A Multimodal (and Ghazallian) Analysis of Epistemic Openness in a Storywork Based Elementary Science Classroom

• In Event: Islamic Epistemologies, Decolonial Pedagogy, and Many Ways of Knowing

Abstract

This paper presents a multimodal interaction analysis of classroom data from a science curriculum grounded in Islamic and decolonial epistemologies, focusing on how students enact epistemic openness—a willingness to integrate, question, and revise one’s knowledge in light of diverse perspectives (Short, 2023; Vossoughi, 2014). The curriculum, part of The Art of Knowing project, integrates Islamic narrative, Indigenous storywork, and relational science to foster ethical inquiry and epistemic complexity.

Through detailed analysis of classroom interactions, we examine how students embody, express, and speak negotiations knowledge and how they reflect Ghazzālian epistemologies. In one episode, for example, a student implicitly calls out a paradox through emphatic gestures, movement, and utterances that signal ethical discernment. Despite the depth of his utterance, it is bypassed in favor of more conventionally acceptable classroom responses, highlighting how school norms often suppress intuitive or spiritual insights. In another instance, a teacher challenges a student’s claim about energy, encouraging story based reflection on reductive and abstract definitions of scientific concepts, opening space for revision and reflective thinking. These types of interactions reveal how epistemic openness is negotiated and enacted in the classroom.

By situating these moments within a Ghazzālian framework, the paper illustrates how perception, reason, testimony, and intuition are not only cognitive categories but also interactional resources. Students’ gestures and utterances often reflect knowledge-seeking behaviors that exemplify integrative, complex epistemologies even when not verbally acknowledged (Sinha et al., 2022). The analysis affirms that ethical and intuitive modes of knowing frequently surface in student engagement, even within normative classroom structures.
This paper contributes to broader conversations about decolonial pedagogy, epistemic justice, and the role of embodiment in learning. It argues for pedagogical designs that support epistemic plurality, honor integrative epistemologies, and foster relational inquiry, suggesting that honoring intuitive and spiritual knowledge requires reconfiguring classroom interaction norms. Ultimately, it positions classrooms as living sites of epistemological transformation, where integrative traditions—Islamic, Indigenous, and decolonial—can take root.

Author

• Samuel Burmester, University of California - Santa Cruz