Epistemic Fluency Research Articles

Epistemic fluency in virtual laboratories as flipped classroom’s innovative learning delivery

PurposeDesign an innovative Flipped classroom’s Delivery through virtual laboratory.Design/methodology/approachThe fundamental framework of the present investigation is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) design. By merging the impetus of “action.” with the inclusiveness of “participation,” PAR establishes a “network” for collaborative teaching or research. PAR is pertinent to our research because it facilitates the participation of infrastructures and individuals in formulating a critical community. This community encourages critical self-reflection, promotes accountability, redistributes authority, and cultivates confidence in research. PAR fosters constructive transformation in educational environments by utilizing participants' combined insights and experiences to establish a structure for substantive dialogue and proactive measures.FindingsAs virtual laboratories are becoming essential in 21st-century science education, we found groundbreaking evidence that can support our novel approach to enhance the quality and equity in education. Our results show that virtual labs engage scientific goals and practices, develop scientific literacy, foster scientific inquiry and problem-solving, and promote metacognition. The effects of the virtual laboratory can develop high self-efficacy and positive attitudes among students. It improves students' laboratory performance, which we noted from laboratory activities, simulations, and long exam results.Originality/valueThe study offers groundbreaking account to depict epistemic fluency aided by virtual laboratory.

Midrange, Differential, Meaningful, and Multidisciplinary: Reflections onJCR’s Epistemic Culture

AbstractScientific communities such as journals or professional societies have their own ways of creating and sharing knowledge called “epistemic cultures.” Drawing on prior reflexive scholarship and conversations with eight preeminent consumer researchers, this article explores some of the central tenets of epistemic culture at the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR): midrange scope, differential insight, meaningful impact, and multidisciplinary field. It also provides some guidance to new consumer researchers on how to accomplish epistemic fluency.

Interdisciplinary students’ reflections on the development of their epistemic fluency

IntroductionHow can higher education institutions foster students’ epistemic fluency, that is, their ability to identify, reflect upon, and connect different knowledges and different ways of knowing? As higher education institutions put interdisciplinary research and education prominently on their strategic agendas, there is a call for knowledge on how to teach students to identify and integrate insights from different disciplines. This study approached this topic from the viewpoint of the student: what are the drivers and barriers to the development of epistemic fluency, according to interdisciplinary students?MethodsParticipants were undergraduate students enrolled in a course on the interdisciplinary research process with a specific emphasis on integration. In the first and last lectures of the course, students were asked to reflect on their openness to alternative perspectives and their connective thinking. They also reflected on their development in general and specifically in this interdisciplinary course.ResultsStudents were able to meaningfully reflect on their development and the results showed a varied picture of students’ epistemic fluency.

Facilitating epistemic fluency of undergraduate students during the interdisciplinary research process

IntroductionIn this article we show how students share knowledge when integrating disciplinary insights in an interdisciplinary research project. More specifically, this research looks at how students communicate to create a shared mental model during moderated sessions with use of CoNavigator as an interdisciplinary collaboration tool or Miro as an online mind map tool. The study focuses on the interdisciplinary capstone of the Liberal Arts and Sciences bachelor program at Utrecht University (LAS), where students collaborate in multidisciplinary groups by going through the interdisciplinary research process (IRP).This process asks students to define an interdisciplinary research question, to define disciplinary insights and combine each other’s disciplinary insights to create a more comprehensive understanding of their research question. The integration of disciplinary insights requires working with different perspectives and acknowledging uncertainty, thereby requiring epistemic fluency and higher modes of knowledge. This research looks at how a structured session with CoNavigator or Miro can help students use these processes when integrating insights.MethodsSeven groups participated in this research, with whom we moderated a session using either CoNavigator or Miro at the start of the integration phase with the purpose of sharing disciplinary insights and finding common ground. We observed each group, looking at communication related to construction, constructive conflict and co-construction. In addition, we looked at evaluation of the tool immediately after the session and the assessment of the integration chapter of all groups.ResultsWe found that each phase of the moderated session elicited different responses in terms of constructive conflict and co-construction, thereby helping students to actively work with different ways of knowing and to define and connect disciplinary differences. In their communication, students show examples of epistemic fluency and higher modes of knowledge, although this did not directly translate into a better assessment of their integration chapter.DiscussionThese results show that discussing disciplinary differences and finding common ground through a session with CoNavigator or Miro gives students a structured way to start with their interdisciplinary integration. We argue that LAS-students exhibit epistemic fluency when working with the tools, but also develop this throughout the session. It appears that the epistemic fluency students already possess prior to the IRP can be further developed by the epistemic fluency expressed by teammates during the tool session. The practice and development of epistemic fluency will always involve uncertainties, but facilitating interdisciplinary integration in this way is valuable as it provides an opportunity to work with these uncertainties and offer students space to speak and integrate freely.

