Mediating Meaning in Reaearch Apprenticeship Through Dynamic Social and Epistemic Framing

• In Event: Meaning-Making, Negotiation, and Framing in Learning Interactions and Apprenticeship

Abstract

Learning in a research apprenticeship is often conceptualized as joining a community of practice, and is sometimes described as a process of becoming a member in the community. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the complex discursive nature of the early phases of such initiation into research. We present a fine-grain discourse analysis of an episode from an early working session of a pair of students who were working on a year-long personal open inquiry that examined the physics of tornados, guided by a physics teacher who was trained to act as research mentor in this context. We conceptualize the discursive nature of this process as a quest to achieve intersubjectivity and employ a sociolinguistic lens unpack it.

Authors

• Shulamit Kapon, Technion Israel Institute of Technology

• Yossef Wagner, Technion Israel Institute of Technology