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)
Fall 2018 - Spring 2020
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 work is currently in progress, though it builds from prior work with collaborators Michael Novak and Enrique Suarez.
An update on this project will be presented at the National Academy of Education Annual Meeting on Nov 8, 2019.
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 work is currently in progress, though it builds from prior work with collaborators Michael Novak and Enrique Suarez.
An update on this project will be presented at the National Academy of Education Annual Meeting on Nov 8, 2019.