Epistemological Frame Research Articles

When Home Is the Mouth of a Shark: Navigating the Academy as the Self in Black and Brown Skin

As transnational women living in Jamaica and South Africa, we came together in Brazil to employ collaborative autoethnography to deconstruct and make sense of our experiences in academia. In this article, we compare our identities in the academy with that of refugees and juxtapose Warsan Shire’s poem Home, where she describes the forced reasons why people leave their country of birth and the psycho-emotional labor of the refugee crisis. Borrowing from an autoethnographic ontology, we recognize ourselves as the unit of measure, and the concerted effort to continuously interrogate the self and each other’s lived experiences. This article challenges the colonial epistemologies of knowing and knowledge as we interweave our individual narratives throughout the article, grappling with our search for an elusive home in the academy, and a sense of belonging within postcolonial, onto epistemological frames of the academy.

Harmonious or disjointed?: Epistemological framing and its role in an integrated science and engineering activity

AbstractScience reforms in national K‐12 science education standards position engineering as a discipline that can be productively integrated into science curricula. This integrated approach presents science as foundational to engineering and engineering as a tool to contextualize and reinforce science ideas such that students come to develop understandings about the natural and engineered worlds. To better understand if integrating engineering into science classrooms achieves the promise described in national reforms, we explored how elementary school students came to understand what is expected of them when asked to engage in an integrated science and engineering unit and whether their understandings represent epistemologically productive ways of integrating the doing of science and engineering. For this purpose, we examined video recordings, transcripts, and classroom artifacts of tasks from a 9‐week unit contextualized in an engineering challenge in which students engaged in activities to explore, design, and build simple circuits devices to develop explanations of energy movement in a circuit. Our findings suggest that an integrated approach may be more problematic than promising; while at times students took up integrated tasks as opportunities to wonder about, question, and explore materials that sparked their interest, their framing of the tasks did not align with the vision for integration called for in current reform documents.

Discorsi pubblici sul lavoro: fonti narrative dall’alto valore pedagogico-sociale

Is there a work and organizations’ethnography and anthropology that has passed and passes through words and discourses? Is it possible to extract from the analysis of public discourse about work the narration to outline an idea of work not only set up and carried out but also told, imagined, desired and above all educating? Printed paper, educational, scientific and political production can be considered very important sources to build a discourse about work and “popular pedagogy” and common sense connected to it in the sense of narration as historical and metabletic tool that contributes to individual and collective development. Words and speeches are epistemological frames and glances at the world have a connection with things. The word is not only a sign, it is also an image. The word brings, somewhat enigmatic, a connection with what it represents. Words therefore also have the power to produce transformations, to change the world, the way they see it and to represent it. Foucault had also written that words are fundamental codes behind a culture and influence experience and thought. Words and speeches about work, spoken and written, then, are a meta-narrative and can help to draw and dissect an unprecedented, alternative, parallel story. Also, a history of pedagogy of work is full of theories, models, methods but also of stories, of speeches of intellectuals, trade unionists, scholars, prominent figures, entrepreneurs who have dedicated their lives to the cause of a dignified and good work. For example, the speeches of Vittorio, Adriano Olivetti, the encyclicals of the different popes that have succeeded each other in history, the many aphorisms and speeches made by great entrepreneurs such as Cucinelli, Steve Jobs etc. that, in different ways, have helped to build an idea of work that - over the centuries - has profoundly changed. Starting from these reflections, the contribution aims to highlight the baggage of intangible assets and the implicit educational deposited in some exemplary narrative passages on the work that have helped to build collective stories and produce a shared sense, to give a specific identity to work and to propose its widespread representation with a high pedagogical-social value.

New Epistemological Perspectives on Quantitative Methods: An Example Using Topological Data Analysis

<strong>Background:</strong> Education researchers use quantitative methodologies to examine generalizable correlational trends or causal mechanisms in phenomena or behaviors. These methodologies stem from (post)positivist epistemologies and often rely on statistical methods that use the means of groups or categories to determine significant results. The results can often essentialize findings to all members of a group as truth knowable within some quantifiable error. Additionally, the attitudes and beliefs of the majority (i.e., in engineering, White cis men) often dominate conclusions drawn and underemphasizes responses from minoritized individuals. In recent years, engineering education research has pursued more epistemologically and methodologically diverse perspectives. However, quantitative methodologies remain relatively fixed in their fundamental epistemological framings, goals, and practices. <strong>Purpose:</strong> In this theory paper, we discuss the epistemic groundings of traditional quantitative methods and describe an opportunity for new quantitative methods that expand the possible ways of framing and conducting quantitative research—person-centered analyses. This article invites readers to re-examine quantitative research methods. <strong>Scope:</strong> This article discusses the challenges and opportunities of novel quantitative methods in engineering education, particularly in the limited epistemic framings associated with traditional statistical methods. The affordances of person-centered analyses within different epistemological paradigms and research methods are considered. Then, we provide an example of a person-centered method, topological data analysis (TDA), to illustrate the unique insights that can be gained from person-centered analyses. TDA is a statistical method that maps the underlying structure of highly dimensional data. <strong>Discussion/Conclusions:</strong> This article advances the discussion of quantitative methodologies and methods in engineering education research to offer new epistemological approaches. Considering the foundational epistemic framings of quantitative research can expand the kinds of questions that can be asked and answered. These new approaches offer ways to conduct more interpretive and inclusive quantitative research.

