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Science learning is thought to be best supported when students engage in sensemaking about phenomena in ways that mirror the work of scientists, work that requires that students are positioned as epistemic agents who share, discuss, and refine their thinking to make sense of science phenomena. Using a case study approach, we explore the experiences of one Black middle school girl, Jessie’s, epistemic efforts and the ways in which her group members’ responses to her efforts either supported or constrained her epistemic agency during small group work in two argumentation lessons. We view this work through the lenses of epistemic aspects of scientific argumentation, rhetorical argumentation, and pseudo argumentation. Our findings show that Jessie’s epistemic efforts were not often taken up by her peers in ways that support her epistemic agency, findings that have implications for student learning and engagement in terms of the epistemic work we ask students to engage in, and the instructional strategies that support this work.
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Conceptualizing phases of sensemaking as a trajectory for grasping better understanding: Coordinating student scientific uncertainty as a pedagogical resource
Sensemaking is conceptualized as a trajectory to develop better understanding and is advocated as one of the fundamental practices in science education. However, the field is lacking of a framework to view the prolonged process of sensemaking that starts from a raise of uncertainty of a target phenomenon to a grasping of a better understanding of a target phenomenon. The process requires teachers to recognize the role of scientific uncertainty in different phases of sensemaking and develop responsive instructional supports to help students navigate the uncertainties. With an attention on student scientific uncertainty as a potential driver of the trajectory of sensemaking, this study aims to identify different phases of sensemaking that can be developed with students’ scientific uncertainty. This study especially attends to two types of scientific uncertainty—conceptual and epistemic uncertainties. Conceptual uncertainty refers to student struggle of using conceptual understanding (e.g., mastery of content and everyday knowledge) to respond to an encountered phenomenon. Epistemic uncertainty emerges from struggles in using epistemic understanding to generate new ideas. Based on the multiple case study method, we examined sensemaking activities in two Korean science classrooms and one American science classroom and identified three phases of sensemaking: (a) focusing on a driving question related to a target phenomenon, (b) delving into multiple resources to develop plausible explanation(s), and (c) examining the successfulness of the new understanding and concretizing it. Based on the findings, we discuss two emerging themes. First, sensemaking progresses through three distinctive phases driven by students’ dynamically evolving scientific uncertainty. Second, attending to both epistemic and conceptual uncertainties can support developing sensemaking coherent with students’ view.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2100879
- PAR ID:
- 10506289
- Publisher / Repository:
- Research in Science Education
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Research in Science Education
- Volume:
- 54
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0157-244X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 359 to 391
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Sensemaking · Phases of sensemaking · Uncertainty · Scientific uncertainty · Pedagogical resources
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-023-10144-3
