Teaching for Epistemic Agency
In this work we are examining 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.
We are currently analyzing video from three teachers' classrooms along with teacher interviews. In addition, we led a professional development workshop in July 2019 focused on supporting students' epistemic agency. Together, we are working to build a model of teacher learning that can be used to support the design of professional development.
Some initial findings from this study so far include:
We are currently analyzing video from three teachers' classrooms along with teacher interviews. In addition, we led a professional development workshop in July 2019 focused on supporting students' epistemic agency. Together, we are working to build a model of teacher learning that can be used to support the design of professional development.
Some initial findings from this study so far include:
- Teachers have varied and wide-ranging personal definitions for what "students' epistemic agency" means and looks like in their classrooms -- and relatedly, they have varied and wide-ranging strategies for supporting it. Rather than seeing this as a deficit (i.e., some teachers have the "right" understanding while others don't), we see this as reflective of the complexity involved in supporting students' epistemic agency (Kelly et al., 2020).
- When working to "open up space" for students' epistemic agency in curriculum materials, planning for epistemic agency was different than planning for coherence from students' perspectives in that it encouraged teachers to attend to areas in which they should anticipate (and encourage) productive deviations from the planned materials. The nature of these deviations varied amongst teachers, but for all this was a new "lens" for interpreting materials and planning for instruction (Ko, Krist, & Hug, forthcoming).
- Attempting to support epistemic agency creates vulnerabilities for students, including the risks of going public with ideas, publicly expressing uncertainty, and publicly revising ideas. Teachers leverage a range of strategies to build trust around these vulnerabilities (Krist, 2019; 2020).
Supported by:
- National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. ($70,000). "The role of trust in building science knowledge: Exploring the relational dimension of epistemological development" (2018-2020)
- University of Illinois Campus Research Board Grant #RB18139 ($27,000). "Learning to teach for epistemic agency: Sustaining reform-based pedagogies in the context of the Next Generation Science Standards" (2018-2019)
- University of Illinois Hardie Faculty Fellows Program ($20,000). "Learning to open up space for epistemic agency: Towards a model of teacher learning." (2020-2021)