Pragmatism as Transcendental Philosophy, Part 2: Peirce on God and Personality

Pragmatism as Transcendental Philosophy, Part 2: Peirce on God and Personality

La psychanalyse et la neuro-gastroentérologie au chevet des troubles fonctionnels digestifs

BackgroundFunctional bowel disorders (FBD) are a frequent pathology whose etiopathogeny defies a simple explanation. Neurogastroenterology designates the brain-intestine couple as a functional unit made up of two interacting somatic poles; and psychoanalysis focuses its attention on the emergence of the drive in the soma and on the circulation of psychic energy between the somatic and psychic poles. Each of these two epistemological frames of reference is the basis of partial explanatory approaches for FBD, but little effort has been devoted to articulate them in theory and practice. Objectives and methodThe present work provides an explanatory model of FBD that would integrate elements from both somatic and psychoanalytic referential systems. It is based on numerous examples derived from the experience acquired in a gastroenterological clinical practice augmented by psychoanalytical listening. ResultsThe psyche exerts an influence on intestinal functioning according to several modalities, including conversion hysteria and anxiety. Conversely, somatic digestive perceptions retroact not only on the brain in the somatic and adaptive referential, but on the psyche in the form of conscious and unconscious presentations that appeal to infantile sexual theories and archaic fears. The gut and the psyche can generate functional symptoms through a phenomenon of positive feedback. ConclusionI propose a model that adopts the pattern of cyclic bidirectional brain-intestine interaction derived from neuro-gastroenterology, enriched by the addition of the modalities of a cyclic psyche-intestine interaction. This organizational model allows us to understand how psychic (conscious or unconscious) and somatic (lesional or not) elements contribute to the genesis of functional symptoms.

The epistemological bridge as a framework to guide teachers to design culturally inclusive practices

ABSTRACT In culturally diverse classrooms, science teachers may plan and enact didactic practices that do not include traditional epistemologies. My purpose is to develop an approach, to support teachers in designing epistemologically inclusive didactic practices. For this, I propose the Epistemological Bridge frame [EB; Castaño, N. (2009). Construcción Social de Universidad para la Inclusión: la formación de maestros con pertinencia y en contexto, desde una perspectiva intercultural [University social construction for Inclusion: Teacher education with relevance and in context from an intercultural perspective] based on epistemological pluralism [Cobern, W., & Loving, C. (2001). Defining “science” in a multicultural world: Implications for science education. Science Education, 85, 50–67. https://doi/10.1002/1098-237X(200101)85:1%3C50::AID-SCE5%3E3.0.CO;2-G] and interculturality [Aikenhead, G. S., & Michell, H. (2011). Bridging cultures: Indigenous and scientific ways of knowing nature. Pearson Education]. Through the EB, teachers might guide students to participate in the domain of every epistemology and to produce explanations on the same phenomenon using each epistemology. I make the EB operational by formulating the principles of epistemological independence and epistemological similarity. These principles describe features of inclusive didactic practices. Finally, I discuss practical aspects that underlie the use of EB by teachers. Thus, I address the issue of access to traditional epistemologies, the criteria for choosing traditional content, and the ontological commitments of students].

SILVIO ROMERO E A POESIA ÉPICA

The theoretical contributions of Brazilian literary critic Silvio Romero are essential sources of study to researchers who wish to comprehend the evolution of the theoretical treatment given to the epic genre in Brazil during the XIX century. In this article the locus of his reflections on the epic genre were mapped. The books and articles where the critic wrote on the topic, as well as their respective periods in time were specified. The critic’s opinion on the production of epopees in Brazil was described. A definition of epic poem as well as of poetry in general was identified. The tension between epic and lyrical was explored. Simultaneously the epistemological frame in which the critic’s discourse is placed was outlined. Finally this research aimed to formulate a systematic metadiscourse which would encompass all the previous points on Romero’s theoretical discourse on epic gender during the XIX century in Brazil.

