take on peripheral tasks that do not deeply engage them in the creation of novel techniques and practices. In addition, access to these research experiences is limited. The course described here is designed to offer PSTs epistemic agency in ways not always available to them when newcomers to a lab.
The project asks: (1) What novel (but disciplinary) epistemic practices and content do students develop in the course?, and (2) How is epistemic agency supported and constrained within the course as they pursue those practices and content?

Methods
Every course session is videotaped, along with records of student work (homework, lab notebooks, whiteboard images). Our analysis is currently at a larger grain size, not focused on the moment-to-moment interactions, but on the larger scale choices and decisions students’ make. We begin our analysis by identifying novel “products” (models, experimental designs, representations), and creating narratives that trace their development over time.

Results
In this presentation, we focus on a semester in which we examined the operationalization of time (Author, 20XX). We focus on the following results: (1) the role of materials, particularly everyday, accessible materials, in supporting epistemic agency; (2) the role of iteration and mangle, as students gradually step into novel methods and findings; (3) the value and role of dissent in promoting agency.

Significance
These findings suggest ways in which instruction can support students in constructing novel, yet disciplinary practices and content, addressing tensions inherent in NGSS, and pointing towards ways in which learning can be seen as the generation of new activity structures, and not simply in assimilation into the existing culture of physics.

Author

• Leslie J. Atkins Elliott, Boise State University
  Presenting Author