skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


  • NSF Public Access
  • Search Results
  • Complexities and contradictions in a teacher’s activation of epistemological resources and their consequences for student framing
Title: Complexities and contradictions in a teacher’s activation of epistemological resources and their consequences for student framing
This research employs the lenses of epistemological resources and framing to examine the complexities of one teacher’s efforts to position his middle-school biology students as sensemakers. Through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis, we trace the teacher’s activation of varied epistemological resources and how such resources positioned students’ efforts throughout the lesson. While the launch of tasks was framed as an opportunity for “doing science,” this framing became less stable when the teacher engaged with students in small group work and during the wrap up that were focused on the “right answer.” Specific phases of the lesson served as a context that influenced the epistemological resources activated, helping us understand the varied, dynamic, and sometimes contradictory nature of the teacher’s moves and their consequences on students’ framing of their efforts.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1720587
PAR ID:
10422123
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Annual meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ( , National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting 2021)
    null (Ed.)
    This study explores the epistemological framing dynamics in one middle school biology classroom and how those dynamics shape students’ collaborative sensemaking in science. We trace how the teacher’s instructional moves shaped students’ framing, and the ways in which that framing influenced students’ learning. Our analysis shows that while the teacher framed small group argumentation activities as spaces for students to generate and negotiate ideas, brief but influential moves at the end of the lesson, which emphasized the correct answer, undermined students’ sensemaking and intellectual authority. These findings have implications for the design of teacher education highlighting the need to promote teachers’ awareness of the impact of their instructional moves in terms of how students frame their efforts in the classroom. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ( , 2021 NARST International Meeting)
    null (Ed.)
    Teachers’ sense of “what is taking place with respect to knowledge” drives their perspective on “what works” and “what is likely to work” in their classroom context. Scholarship by Hammer, Russ and many others indicates that this “sense” is very often context-sensitive and may be productively modeled as a local coalescence of small-grained epistemological resources. Presented here is an investigation of the epistemological resources contributing to high school chemistry teachers’ framing of “what works” in their learning environment. Teacher reflections are unpacked and characterized for classroom information noticed and responded to when considering “what worked” during the 2019-2020 school year. Preliminary findings suggest epistemological resources guiding “what worked” often align with a view of knowledge as propagated stuff. Thus, implying that teachers’ reasoning about “what works” is guided by how well knowledge is transferred to students. Also present was evidence that epistemological resources aligned to views of knowledge as fabricated stuff were activated. The perspective that knowledge is inferred or developed from other knowledge, rather than passed from an authority figure, aligns well with reform efforts that emphasize student sensemaking. This study is part of a larger program in which a teacher-researcher collaborative adapts and refines evidence-based curricular materials for an undergraduate chemistry course for use in high school. These materials are structured around scaffolded progressions of big ideas (e.g., energy, electrostatic and bonding interactions) that build in complexity as students make sense of increasingly complex phenomena. Ongoing improvement of transformed materials is dependent upon the ability to initiate and stabilize a sense of “what works” consistent with sensemaking aims. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ( , National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting 2021)
    null (Ed.)
    Recent educational reforms conceptualize science classrooms as spaces where students collaboratively engage in disciplinary practices to construct and evaluate scientific explanations of phenomena. For students to effectively collaborate with each other, they need to develop a shared framing of the nature of the science activity and the expectations surrounding their engagement in it. Such framing does not only pertain to the conceptual work but also involves myriad epistemological, social, and affective dimensions. We conceptualize collaborative disciplinary engagement as the process of aligning the group’s framing along these dimensions and, we argue, student negotiations to achieve this alignment are in part what initiate and sustain collaborative disciplinary engagement in the science classroom. By focusing on student negotiations, this study builds on existing research on group dynamics involved in science learning and contributes nuanced empirical insights on the nature of student negotiations along the conceptual, epistemological, social, and affective dimensions of argumentation in science. Moreover, the findings provide a proof of concept regarding the key role that student negotiations of framing have in driving collaborative disciplinary engagement. The study findings have implications for research and practice to support learners’ productive disciplinary engagement in group work in the science classroom and beyond. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ( , Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)
    null (Ed.)
    This work explores epistemological framing dynamics in a middle school biology classroom and how such dynamics shape student engagement and learning opportunities. Our data sources include student and teacher interviews, classroom videos of three multi-day lessons with a focus on argumentation, and work products collected across one academic year. Our analysis reveals that while the teacher made room for students to generate and negotiate ideas, brief but influential moves emphasizing single correct answers undermined students’ sensemaking. These instructional moves, while only occupying a small amount of instructional time, framed students’ sensemaking efforts not as a process to seek the strongest explanation from a number of possibilities, but rather to wait for the correct explanation to be revealed from an authority. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ( , SITE Interactive Online 2020 Conference)
    null (Ed.)
    The COVID-19 induced school shutdown dramatically decreased students’ hands-on STEM learning opportunities. An NSF-funded program partnering preservice teachers and undergraduate engineering students to teach robotics to fifth graders was adapted to a virtual format via Zoom. A case study intimately explored one team’s experience as they engineered bio-inspired robots over five weekly sessions. Zoom recordings, written reflections, and lesson slides were analyzed to describe how the virtual context shaped the lesson and influenced the preservice teacher’s experience. All three participants successfully engineered a robotic flower indicating hands-on robotics instruction is feasible in an online format. The virtual context increased the preservice teacher’s responsibilities and sense of autonomy, and appeared to positively influence her knowledge and self-efficacy. Despite technical challenges, positive outcomes suggest the approach is worth repeating. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining a virtual robotics lesson co-taught by a preservice teacher and an engineering student. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email