Epistemic Responsibility and Sense-Making With Multiple Epistemologies in Social Studies Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Existing scholarship in social studies education, while often promoting multiple perspectives, shows limited attention to how our field represents multiple ways of knowing. Considering that students and communities marginalized in schooling systems also find their epistemologies marginalized in curriculum and educational research, this symposium grapples with epistemic responsibilities for social studies education and research. Through recent research from multiple international contexts and scholars working from non-Western/colonial epistemological approaches, this symposium explores how curricula, educators, and students position themselves towards knowledge construction practices. Such practices, we argue, relate to particular sociocultural and epistemological commitments that support and/or ignore such responsibilities. We aim to generate knowledge, questions, and collaborations for social studies educators’ epistemic responsibilities to educational justice and equity.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Social Studies Research

Chair

• Christopher L. Busey, University of Florida

Papers

• Teaching Across Epistemologies: Navigating Epistemic Responsibilities With Indigenous/Tribal Curriculum - Jenni Conrad, Temple University

• Conceptions of Knowledge Across Contexts: Making New Sense of Teachers' Epistemic Beliefs - O. Matthew Odebiyi, St Cloud State University; Youn-Jeng Choi, Ewha Womans University

• Vestigial Eugenics in World History Curriculum: How Racial Science Structures Narratives of Development and Modernity - Tadashi Dozono, California State University - Channel Islands

• Egyptian Students' Epistemological Approaches to the Country's Dominant Narrative: Implications for Curricula and Teachers - Ehaab Dyaa Abdou, Wilfrid Laurier University

Discussant

• George J. Dei, OISE/University of Toronto