Learning from experiences of evaluators implementing theory-driven evaluations in diverse settings: Building on the contributions of John Mayne

The papers in this volume grapple with various issues related to the use of theories of change in program evaluation. This introductory paper reviews some of the critical challenges that arise in developing and learning from theory-driven evaluations. These challenges include the relationship between theories of change and ecologies of evidence, the need for epistemic fluency in learning, and coming to terms with the initial incompleteness of knowledge in program mechanisms. The nine papers that follow, which represent a geographically diverse set of evaluations and evaluators (including Scotland, India, Canada, USA), help develop these and other themes. This volume of papers also serves as a celebration of the work of John Mayne, one of the foremost theory-driven evaluators of the last few decades. John passed away in December of 2020. This volume is intended to honor his legacy while also identifying challenging issues that call for further development.

Modeling Chinese Teachers' Efficacies for the Teaching of Integrated STEM With Interdisciplinary Communication and Epistemic Fluency.

Engineering design is a core activity in integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. During the design process, teachers should possess interdisciplinary communication capacities to collaborate with their peers who are teaching different subjects and have epistemic fluency to comprehend multiple ways of subject matter knowing for the collective design of high-quality integrated STEM (iSTEM) lessons. This is especially so for the online mode of instruction during and after the pandemic. Teachers’ efficacies for interdisciplinary communication and epistemic fluency have rarely been explored. In this study, we aimed to examine primary school, junior high school, and high school STEM teachers’ (N = 483) efficacies for daily instruction, student engagement, interdisciplinary communication, epistemic fluency, and technological pedagogical engineering knowledge (TPEK) and designing integrated STEM instruction. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (n = 155) and a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (n = 328) were used to validate the measurement and structural model. Next, a structural equation model (SEM) was employed to examine whether these variables were reliable predictors of teachers’ integrated STEM instruction. The survey was validated with good reliabilities and the structural equation modeling supported most of the hypotheses. Statistically, the results also showed that teachers’ general efficacies for daily teaching and students’ engagement predicted their interdisciplinary communication, epistemic fluency, and TPEK. Teachers’ interdisciplinary communication predicted their epistemic fluency, TPEK, and iSTEM. Teachers’ epistemic fluency also predicted their TPEK and iSTEM. In addition, multi-group analyses were used to test the measurement invariance of the scale and to compare the latent means between the genders and subject matters. The results of the various analyses confirmed that the measurement model appeared to be equivalent across the genders and subject matters examined. Genders and subject matters did not significantly differ in any of the measured variables. The results from this study indicate that teachers’ epistemic fluency and interdisciplinary communication play essential roles in advancing their TPEK and iSTEM. Hence, this study suggests that teacher professional development should focus on enhancing teacher epistemic fluency through interdisciplinary collaboration to support the development of TPEK and iSTEM instruction.

Curriculum and learning designers’ epistemological views of learning and how they inform design work in universities

Universities globally have been increasingly looking to bring in professionals with expertise in learning and curriculum design to help with educational innovation. The aim of this study was to explore the epistemological views of learning that people in curriculum and learning design roles use to inform their practice. In this study, ten learning and curriculum designers were interviewed in depth. The participants demonstrated wide and deep knowledge of learning and teaching, drawing on both established notions of constructivism but also on emerging theories and evidence. Combined with extensive experience, the interviews revealed that these learning designers demonstrate high levels of epistemic fluency, adapting and using processes and practices in a dynamic way as task requirements demand. The findings make a contribution to the limited understanding of the knowledge base that curriculum learning designers draw on to carry out their work. The implications of these findings for universities are also discussed.

