Epistemologically Responsive Teaching as a Pedagogical Mechanism for Supporting Scientific Practices

• In Event: 63.025 - Supporting Modeling Epistemologies in the Science Classroom

Abstract

Objectives. In this work, we explore how we might leverage the construct of teacher responsiveness to support the development of teaching practice that supports the scientific practices as a set.

Theoretical Framing. Science educations researchers increasingly depict learning as participation in science practices (NRC, 2012). Given that the explicit goal of students’ participation in the practices is for them to “figure out” phenomenon rather than “learn about” content (Schwarz, Passmore, & Reiser, 2016), student ideas generated during “figuring it out” must become the focus of classroom activity. Doing this requires that student ideas, rather than just textbook knowledge, be the stuff that is built on during sensemaking activities.

How can teachers centralize student ideas in ways that encourage student engagement in the scientific practices? Scholars interested in responsive teaching (Robertson, Scherr, & Hammer, 2015) articulate a variety of ways teachers can attend and respond to their students’ ideas, some of which are domain-general (e.g. re-voicing) and others which are domain- and practice-specific (e.g. pressing for evidence in an argument). In this work, we adopt a perspective that supporting the scientific practices necessitates a middle-ground in terms of responsive specificity - one that attends to the disciplinary substance of student thinking while at the same time not separating the practices into distinct activities.

Methods/Data. Using design-based research (Cobb et al., 2003), we iteratively designed and researched an elementary science methods course that introduces preservice teachers (PSTs) to responsive teaching by providing them with opportunities to practice that work with science ideas in text and video (Sherin & van Es, 2005). Specifically, we support PSTs in developing “epistemologically responsive teaching” in which they attend and respond to the disciplinary epistemologies evident in student ideas. In this poster, we present examples of our PSTs’ proposed responses to illustrate the theoretical argument that those responses can support student participation in the practices.

Results. In the full paper, we will provide numerous examples; here we offer one exemplar. Here, a PST proposes asking a student in a video what she means by “hold.”
…[I would ask about] their verb usage, like 'holds' and 'passes through.' Um, also what happens to the sand... when it holds water, or what happens to the sand when the water passes through. (Line 2481)
The PST pushes on the causality underlying the word “hold,” thereby communicating that causal accounts are a central epistemological feature of science. This response could, for example, support the practice “Developing models” by helping the flesh out the underlying mechanism for the phenomenon. Here, attention to disciplinary epistemologies (importance of causality) can support the scientific practices.

Scholarly Significance. Unlike professional development centered on a single scientific practice (Fishman et al., 2017), working with teachers at the level of disciplinary epistemologies allows us to reinforce the major theoretical innovation of the practices – they are a set, and not separable “steps.” Encouraging teachers to attend to their student ideas in a way that embodies that innovation allows students to experience an epistemologically accurate version of the scientific practices.

Authors

• Leema G. Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Rosemary Russ, University of Wisconsin - Madison