What’s Love Got to Do With It? Toward a Theory of Benevolent Whiteness in Education

In this theoretical essay, I argue that the contemporary over-disciplining of Black and Native youth can best be understood through understanding the culturally violent roots of the heroic white woman teacher. I use analytical tools from settler colonial theory and feminist of color theory to inform my epistemological framing of power as a site of multidimensionality existing across space and depth (Sandoval, Methodology of the oppressed, vol 18, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013) and comprised of mutually constructed systems of oppression (Collins, Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, Routledge, London, 2002). Revisioning the “discipline gap” from this vantage point moves us away from culturally focused or individualized deficit thinking aimed at communities of color and toward understanding the structures and histories foundational to our contemporary school systems, and the individuals who have informed and upheld those structures for nearly 200 years. I close with a discussion of immediate practical changes we can implement in classrooms, as well as a perhaps less practical call for reimagining decolonial futurities for teaching and schooling, both taking into account that the current U.S. teaching force and enrollees in credential programs are majority white and female whereas the student population is not.

Human Rights, Transhumanism and Posthumanisim: A human technological Enchancement.

This research aims to analyze from a legal perspective and various epistemological frames, a paper refered to human rights, in relation to transhumanism and posthumanism. It will be taken as the central axis, the biotechnology, being more than an object but as an extension of the human body, in order to demonstrate cases of fundamental rights violations of those people who improve themselves technologically, whether by balancing a deficit to improve physical or mental abilities, in harmony with the the progressiveness of rights.

Decolonization of English Literature Studies in Iran

Iran has never been formally colonized; however, its history corroborates that colonial ideologies and the western imperial powers’ political, economic, and educational influences have been enforced in the country, especially in the Qajar and Pahlavi eras. These western influences and involvements turned Iran into a dependent country. Although the 1979 Islamic Republic put an end to this formal western involvement, some structures of dependency on the West lingered well into the Islamic Republic. One such dependency is academic dependency in which universities in Iran follow the curricula introduced by the colonial powers. Ayatollah Khomeini’s cultural revolution speech in 1980, in which he criticized the state of dependency of the Iranian universities and highlighted the need to reconstruct and reform the universities, prompted a wide-ranging educational reassessment and reorganization. Despite this and scholars’ decades-long efforts in ending this academic dependency, programmes such as English literature studies promote the imperial values and visons. Whereas world literature is gaining momentum around the world, the English literature programmes in Iranian universities are still celebrating the Anglo-American canonical literature. Anchored within such discourse, this essay questions the lingering of this imperialistic legacy, presents ways for decolonization of English literature in Iranian universities, and proposes an approach to include literature from the four corners of the world to erase the hierarchical order. Drawing very briefly on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s criteria for selection of literary texts in world literature, this essay adds two more criteria and introduces examples of literary works that deserve to be included in the curriculum. This produces a ‘new epistemological frame’ that not only gives legitimacy and visibility to formerly neglected and marginalized texts, but also ceases the mindless celebration of Anglo-American canonical literature. This new curriculum that aims for a ‘geopolitical reconfiguration’ of English literature accommodates both western and non-western literatures.

Subjection and Resistance: Landscapes, Gardens, Myths and Vestigial Presences in Olive Senior's Gardening in the Tropics

This paper argues that a selection of Caribbean writers has engaged an aesthetic that spotlights the idea of a living or divine landscape through a deployment of folkloric, mythological, magical or spiritual epistemological frames. This aesthetic foregrounds the expansive possibilities of nature and other life forms in the wake of empire and global modernity. By an engagement with these tools, the creative writer deconstructs the limits of colonial ecological damage and modern-day agricultural devastation, while simultaneously affirming the Caribbean landscape as an active and creative agent within articulations of community and belonging. Through a blend of eco-criticism as examined by Elizabeth DeLoughrey and Wilson Harris's formulations of the "living landscapes" and Caribbean mythologies, this essay seeks to interrogate the manner in which Caribbean poet, Olive Senior, consciously deploys the literary imagination as a platform to plant seeds of reform and activism in the trail of environmental destruction. Senior accomplishes this through notions of mythic time and space that are unfettered by monolithic ideologies and linearity. This signposts an effort to posit a reliance on a spirit-infused universe—a deeply felt ideology which is pivotal to acts of environmental healing and societal recuperation.

Revealing and Revelling in the Floods on Country: Memory Poles within Toonooba

Revealing and Revelling in the Floods on Country: Memory Poles within Toonooba

Student epistemological framing on paper-based assessments

Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments may provide information about what faculty and/or researchers think it means to know and do physics, i.e. their epistemologies. Using data from students completing assessment questions during one-on-one think aloud interviews, we explore how assessment features impact (or did not impact) student engagement with the assessment problems. We analyze video recordings and transcripts to infer the epistemological framings and resources students use while completing introductory-level physics problems. Students' framings tended to be fairly stable, but when shifts did occur - they were triggered by a shift in resource, which can be activated by assessment feature. This work extends existing work on epistemological framing into the realm of assessment and allows us to consider the effects of assessments on our students' understanding of physics teaching and learning.