Exploring the Promises and Perils of Integrated STEM Through Disciplinary Practices and Epistemologies

Growing interest in integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (iSTEM) education has been promoted as one way to increase innovation capacity, support future employment, and enhance learning outcomes in K-12 education throughout the USA. Existing efforts to construct iSTEM curricula have largely focused on finding points of integration among commonly shared disciplinary practices, but these efforts have not explicitly accounted for the distinct epistemologies of the disciplines. In this study, we critically examined the concept of iSTEM by conducting a thematic analysis of K-12 STEM learning standards documents to identify cross-cutting themes among the practices of the various disciplines. We then analyzed these themes using disciplinary epistemologies in order to highlight some promises and perils of an integrated approach to STEM education. We identified eight cross-cutting themes: communicating, investigating, modeling, using tools, working with data, making sense of problems or phenomena, solving problems, and evaluating ideas or solutions. Through our analysis of practices and epistemologies, we discuss the promises of iSTEM, including fewer learning standards, enhanced epistemic fluency, increased diversity and inclusion in STEM, and opportunities to challenge settled and siloed disciplinary knowledge. We also discuss potential perils, which consist of conflation and/or exclusion of various STEM practices and epistemologies. We urge continued examination of iSTEM with an eye toward the epistemic implications.

Integrated care: a definition from the perspective of the four quality paradigms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to support the ongoing dialogue and shed light on the different views on integrated care. An overarching definition of integrated care is proposed combining the ways of thinking of the four quality paradigms the authors identify. The idea of epistemic fluency offers a way-out of ongoing discussions about “what integration is”.Design/methodology/approachFour paradigms of quality are presented and applied to healthcare. Epistemic fluency is proposed as the capacity to understand, switch between and combine different kinds of knowledge. The authors compare previously developed definitions of integrated care to the various combinations of paradigms.FindingsAll four paradigms of care quality are present in healthcare and in the most used definitions of integrated care. The Reflective Paradigm and the Emergence Paradigm receive least attention. Some definitions combine more than one paradigm. An overarching definition of integrated care is proposed.Research limitations/implicationsIn this paper, only the most prominent definitions of integration have been considered.Practical implicationsIntegration research and practice requires a widely accepted definition of integrated care, embracing all four paradigms of care quality. Our suggestion provides a common foundation that may prevent misunderstanding.Originality/valueThe use of quality management paradigms to frame the debate on defining integrated care is new and leads to new insights for teaching, research and practice.

Constructing Causal Understanding in Complex Systems: Epistemic Strategies Used by Ecosystem Scientists

AbstractMoving from a correlational to a causal account involves epistemological assumptions in any discipline. It presents particular challenges when phenomena involve multiple causes, time lags, feedback loops, or thresholds, as is the case in ecosystem science. Although reductionist approaches may contribute to explanatory efforts, investigation in ecosystems science requires a systems perspective. Understanding how ecosystem scientists arrive at causal accounts—and importantly, that they do—is critical to public understanding of science. Interviews with ten ecosystem scientists revealed the strategies and habits of mind that ecosystem scientists bring to examining complex systems. The scientists described challenges in conducting experiments at relevant scales and the epistemic strategies employed in response. The themes included constructing a body of evidence using multiple approaches, integrating results through statistical and process-based models, measuring and describing variability, conducting experiments in context, thinking across levels, considering the limits to generalizability, and exercising epistemic fluency. We discuss implications for K–20 education.

Practical Epistemic Cognition in a Design Project—Engineering Students Developing Epistemic Fluency

Contribution: This paper reports engineering students ’ practical epistemic cognition by studying their interactional work in situ. Studying “epistemologies in action” the study breaks away from mainstream approaches that describe this in terms of beliefs or of stage theories. Background: In epistemology, knowledge is traditionally seen as “justified true belief,” neglecting knowledge related to action. Interest has increased in studying the epistemologies people use in situated action, and their development of epistemic fluency. How appropriate such approaches are in engineering and design education need further investigation. Research Questions: 1) How do students in the context of a design project use epistemic tools in their interactional work? and 2) What are the implications of the findings in terms of how students’ cognitive and epistemological development could be conceptualized? Methodology: A collaborative group of six students were video recorded on the 14th day of a fifth-semester design project, as they were preparing for a formal critique session. The entire, almost 6 h, session was recorded by four video cameras mounted in the design studio, with an additional fifth body-mounted camera. The video data collected was analyzed using video ethnographic, conversation analysis, and embodied interaction analysis methods. Findings: The results show that the students use a wealth of bodily material resources as an integral and seamless part of their interactions as epistemic tools, in their joint production of understanding and imagining. The analysis also suggests that students’ epistemological and cognitive development, individually and as a group, should be understood in terms of developing “epistemic fluency.”

Responsive learning design: Epistemic fluency and generative pedagogical practices

AbstractSeveral decades of research and development have produced a rich ecology of technologies designed to support active, collaborative constructionist pedagogical practices. Nevertheless, many teachers are reluctant to use these technologies in their teaching or fail to devise learning designs which leverage their qualities. We argue that this tension reflects a dissonance between the epistemic practices (manners of constructing knowledge) implicit in teachers' pedagogical practices and the ones embodied in the technology. We demonstrate this argument in the case of Dynamic Mathematics Environments (DME) through the epistemic practice of identifying invariants, and its dynamic manifestation in the technology, and illustrate it further with examples from an online course on CSCL. For teachers to effectively design learning experiences in a technology rich environment, they need to develop their capacity to critically assess the epistemic and pedagogical practices associated with this environment, identify a set of target epistemic practices and carefully devise the pedagogical practices which will engender these. We call these “generative pedagogical practices.” To do so, teachers need to actively participate in activities that would provide them with opportunities to make that epistemic change: building, experimenting with and designing for learning in diverse environments. Sometimes, applying such an epistemic disposition, requires supressing old practices of activity design.

Teacher Professional Development for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education: A Review from the Perspectives of Technological Pedagogical Content (TPACK)

This review identifies 20 studies pertaining to teacher professional development for STEM education. Using a mixture of content analysis with reference to the TPACK framework, and open and axial coding, a descriptive model was constructed. The model describes the connection of the various categories of variables associated with teacher professional development for STEM. How content, pedagogy, and technology are featured in current STEM research are treated as properties of the core phenomenon of teacher professional development for STEM. Design considerations for future research are presented. The study recommends that design thinking, epistemic fluency and technological pedagogical engineering knowledge could be the anchors of future research.

Facilitating epistemic fluency through design thinking: a strategy for the broader application of studio pedagogy within higher education

ABSTRACTTomorrow's professionals will require an enhanced capacity for collaboration, cooperation and creative thinking. Markauskaite and Goodyear (Markauskaite, L., and P. Goodyear. 2016. Epistemic Fluency and Professional Education: Innovation, Knowledgeable Action and Actionable Knowledge. Springer) have posited epistemic fluency as the pedagogical approach necessary to prepare graduates for increasingly complex challenges. They have provided a framework for creating epistemic learning environments but not a clear implementation strategy. This paper draws parallels between epistemic fluency and design thinking to position the design studio as a relevant pedagogical model with an established set of strategies for facilitating epistemic fluency. A series of experiments undertaken to optimise the studio environment for the development of epistemic fluency will be drawn on to illustrate its suitability. The intent is to provide guidance for how studio learning could be adapted for use within other disciplines and to highlight the challenges teachers need to address within this process; particularly, that epistemic environments require the continuous exercise of design thinking by both teacher and learner.

Epistemic fluency and professional education: innovation, knowledgeable action and actionable knowledge by L. Markauskaite and P. Goodyear

With a strong emphasis on epistemic games, this book is itself a game changer by defining transdisciplinary perspectives of professional education and professional learning. For educators of pre-service or in-service teachers, this book is even more important as it offers an alternative to conventional understandings of cognition and learning, and an array of strategies that may also be relevant to the way we teach in secondary and primary contexts. While the authors tend to approach thinking and learning from a cognitive science perspective, it is the adoption of perspectives from diverse epistemological and ontological origins that makes this book unique: as the author’s contend with broadening the conventional cognitive sciences world-view...

Symposium 5: Athenian Democracy & Networked Learning Communities

The Athenian democracy is worthy of study if for no other reason than that it was inspiration for many academic fields. This project highlights some institutions and policies of the Athenian democracy, during its flowering in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, in order to interpret them for the benefits of networked learning communities. Concepts such as ephebes and the power of reward can be applied to both the ancient and digital era, without implying an exact parallel. New members (ephebes) need training to create their e-portfolios, acquire digital literacy and epistemic fluency to be eligible to contribute to and benefit from community management. Discussion forums could be an arena for dialogue and information exchange. Allocating labor, e-community managers could fulfill the potential of technology-enhanced learning and tutors would able to select and distribute resources that could be useful and applicable. Praxis and democratic ideals are mirrored in the framework of an economy of knowledge. Epistemologically speaking, an economy of knowledge can be seen as a theory for acquiring the full benefits and costs of coming to know and use knowledge. This theory of knowledge could be a core concept in network learning. This theory does not presume full knowledge, but it does presume democratic social construction of knowledge. On ontological grounds, subjectivity implies that there are always some alternative constructions available to choose from in dealing with the world. The reliability of democracy increases as different points of views transformed into a socially ‘agreed’ way of interaction and participation. The dark side of democracy more closely related to NL communities could shade mainly the ideas of irrational decision, monoculture (single, homogeneous culture without diversity) and demagogy. To illuminate dark corners of democratic e-communities, a form of ‘aristocratic democracy’ is used as a metaphor for the social regime. The term, aristocracy, in the Greek sense of the word, means that the best rules in every domain. To top it all, cultural pluralism could light democratic e-communities, with creativity or conflict that can promote critical thinking and dialogue.Praxis and further research are required to test the validity of the theory presented.

