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Science learning is thought to be best supported when students are positioned as epistemic agents. Using a case study approach, we explore the experiences of one Black middle school girl and her 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. 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. 

If we are to support students to become epistemic agents in the ways envisioned in reforms, we must acknowledge that classrooms can be spaces of injustice, where instructional efforts can propagate inequitable systems of oppression. In this case study, we describe the epistemic efforts of one Black girl, Jessie, and the rights and privileges afforded or denied to her as she worked with a group of her peers to develop and negotiate a scientific claim. Through examination of video data, transcripts, and student work products, we characterized students’ efforts as about epistemic, rhetorical, and pseudo-argumentation, and how we explored how such efforts invited or constrained Jessie’s epistemic agency. Jessie’s pattern of persistence, which we understand to be her fight to have her rights as a scientific sensemaker acknowledged, surfaced issues of inequity in which Jessie’s ongoing efforts to engage in epistemic argumentation were rejected by her peers. 

Research on students’ engagement suggests that epistemic affect--that is, the feelings and emotions experienced in the epistemic work of making sense of phenomena-- should be recognized as a central component of meaningful disciplinary engagement in science. These feelings and emotions are not tangential by-products, but are essential components of disciplinary engagement. Yet, there is still much to understand about how educators can attend and respond to students’ emotions in ways that support disciplinary engagement in science. To inform these efforts, we follow one high school Biology teacher, Amelia, to answer the following question: How does Amelia attend to and support her students’ emotions in ways that support their disciplinary engagement? Data examined include teacher interviews and classroom recordings of two multi-day science lessons. We found that the teacher worked to support her students’ emotions in moments of uncertainty in at least two ways: (1) by attending to these emotions directly, and (2) by sharing her personal experiences and feelings in engaging in similar activities as a science learner. We describe how Amelia made herself vulnerable to students, describing her own struggles in making sense of phenomena, in turn supporting her students to normalize these experiences as part of doing science. 

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. 

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. 

While conceptual uncertainties position students to engage in the disciplinary practices of science in meaningful ways, that engagement is dependent on how students respond to and manage such uncertainties. The current study examines various epistemological, social, and affective dynamics and how they influence the management of conceptual uncertainties in one group of middle school students in a science classroom. Using multimodal discourse analysis, we found that students’ persistence in disciplinary engagement is not only dependent on the presence and recognition of conceptual uncertainties but also on how students take up and manage challenges along epistemological, social, and affective dimensions. Our work can inform educators interested in supporting students to navigate the complex and multidimensional dynamics of collaborative sensemaking in service of promoting disciplinary engagement in science.