"I Am Not Sure If I Can Totally Give Up Science's Epistemic Authority": Science Teachers Grappling With Positioning Diverse Learners as Onto-Epistemic Agents

• In Event: Equity in Elementary Science Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Problem. The way children learn science is a complex process that first begins with their everyday experiences and interpretations based on funds of knowledge and sociocultural identities. From critical perspectives learning “begin[s] from the learners’ key problems, worldviews, and ‘namings’ of the phenomenal world, in effect turning them into teachers and inventors of the curriculum” (McLaren & Lankshear, 2004, p. 5). Given the traditional teacher-student relationships, and the settled expectations of science education in terms of the unequal distribution of power and epistemic authority, validating and recruiting diverse students’ identities and ways of knowing, i.e., their onto-epistemic agencies, as resources for learning are proven to be daunting tasks for science teachers (Authors, 2018).
Design. We situate this study in the context of longitudinal design-based STEAM Research Academy with hundreds of emergent bilingual/multilingual learners (English learners). We became increasingly interested in: (1) how and why some science teachers were able to give up their planned curriculum and followed the lead of their students to explore science questions that stemmed from the students’ interests, questions, and everyday knowledge; and (2) in what ways the teachers’ practices cultivated or stifled the diverse learners' ontic-epistemic agencies. All teachers were provided with professional development (PD) on “Positioning of Students as Onto-Epistemic Agents in Science Learning.” This research examines teachers’ moment-to-moment practices and discourse during teacher-student, student-student interactions, and how their practices were informed by the ways in which they positioned culturally and linguistically diverse students, and the students’ everyday knowledge and interests in relation to the planned or normative curriculum.
Findings & Analysis. During learning interactions “teachers perform many actions, practical and conversational... [which] communicate to students, in different ways,” whether their ways of knowing, being and doing are valid (Lidar et al., p. 153). Our project teachers all equally shared the similar commitment of centering the students’ everyday knowledge(s), identities, and interests to drive their pedagogy, yet we found that some were able to be more consistent, while others were inconsistent in their practice of promoting the onto-epistemic agency among students.
Contribution/Significance. Examining how teachers recruit diverse students’ ways of knowing and being as resources for learning, and cultivate their onto-epistemic agency in science education is an important task for equity efforts. Understanding how and why certain teachers are able to tap into their students’ diverse resources, while others are not, can help the educational community to develop robust PD models to support equity goals.

Authors

• Shakhnoza Kayumova, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth

• Akira Harper, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth