Epistemic Tools Research Articles

A clash of epistemic tools: computer programming and paper-and-pencil in secondary school mathematics problem solving

A clash of epistemic tools: computer programming and paper-and-pencil in secondary school mathematics problem solving

Linguistics and reading: learning in the school library to promote reflection on the functioning of language

Reading promotes the approach to new knowledge in school and reinforces comprehension already acquired (Colomer, 2015; Ballester, 2015; Lockwood, 2011), and it frees the teaching of the literacy process from being subordinated to the literal to position itself as a powerful epistemic tool (Ruiz, 2009). The need to value and offer educational aids around reading and language development arises because evidence indicates that Chile is characterized by an unequal distribution of access to education for school students according to the types of schools and the fact that there are low results in national reading comprehension tests (OECD, 2016). This text presents pedagogical proposals and theoretical reflections from linguistic (Stubbs, 1984; Calsamiglia and Tusón, 2008; Bosque and Gallego, 2016) and pedagogical approaches (Spolsky, 2008) and language teaching (Camps, 2006; Cassany et al., 2007), whose application is expected to promote the development of abstract thinking and visits to the school library, as well as to strengthen language teaching and reflection on its functioning in reading instances.

Developing an instrument to measure Korean pre‐service teachers' understanding of language as an epistemic tool in mathematics education

AbstractThis study adapted and validated an instrument to measure pre‐service teachers' understanding of language as an epistemic tool in mathematics education in South Korea. Initially validated for science education, the instrument was tailored for mathematics education and translated into Korean. The validation process included tests for content validity, substance validity through translation, and structural validity, affirming the instrument's efficacy in this new context. The rating scale model was employed to analyze raw response data and confirm a unidimensional model fit. To ensure the functional equivalence of translated items, rigorous domain reanalysis, translation, and back‐translation processes were implemented. A pilot study involving 215 Korean pre‐service teachers was conducted, yielding results that support the instrument's reliability and validity in measuring their understanding of language as an epistemic tool in mathematics. This adaptation provides a quantitative measure for this understanding and an example to revise the instrument for new contexts.

Brouillet’s Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière as an epistemic tool in Charcot’s research on hysterical amnesia

ABSTRACT Much has been written, mostly in overly critical terms, about Jean-Martin Charcot’s use of images in his hysteria research. Besides the images of patients Charcot produced for his clinical research, one other image has preoccupied present-day scholars—André Brouillet’s painting Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière. Unveiled at the 1887 Salon in Paris, this life-sized painting depicts Charcot lecturing on hysteria to his male audience while presenting a swooning female patient. For many present-day critics, Brouillet’s painting symbolizes Charcot’s purported misuse of his female hysteria patients. Contrary to such interpretations, this article shows that Brouillet’s painting did not merely serve as an iconic visual representation of Charcot’s hysteria research but was also used by Charcot as an active epistemic tool in his research on hysterical amnesia. Through a close reading of Charcot’s only published lecture on hysterical amnesia, which he held on December 22, 1891, I analyze the process through which Charcot generated new medical insights into hysterical amnesia. I thereby trace the decisive role that Une leçon clinique played in this process.

Elementary students’ shared understanding of angle during an educational robotics task

IntroductionPrior research has documented students’ struggles in conceiving of angle and angle measurement, which may stem from textbook and curriculum representations of angles as static. In this study, we examined grade 3-5 students’ mathematical thinking of angle during an educational robotics task implemented within a making space learning environment in a school setting (i.e., hybrid making space).MethodsOur analysis included 19 video recordings of six groups of students in grades 3-5.ResultsResults from this study demonstrate how students negotiated a shared understanding of angle through multiple epistemic tools (e.g., gestures, bodily actions, language) that were situated and contextualized within the task. This included developing a shared language, conceptualizing angle as a dynamic entity, and perceiving angle through directionality and degree measures.DiscussionWe contend that learning experiences within a hybrid making space provide young students with opportunities to engage in mathematics as a social phenomenon and human activity.

REAL possibilities: innovative and responsive curriculum enactment enabling impactful inquiry in primary science

ABSTRACT The goal of the Beyond 2000 report (Millar & Osborne, 1998) to prepare young people for uncertain futures is arguably more crucial than ever. Current educational policies and curricula emphasise STEAM, twenty-first-century skills, and citizenship perspectives for solution generation to address global challenges. However, generative enactment in primary science requires ongoing attention, which is the focus of this paper. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne, Australia, our design-based research with Year 6 students and teachers used inductive thematic analysis to identify what we term impactful inquiry. Students scientifically-grounded solutions to an issue relevant to them. Drawing on existing inquiry models, we propose an empirically informed framing of our impactful inquiry as REAL: (a) Relevant-contextually integrated and responsive; (b) Evidence-focused-using epistemic tools, practices and processes of scientific inquiry; (c) Actioned-driving science-informed change in the community; and (d) Linked, to learning and life, with consideration of the past, present, and future including sustained and continued action and curriculum in meaningful ways. We intend the REAL framing of our impactful inquiry to contribute to efforts to innovate responsive curriculum enactment of primary science that prepares students to negotiate socio-ecological issues and realise transformative change, now and into the future.

The social lives of point-of-care tests in low- and middle-income countries: a meta-ethnography.

Point-of-care tests (POCTs) have become technological solutions for many global health challenges. This meta-ethnography examines what has been learned about the 'social lives' of POCTs from in-depth qualitative research, highlighting key social considerations for policymakers, funders, developers and users in the design, development and deployment of POCTs. We screened qualitative research examining POCTs in low- and middle-income countries and selected 13 papers for synthesis. The findings illuminate five value-based logics-technological autonomy, care, scalability, rapidity and certainty-shaping global health innovation ecosystems and their entanglement with health systems. Our meta-ethnography suggests that POCTs never achieve the technological autonomy often anticipated during design and development processes. Instead, they are both embedded in and constitutive of the dynamic relationships that make up health systems in practice. POCTs are often imagined as caring commodities; however, in use, notions of care inscribed in these devices are constantly negotiated and transformed in relation to multiple understandings of care. POCTs promise to standardize care across scale, yet our analysis indicates nonstandard processes, diagnoses and treatment pathways as essential to 'fluid technologies' rather than dangerous aberrations. The rapidity of POCTs is constructed and negotiated within multiple distinct temporal registers, and POCTs operate as temporal objects that can either speed up or slow down experiences of diagnosis and innovation. Finally, while often valued as epistemic tools that can dispel diagnostic uncertainty, these papers demonstrate that POCTs contribute to new forms of uncertainty. Together, these papers point to knowledge practices as multiple, and POCTs as contributing to, rather than reducing, this multiplicity. The values embedded in POCTs are fluid and contested, with important implications for the kind of care these tools can deliver. These findings can contribute to more reflexive approaches to global health innovation, which take into account limitations of established global health logics, and recognize the socio-technical complexity of health systems.

The promise of interspecies desegregation: Allying with capybaras against gated communities in Buenos Aires’ wetlands

Nordelta is an exclusive gated community in Buenos Aires built over the wetlands of the Paraná Delta that has encroached on more-than-human bodies and lands through racialized discourses and infrastructures. In this article, I analyze a controversy that arose in 2021 when crowds of capybaras started roaming freely in the community. The event triggered a robust social media response that, I argue, generated popular epistemic tools to enlist capybaras into categories of multispecies endangerment and dispossession. In addition, I delve into the emergence of the communitarian territory of Punta Querandí, which, at the borders of Nordelta, seeks to repair segregation and encroachment for humans and other-than-humans. Drawing on scholarship on animals, race, and the built environment, I employ an ethnographically informed analysis of social media, archival documents, and interviews to explore the two cases as responses to racial capitalism and real extractivism in contemporary Argentina, shedding light into what I term “the promise of interspecies desegregation.”

Measuring Things That Measure You: Complex Epistemological Practices in Science Applied to the Martial Arts

We argue that an epistemology of martial arts is at least as complex as advanced epistemological positions available to the philosophy of science. Part of the complexity is a product of the epistemic relation between the knower and known, or the scientist and the object of inquiry. In science, we measure things without changing them and, sometimes, complex systems can change as we measure them; but, in the epistemology of sport that we are interested in, each measurer is also an object of inquiry. As such, each martial arts practitioner has to use various epistemic tools to measure a responsive system. We proceed in three steps. First, we discuss three epistemological frameworks in the philosophy of science—perspectivism, productivism, and distributed cognition. Second, we develop an epistemology of martial arts that features components from each of those epistemic frameworks. Third, we close the paper with a brief discussion about the unique complexity available to the martial artist, focusing on the responsive measurements that occur between two systems.

Printing Ochre

The discipline of geology was relatively new at the start of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in the late 1800s, but through the organisation of an efficient government bureau and the voice of its printed page, it became a dominant perspective in the way generations of citizens relate to and view the natural world, human and nonhuman, life and nonlife. I choose to position my press in direct opposition to the maintenance of these dualisms. I will argue the critical role of print in facilitating USGS domination of terrestrial beings in a practical sense, yet beyond the methods and reach of publication, I believe the products of the USGS mediate our understanding of and relation to these beings. Instead, design practices can be directed towards changing attitudes and understanding between humans and nonhumans. Monika Bakke argues for the importance of artistic endeavours in addressing our collective futurity: Drawing on both life’s mineral origins and its key role in shaping mineral species, artists are turning to technoscience in order to develop, outside expert circles, better understanding of physical, chemical, and biological environments, not just of the geological past but also those to come in the future. ... Yet, their methodologies are specific to art which offers creative ontological and ethical contributions to public debate. (2017, p. 43) I am developing a design research paradigm relating to ochre as an epistemic tool for human and nonhuman intersubjectivity and ontological reconciliation or reunification between life and nonlife. I model my practice after a simplification of the USGS: to survey (observe, describe, collect) and to report (archive, document, record), with some critical variance in method and outcomes.

Getting a grip on how we talk about computational practices in science in settings of teacher learning

AbstractBackgroundScience teachers' understanding of the roles of computing practices in science frame how they enact scientific computational practices in their teaching and how their students perceive the relationship between computational practices and scientific endeavours.ObjectivesThis critical, integrative review synthesizes teacher learning literature about the role of computational literacy and computing practices in K‐12 science teaching.MethodsWe examined 54 peer‐reviewed articles and analysed the ways the researchers and teacher participants describe the affordances of integrating computational thinking (CT) and other computational practices in science. We characterize how CT and computational practices are framed in relation to scientific learning goals. We identify six primary affordances for integrating computational practices with science that are conveyed to teachers and by teachers, as represented in these studies of teacher learning.Results and ConclusionsThese six perspectives include (1) learning computer science principles, (2) developing CT dispositions, (3) engagement and inclusion in science, (4) taking ownership of science, (5) supporting learning science content, and (6) participating in computational practice as a form of scientific epistemic practice. Our analysis indicates that computational thinking and computational practices are often integrated in science in order to teach something about computing (e.g., Perspective 1), rather than to support learners' scientific work. Only the 29 articles coded for the sixth perspective—that is, in service of epistemic aims in science—demonstrate commitment to students' uses of computational ideas and practices as epistemic tools to participate in the sensemaking work of science.TakeawaysComparison of Perspectives 5 and 6 illustrates the nuance between computational practices in science that reify something students have already “figured out,” rather than those that serve epistemic goals. Perspective 6 encapsulates the deep synergy among (1) the reflexive nature of computing with scientific ideas and (2) computing as a central practice in science and engineering. We contend that a more focused message of computational practices in service of scientific sensemaking goals is necessary if we expect teachers to enact CT and related computational practices in their classrooms.

Metrics in biodiversity conservation and the value-free ideal

This paper examines one aspect of the legacy of the Value-Free Ideal in conservation science: the view that measurements and metrics are value-free epistemic tools detached from ideological, ethical, social, and, generally, non-epistemic considerations. Contrary to this view, I will argue that traditional measurement practices entrenched in conservation are in fact permeated with non-epistemic values. I challenge the received view by revealing three non-epistemic assumptions underlying traditional metrics: (1) a human-environment demarcation, (2) the desirability of a people-free landscape, and (3) the exclusion of cultural diversity from biodiversity. I also draw a connection between arguments for retaining traditional metrics to “scientific colonialism,” exemplified by a fortress conservation model. I conclude by advocating for abandoning the myth of the intrinsic value-freedom of measurement practices and embracing metrics aligned with societal and scientific goals.

Exploring the Complexity of Adaptive Teaching Expertise within Knowledge Generation Environments

The shift towards Next Generation Science Standards represents a paradigmatic change in teaching, transitioning from knowledge transmission to knowledge generation approaches. This reform underscores the complexity of teaching expertise, extending beyond mere knowledge to require a profound comprehension of generative learning environments. In this study, we explore Adaptive Teaching Expertise (AdTex), defining it as a teacher’s capacity characterized by fluidity and reflexiveness in teaching dynamics, rather than just flexibility. Through a complexity framing approach, we delineate three layers of AdTex: the visible actions of teachers, the semi-visible use of epistemic tools such as language, dialogue, and argument, and the tacit orientations towards learning that encompass epistemological, ontological, and axiological dimensions. Our research primarily investigates the intricate relationship between the epistemic tool and orientation layers. Our findings highlight the significance of an interconnected understanding and the impact of philosophical orientations on adaptive teaching practices. A notable contribution of this study is the development of a framework that articulates the belief and knowledge systems crucial for fostering generative learning environments, alongside the introduction of complexity maps to illustrate the interplay among these subsystems.

Detecting your depression with your smartphone? – An ethical analysis of epistemic injustice in passive self-tracking apps

Smartphone apps might offer a low-threshold approach to the detection of mental health conditions, such as depression. Based on the gathering of ‘passive data,’ some apps generate a user’s ‘digital phenotype,’ compare it to those of users with clinically confirmed depression and issue a warning if a depressive episode is likely. These apps can, thus, serve as epistemic tools for affected users. From an ethical perspective, it is crucial to consider epistemic injustice to promote socially responsible innovations within digital mental healthcare. In cases of epistemic injustice, people are wronged specifically as epistemic agents, i.e., agents of the production and distribution of knowledge. We suggest that epistemic agency relies on different resource- and uptake-related preconditions which can be impacted by the functionality of passive self-tracking apps. We consider how this can lead to different forms of epistemic injustice (testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory injustice) and analyze the influence of the apps’ use on epistemic practices on an individual level, in mental healthcare settings, and on the structural level.

“Quantum 3.0”: What Will It Mean for War, Peace, and World Order?

Without quantum mechanics, the nuclear and information revolutions of the twentieth century would not have happened. In this article, we examine how new quantum technologies are coming to reshape war and peace in the twenty-first century. Research and development across quantum computing, communications, and sensing has taken on the dynamic of a “quantum race” between major powers, big tech, and academic institutions. A quantum advantage in these areas could radically reshape political and economic as well as strategic balances of power. In a world already marked by global entanglement, deep uncertainty, and superpositional states of war and peace, quantized modes of understanding need to expand from the natural and physical sciences into the social and political sciences, which remain stuck in causal, linear, and deterministic worldviews inherited from the seventeenth century. We use this article to begin to push beyond the classical limits of traditional international relations to consider new epistemic tools, ethical frameworks, and geopolitical strategies for a world order transformed by Quantum 3.0.

Elementary teachers’ knowledge of using language as an epistemic tool in science classrooms: a case study

ABSTRACT Language is a fundamental tool for learning science. This study highlights the importance of teacher knowledge in utilising language as a tool for knowledge generation in the classrooms. This case study examines elementary teachers’ development of declarative, procedural, and epistemic knowledge related to using language, particularly focusing on how a three-year professional development programme centred around the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach influences the development of these knowledge bases. Our findings indicate that the SWH PD positively influenced the teachers’ knowledge development while there were disparities in knowledge development across individual teachers and knowledge aspects. We further discuss the changes in the teachers’ knowledge and provide implications for future professional development and research regarding language use in science classrooms.

Making Experts: The Boundary Crossing of Knowledge and the Emergence of Relational Expertise in a School Makerspace

Existing research has illuminated the multidimensional nature of knowledge creation in school makerspaces. Yet, limited research exists on the boundary crossing of knowledge in makerspaces and how it can lead to the emergence of relational expertise. Using video records of interactions between 10–13-year-old students and their teachers in a school makerspace, this ethnographic case study applied mediated discourse analysis to investigate the boundary crossing of knowledge and the emergence of relational expertise—i.e., engaging with one’s own expertise, while recognizing, responding to, and building on others’ expertise. The results demonstrate how relational expertise emerged through boundary crossing of knowledge, with increased opportunities for students to identify themselves as experts. The boundary crossing of knowledge was mediated by participating students and teachers as well as material objects, evidencing the social and material nature of relational expertise in the makerspace. By recognizing the makerspace as a boundary object and an epistemic tool, the study enhances current understanding of the boundary crossing of knowledge and the emergence of relational expertise within creative and digitally enhanced learning environments.

Epistemics and Education

By engaging in the epistemic practices of a disciplinary area, students are able to build their capacity for learning and expand their repertoire for reasoning. These epistemic practices are intrinsic to knowledge-producing communities and need to be examined from a sociocultural perspective. In this paper, I describe epistemic practices and the related topics of epistemic and ontological cognition and epistemic tools. I consider the epistemological commitments of the communities constructing knowledge and the spheres of application for epistemics in education. These epistemic domains of education are each illustrated with examples from curriculum design. The value and limitations of the perspective are discussed. In a post-script, I answer common questions about the uses of epistemic practices in education.

Examining teacher transition pathways towards knowledge generation environments

ABSTRACT National standards that centre on the underpinning epistemic practices of the discipline has emphasised the need for teachers to focus much more on knowledge generation approaches to learning. Adopting a complexity perspective, we attempt to understand how teachers shift over time by examining their epistemic orientation to knowledge generation and their understanding of the nature of the epistemic tools of language, dialogue and argument that underpin these environments. Ninety-five teachers participated in a 2-year professional development programme to implement the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach – a recognised generative learning approach. Using a longitudinal latent profile analysis of four waves of data, three different teacher profiles emerged (low, medium and high). Teacher transition to higher profiles was not uniform, took time, and required them to engage with the epistemic systems of orientation and tools. The results highlight that teacher PD needs to be tailored to promote richer transitions to implementing generative learning environments.

The technological physical laboratory to achieve improvements in the quality of learning in epistemic terms

This work aims to identify teaching and learning practices in practical classes of Computer Network Technology courses, which promote the use of the Physical Laboratory (PL) as an epistemic tool to improve learning in epistemic terms. Content analysis of Multimodal Narrations (MN) of three classes by two teachers were used. An MN aggregates and organizes the data collected in the PL environment. Based on the results, we infer that the student and the teacher, under certain conditions, use the physical laboratory as an epistemic tool since the physical interactions prove its use and reuse. In addition, this study allows, in the context of work in the physical laboratory of networks, to identify that the orchestrations of mediation patterns adopted by the teacher influence the students’ epistemic practices and the use of the laboratory as a tool to produce new knowledge. The following contributions are presented: (1) The quality of the students’ epistemic practices is increased if, in the teacher’s dynamics of mediation, the control of the students’ action is reduced; (2) The orchestration of the teacher’s mediation patterns is essential to achieve beneficial results in student learning with the use of artifacts from the physical laboratory of Computer Networks; (3) For the physical laboratory to become an epistemic tool, it is necessary that the mediation standards allow students to develop epistemic practices to a high or very high degree and there is a certain mediation orchestration.