Current Projects
Learning to Teach for Epistemic Agency: Sustaining Reform-Based Pedagogies in the Context of the Next Generation Science Standards
Supported by University of Illinois Campus Research Board Grant #RB18139 ($27,000)
Starting June 2018
The objective of this project is to examine teacher learning around supporting students' epistemic agency: having students take ownership over the intellectual work of doing science and make decisions about how that work should proceed. This question will be addressed by conducting retrospective interviews with teachers who are involved in developing and implementing NGSS-aligned curricular units about their ongoing curriculum development work; and by having teachers collect and reflect on point-of-view (POV) observations, an innovative methodology for investigating teachers' in-the-moment cognition, during the implementation of their designed units in the 2018-2019 school year. By examining teachers' reflections on and implementations of NGSS- aligned units, this study will produce preliminary design principles for teacher learning interventions around supporting students' epistemic agency. In addition, these analyses will contribute to theory-building on teacher learning around how teachers come to think about student decision-making in practice and how they shift their teaching and/or adapt curricula in ways that support students' epistemic agency. Understanding how teachers learn to cultivate students' epistemic agency in science is critical for supporting and sustaining the heart of science education reform efforts such as the Next Generation Science Standards.
The objective of this project is to examine teacher learning around supporting students' epistemic agency: having students take ownership over the intellectual work of doing science and make decisions about how that work should proceed. This question will be addressed by conducting retrospective interviews with teachers who are involved in developing and implementing NGSS-aligned curricular units about their ongoing curriculum development work; and by having teachers collect and reflect on point-of-view (POV) observations, an innovative methodology for investigating teachers' in-the-moment cognition, during the implementation of their designed units in the 2018-2019 school year. By examining teachers' reflections on and implementations of NGSS- aligned units, this study will produce preliminary design principles for teacher learning interventions around supporting students' epistemic agency. In addition, these analyses will contribute to theory-building on teacher learning around how teachers come to think about student decision-making in practice and how they shift their teaching and/or adapt curricula in ways that support students' epistemic agency. Understanding how teachers learn to cultivate students' epistemic agency in science is critical for supporting and sustaining the heart of science education reform efforts such as the Next Generation Science Standards.
Preliminary model of teacher work required to support students' epistemic agency.
The Role of Trust in Building Science Knowledge: Exploring the Relational Dimension of Epistemological Development
Supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program ($70,000)
Starting Fall 2018
This study examines the connections between interpersonal trust-building and students’ participation in authentic disciplinary learning, using science education as a particularly timely and generative context of focus. Current reforms in science education aim to engage students in science knowledge building practices (NGSS Lead States, 2013; NRC, 2012), which requires substantial amounts of talk, interaction, and discussion (Quinn, Lee, & Valdés, 2012). I aim to explicate not simply that, but how these relational dynamics are integral to disciplinary learning. Drawing on literature on children’s epistemological development in practice (Berland et al., 2016), affect-based trust (McAllister, 1995), and feminist critiques of science and schooling (Harding, 1986; Noddings, 1988), I examine how trust developed in an 8th grade science class over the course of two content-area units. This case provides a strategic window into the co-constituencies of and tensions between relational and disciplinary messages in epistemological development. Exploring the nature of these interactions will contribute to our understanding of how to build relational dynamics in classroom communities that support rich disciplinary learning, and how those relational dynamics shape the version of the nature of the discipline about which students learn.
This study examines the connections between interpersonal trust-building and students’ participation in authentic disciplinary learning, using science education as a particularly timely and generative context of focus. Current reforms in science education aim to engage students in science knowledge building practices (NGSS Lead States, 2013; NRC, 2012), which requires substantial amounts of talk, interaction, and discussion (Quinn, Lee, & Valdés, 2012). I aim to explicate not simply that, but how these relational dynamics are integral to disciplinary learning. Drawing on literature on children’s epistemological development in practice (Berland et al., 2016), affect-based trust (McAllister, 1995), and feminist critiques of science and schooling (Harding, 1986; Noddings, 1988), I examine how trust developed in an 8th grade science class over the course of two content-area units. This case provides a strategic window into the co-constituencies of and tensions between relational and disciplinary messages in epistemological development. Exploring the nature of these interactions will contribute to our understanding of how to build relational dynamics in classroom communities that support rich disciplinary learning, and how those relational dynamics shape the version of the nature of the discipline about which students learn.
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Past Projects
Scientific Practices
(PI: Brian Reiser, Northwestern University, funded by the National Science Foundation grant DRL 1020316.)
(PI: Brian Reiser, Northwestern University, funded by the National Science Foundation grant DRL 1020316.)