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1. Students’ implicit epistemologies when working at the intersection of engineering and the arts

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-021-00289-w  

   Cruz, Joshua; Bruhis, Noa; Kellam, Nadia; Jayasuriya, Suren (December 2021, International Journal of STEM Education)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Background This paper explores the epistemologies and discourse of undergraduate students at the transdisciplinary intersection of engineering and the arts. Our research questions focus on the kinds of knowledge that students value, use, and identify within an interdisciplinary digital media program, as well as how they talk about using these epistemologies while navigating this transdisciplinary intersection. Six interviews were conducted with students pursuing a semester-long senior capstone project in the digital culture undergraduate degree program in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University that emphasizes the intersection between arts, media, and engineering. Results Using deductive coding followed by discourse analysis, a variety of student epistemologies including positivism, constructionism, and pragmatism were observed. “Border epistemologies” are introduced as a way to think and/or construct knowledge with differing value across disciplines. Further, discourse analysis highlighted students’ identifications with being either an artist or an engineer and revealed linguistic choice in how students use knowledge and problem-solve in these situations. Conclusions Students in a digital media program use fluid, changing epistemological viewpoints when working on their projects, partly driven by orientations with arts and/or engineering. The findings from this study can lead to implications for the design and teaching of transdisciplinary capstones in the future. 

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2. Beliefs versus resources: a tale of two models of epistemology

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D2RP00290F  

   DeGlopper, Kimberly S.; Russ, Rosemary S.; Sutar, Prayas K.; Stowe, Ryan L. (April 2023, Chemistry Education Research and Practice)

   Compelling evidence, from multiple levels of schooling, suggests that teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about knowledge, knowing, and learning ( i.e. , epistemologies) play a strong role in shaping their approaches to teaching and learning. Given the importance of epistemologies in science teaching, we as researchers must pay careful attention to how we model them in our work. That is, we must work to explicitly and cogently develop theoretical models of epistemology that account for the learning phenomena we observe in classrooms and other settings. Here, we use interpretation of instructor interview data to explore the constraints and affordances of two models of epistemology common in chemistry and science education scholarship: epistemological beliefs and epistemological resources. Epistemological beliefs are typically assumed to be stable across time and place and to lie somewhere on a continuum from “instructor-centered” (worse) to “student-centered” (better). By contrast, a resources model of epistemology contends that one's view on knowledge and knowing is compiled in-the-moment from small-grain units of cognition called resources . Thus, one's epistemology may change one moment to the next. Further, the resources model explicitly rejects the notion that there is one “best” epistemology, instead positing that different epistemologies are useful in different contexts. Using both epistemological models to infer instructors’ epistemologies from dialogue about their approaches to teaching and learning, we demonstrate that how one models epistemology impacts the kind of analyses possible as well as reasonable implications for supporting instructor learning. Adoption of a beliefs model enables claims about which instructors have “better” or “worse” beliefs and suggests the value of interventions aimed at shifting toward “better” beliefs. By contrast, modeling epistemology as in situ activation of resources enables us to explain observed instability in instructors’ views on knowing and learning, surface and describe potentially productive epistemological resources, and consider instructor learning as refining valuable intuition rather than “fixing” “wrong beliefs”. 

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3. Modeling Student Negotiation of Assessment‐Related Epistemological Messages in a College Science Course

   https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21914  

   Schwarz, Cara E; DeGlopper, Kimberly S; Greco, Nicole C; Russ, Rosemary S; Stowe, Ryan L (March 2025, Science Education)

   To prepare students to use science knowledge in their later personal or professional lives, we must attend to what they believe it means to know and learn science (i.e., epistemology). Unfortunately, we have little understanding of how students' epistemologies shift and are stabilized as they navigate their science courses. Researchers have made intuitive arguments that many microscale epistemological messages sum over time to give rise to macro‐scale understandings of knowing and learning, but we have no theoretical model for how this sum unfolds. Here, we begin to build such a theoretical model. To do so, we focus on assessments and related materials in a college chemistry course as potentially consequential sources of messages about valued knowledge products and processes. We then elicited students' evolving understandings of assessment‐related epistemological messages in several one‐on‐one interviews conducted throughout the semester. Analysis of how three students experienced, negotiated, and responded to assessment‐related messages showed that interactions with the course system stabilized a consistent, well‐resolved picture of the ways of knowing and learning that counted in the focal course. Specifically, good knowledge must have specific authority‐mandated features and knowledge is justified primarily via alignment with an instructor‐authored key. Students found utility in different (reliable) processes for achieving the aim of authorized knowledge, and some of these differences were maintained throughout the semester. Implications for modeling students' experience with course‐embedded epistemological messages over time and how this work might inform practice are discussed. 

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4. Alignment between student epistemological views and experiences with course structures in introductory physics: A case study

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2023.pr.Ouellette  

   Ouellette, Ellen; Lewsirirat, Sarat; Sebastian, Ryan Biju; Lundsgaard, Morten; Krist, Christina; Kuo, Eric (October 2023, Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference)

   Jones, Dyan; Ryan, Qing X.; Pawl, Andrew (Ed.)

   Designing physics courses that support students' activation and development of expert-like physics epistemologies is a significant goal of Physics Education Research. However, very little research has focused on how physics students' interactions with course structures resonate with different epistemological views. As part of a course redesign effort to increase student success in introductory physics, we interviewed introductory physics students about their experiences with course structures and their learning and belonging beliefs. We present here a case from this broader data corpus in which a student, Robyn, discusses his epistemological views of physics problem solving and his experiences with physics lectures, office hours, and discussion sections. We find that Robyn's physics epistemology manifests consistently across his interactions with each of these different course structures, suggesting a possible resonance between students' beliefs and their experiences with course structures and the value of further investigation into the potential merits of comprehensive course design. 

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5. From Data Activism to Activism in a Time of Data-Centrism: Affirming Epistemological Heterogeneity in Social Movements

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3710911  

   Andrus, McKane; Ghoshal, Sucheta; Dasgupta, Sayamindu (May 2025, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   In this paper, we seek to understand how grassroots activists, operating within the hegemony of data-centrism, are often disempowered by data even as they appropriate it towards their own ends. We posit that the shift towards data-driven governance and organizing, by elevating a particular epistemology, can pave over other ways of knowing that are central to social movement practices. Building on Muravyov's [102] concept of ''epistemological ambiguity,'' we demonstrate how data-focused activism requires complex navigations between data-based epistemologies and the heterogeneous, experiential, and relational epistemologies that characterize social movements. Through three case studies (two drawn from existing literature and the third being an original analysis), we provide an analytical model of how generative epistemological refusals can support more value-aligned navigations of epistemological ambiguity that resist data-centrism. Finally, we suggest how these findings can inform pedagogy, research, and technology design to support communities navigating datafied political arenas. 

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