Knowledge creation in networked learning

Although the pedagogic potential of structured online discussions in higher education has been realised, the promise of rapidly developing wiki technology and synchronous audio and video technology in teaching and learning needs to be examined. A better understanding of the affordances of these tools and a clearer articulation of the kinds of interactions needed for knowledge creation in networked learning is required. This study explores the ways in which knowledge can be jointly created among geographically dispersed communities of developing researchers through combined web-based tools both synchronous and asynchronous enabled though networked technology. We focus on the role online discussion spaces, wikis and synchronous discussions play in collaborative creation of knowledge by looking at participation processes as they occur online and collaboratively. The study is conceived in the broader context of socio-constructivist approach using concepts around the notion of epistemic fluency. The concept of affordance is employed to illuminate the properties inherent in the tools under study and pin point the ways in which they act as facilitators for learning. Qualitative data are generated through a focus group and semi-structured interviews which are triangulated with naturally occurring data from online discussion forums as part of an exploratory case study approach. Analytic techniques using pattern-matching and grounded theory approaches are used in the analysis of the data. Findings suggest that different kinds of networked technologies can support users in multiple and complementary ways when it comes to sharing experiences, exploring concepts and developing new forms of knowledge around key questions and problems. As such, qualitative differences seem to exist in the perceived affordances of online discussion forums and wikis as tools to promote collaborative advancement of knowledge. We suggest that online structured discussion forums provide affordances for probing, interrogating and posing arguments among groups of learners working collaboratively in knowledge creation. Implications suggest switching attention away from wikis as a standalone collaboration tools suitable for educational purposes and turning it on to their functionality as repository spaces for storing and sustaining shared information and collaboratively created knowledge. Evidence pointing to the conditions for successful use of educational wikis identifies affordances of parallel use of synchronous audio and video technology as mediating tools in supporting collaborative wiki-based activity. The combination of wiki with synchronous audio technology seems to offer the necessary affordances for the development of shared meaning and externalisation of individual representations within the group. On this basis, we argue for the necessity for social dialogue in knowledge creation enabled through the implementation of combined tools to offer complementary affordances in the process. Implications of the study place dialogic processes at the centre of educational activities as part of the design of technology-enhanced postgraduate programmes of study across university departments.

Expanding the concept of Networked Learning

In this paper I want to explore the concept of networked learning in a way that has too rarely been attempted in the history of the conference or, indeed, the term. It struck me while preparing another publication, early in 2007, that the Networked Learning conference feels like 'just another e-learning conference'. This was partly a reflection from attendance at the 2004 and 2006 conferences. I also went back and checked this with proceedings of all past Networked Learning conferences. Some of the key networked learning conference protagonists were involved in developing a definition of networked learning: Learning in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources. Although the core of networked learning may be represented 'in amongst' the proceedings, there is a sense that papers are being included so long as they have something to do with learning technology: there may not have been a single conference without them.I think this needs to be highlighted and addressed since it misses out on an important contribution that networked learning could make to learning theory and practice, not least with the rise of social networking applications. Research into learning technology has been criticised as too small scale, or even just inept for a number of reasons. One of these is the failure to build upon established theory and research which is an inexcusable failure to learn from the past. Searching the jiscmail archive for 'Networked Learning' indicates that the membership has not used jiscmail to discuss the concept. There was a brief exchange in October 2000, spawned by Chris Jones, asking, 'What exactly is e-learning and does it differ from the networked learning adressed by this list?' (sic). Peter Goodyear's reply predicted that if we conflate eLearning as: all that CAL/CAI/CBT stuff we've been doing for years plus what we can do now on the Web' then the whole field will actually move back rather than forward (just as it did with the introduction of the PC in the early 80's, he said, contentiously). Learning technology research and practice is in need of suitable theoretical foundations and, with reference to Chris Jones' work, questions around the concept of networks may provide a way forward. In this paper I present two sorts of propositions that seek to extend the 2001 definition of networked learning: one that narrows the concept and another that broadens it. The best way I can present the first proposition is in the form of a question: What does it mean to be ''networked learned'? Reading the term in this, albeit clumsy, way allows us to consider networked learning as a theory of learning, although I have tried to subsume it within the context of work by Goodyear around 'epistemic fluency'. For the second proposition I turn to work from my recent Masters in Advanced Learning Technology. In the Final Project Report (dissertation) I argued that the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee report on 'Effective networked learning in higher education: notes and guidelines', as with other such documents, presume student engagement or dismiss non-engagement as something that will be resolved over time; engagement which was the lifeblood of networked learning opportunities. I proposed a widening of the definition of networked learning with special reference to the meaning of 'promoting connections'. For successful episodes of networked learning, a designer's attention must be given to 'promoting connections' of technology use in the minds and lives of all involved.