Students as epistemological agents: claiming life experience as real knowledge in health professional education

University teachers’ practices of resistance against dominant epistemological norms have been described in recent critical higher education literature, but comparatively little work has explored students’ practices of intellectual resistance and negotiation within the university. As part of a larger study on students’ experiences of study-life overlap in health professional education, this paper examines students’ responses when their knowledge arising from life experience was marginalised. Students used five epistemological strategies to respond to this side-lining of lived knowledge, i.e. building the case that lived knowledge is ‘academic’, switching to institutionally recognisable language, considering epistemological framing when responding to discrimination or assumptions, sustaining friendships as epistemological work and seeking out settings where their lived experience was valued. This paper argues for the need to understand students as active epistemological agents within the university. It adds to existing critical scholarship on staff practices of intellectual resistance by considering students’ practices as part of the academic community.

Indigeneity as a transnational battlefield: disputes over meanings, spaces and peoples

ABSTRACT This article argues that indigeneity is a battlefield related to political economy, a transnational political space where multiple subjects contest and negotiate the management of lives and territories. Through the narratives of the Coca indigenous community of Mezcala (Mexico) – caught up in diasporic flows – I illustrate how a transnational community navigates its indigeneity within the workings of neoliberal governance via migration and tourism. On the one hand, I explore how the rhetorics of ‘development’ and mestizaje act together as an epistemological frame shaping mentalities within communities to favour power relations and influencing the construction and use of indigeneity. On the other hand, I identify how indigenous peoples go beyond the strategic use of their indigeneity and dignify it to strengthen their communities and advance political projects. I envision that by reaching its diaspora, it might be possible to defy capitalist/colonialist relations, logics, and plans.

Living Histories, Local Stories, of Race, Place, and Education: A Qualitative Study From the CSRA Oral History Project in Readers Theater

This readers theater presentation of research undertaken through the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) Oral History Project explores the curricular contours of race and place as articulated through the collected stories of inhabitants of the CSRA who have made educational contributions there, of segregation, desegregation, and their enduring influence. Via heretofore undocumented accounts, we seek to illumine something of the educational necessities and narratives—deferred and hoped-for dreams, accomplishments, and curricular possibilities—their stories articulate. In our manner of presentation, we pursue alternative epistemological frames and forms of expression, embracing a multitude of ways of knowing and coming to know in research and education.

Nussbaum, Anger, and Racial Justice: On the Epistemological and Eschatological Limitations of White Liberalism

ABSTRACT Martha Nussbaum argues that anger is a threat to democratic institutions, but she also concedes that a nonviolent version of anger remains necessary for motivating reform. This reversal from the more sanguine position she previously held invites a broader investigation into the social and intellectual conditions that make liberal rejections of anger and exhortations to civility seem plausible in the contemporary U.S. political context. The author suggests that her argument relies upon a white epistemological frame, which suppresses attentiveness to racial struggle as a political context in which the ethical significance of anger may be understood. Moreover, a particular cultural product of this frame, the liberal narrative of social progress, functions as a secular eschatology in her argument, generating a false hope in the reliability of systems and in gradual institutional reform as guarantees of racial justice. The author draws upon apocalyptic traditions to address this eschatological problem.

Waves of Information, Suffocated Understanding, and the Place for Narrative Inquiry in the “Post-Truth” Era

Psychologists working in the field of narrative inquiry draw from multiple scholarly traditions, ground their work in differing epistemological positions, embrace a plurality of interpretive frameworks, and approach analysis from various perspectival orientations. Thus, in this article I do not present a monological story about narrative truth; rather I explore a range of ways that notions of veridicality are addressed and negotiated by narrative psychologists. In exploring notions of Truth, truths, facts, meanings, and understanding, I present some of the epistemological frames, conceptual tools, and analytic approaches employed by narrative researchers, and in so doing, illuminate how they come to, articulate, and justify their claims. These practices, I argue, generally reflect a suspicion of “the Truth” of a monological story, an appreciation of the relationship between truth and method, and an acknowledgement of the great responsibility involved in interpreting the story of another. Accordingly, I argue that practitioners of narrative inquiry in psychology generally take issues of veridicality more seriously than those who have historically sought certainty and claimed “Truth,” and that the field has much to offer in the “post-truth” era – a time of abundant information and minimal understanding.

Normativity, social change, and the epistemological framing of culture.

The authors deploy an epistemic framework to represent culture and model the acquisition of cultural behavior. Yet, the framing inherits familiar problems with explaining the acquisition of norms. Such problems are conspicuous with regard to human societies where norms are ubiquitous. This creates a new difficulty for the authors in explaining change to mutually exclusive organizational structures of human life.