Symposium 3: Where is the learning in networked knowledge construction?

From the days of Plato until today's information society, knowledge has been at the core of human activity critically influencing aspects of social, cultural and economic prosperity across communities. The emergence of networked communication technologies has dropped traditional boundaries in H.E. allowing bringing together geographically dispersed learners and giving them opportunities to redefine their shared understanding of a given discipline as well as a shared sense of their complex roles as developing professionals. Increasing attention is being paid to the ways in which values, beliefs, experiences and knowledge are being shared and negotiated among groups of learners in formal educational settings. Networked learning in particular, provides a range of collaborative learning arrangements that include a broad variety of networked computer technologies and has become a useful context for knowledge construction in H.E. What is interesting in exploring knowledge construction learning communities is placed on discussions pointing to the distinction between the creation of collaborative knowledge and possibilities for learning emerging from such initiatives. There is also a need for research on the ways in which the experiences gained from collaboration are used to deal with emerging learning situations, e.g. those met while preparing assignments and project reports as part of a formal course of study. The process of collaborative knowledge construction often involves cycles of developmental activity in which participants engage including decisions about what is worth to be added to the knowledge of a learning community. As a useful conceptual tool for researching the process of knowledge construction in networked learning, we propose the notions of epistemic activity and epistemic fluency. The epistemic ideas, we argue, work as a useful framework to give meaning and to refine collaborative discussion prone to the generation of new knowledge. This work-in-progress paper develops the conceptual background for researching knowledge construction in networked learning and examines learners' participation in knowledge advancement activities both collaboratively and individually through the lens of qualitative methodology. Learners' participation in knowledge construction activities is investigated using an analytical framework originating from the data and ideas guided by the theoretical framework of the study. Data have been collected from a postgraduate course in Advanced Learning Technology including online discussions, student assignments and interviews. The paper concludes that the ideas expressed within online messages exchanged between course participants as well as research projects and reviews undertaken as part of their assessment are representations of abstract knowledge. Epistemic activities have a decisive role in knowledge creation and improvement as they add value to such representations. Participation in epistemic activities inherent in a professional culture or discipline (i.e. through answering important questions, solving out problems and adding to its knowledge base) allows gradually becoming an active valued practitioner of this culture and generally develops one's epistemic fluency. Finally, the findings point to the importance of the contextual aspect in the process of knowledge construction and epistemic fluency acquisition pointing to the fact that knowledge can be advanced through interaction of the individual with the environment including peer learners, tutors and available resources. The ability to create and refine knowledge while maintaining a set of relations between other learners, resources and communities has implications for learning. Connectivity is crucial to that extend. In that respect, networked learning needs to be redefined to emphasise the dynamic attributes inherent in the connections enabled between participants and resources which are conducive to the emergence of shared and new knowledge. The implications for transformational learning found in such initiatives remain to be further explored.

Deficit or Difference? the Role of Students' Epistemologies of Mathematics in their Interactions with Proof

The ability to handle proof is the focus of a number of well-documented complaints regarding students' difficulties in encountering degree-level mathematics. However, in addition to observing that proof is currently marginalised in the UK pre-university mathematics curriculum with a consequent skills deficit for the new undergraduate mathematics student, we need to look more closely at the nature of the gap between expert practice and the student experience in order to gain a full explanation. The paper presents a discussion of first-year undergraduate students' personal epistemologies of mathematics and mathematics learning with illustrative examples from 12 student interviews. Their perceptions of the mathematics community of practice and their own position in it with respect to its values, assumptions and norms support the view that undergraduate interactions with proof are more completely understood as a function of institutional practices which foreground particular epistemological frameworks while obscuring others. It is argued that enabling students to access the academic proof procedure in the transition from pre-university to undergraduate mathematics is a question of fostering an epistemic fluency which allows them to recognise and engage in the process of creating and validating mathematical knowledge.