Do Biologists’ Conceptions of Science as a Social Epistemology Align with Critical Contextual Empiricism?

Fuselier, Linda; McFadden, Justin; King, Katherine Ray

doi:10.1007/s11191-019-00084-8

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Here, we argue CCE is especially pertinent to laboratory education given recent calls advocating for biology education to promote both inquiry and inclusivity (Berland et al 2016;Engle 2006). So, while CCE is often cited and tangentially adopted into "consensus" lists characterizing the nature of science (Abd-El-Khalick et al 2008;Allchin 2014;Irzik and Nola 2014;Niaz and Maza 2011), there has been limited, explicit infusion of CCE into nature of science (Fuselier et al 2019) and by our account no studies exploring how it might be operationalized in the laboratory have been conducted.…”

Section: Critical Contextual Empiricismmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…When GTAs withheld agency from students, it inhibited their capacity to envision how their efforts mattered and prevented them from locating themselves in wider community of knowledge producers. The generic community also persisted because GTAs failed to explicitly discuss the community's role in producing objective knowledge; perhaps revealing that they themselves lacked understanding concerning the value of critique and the links among inquiry, argumentation and knowledge production in a scientific community (Fuselier et al, 2019). The inability to foster student agency in the classroom community represents one of the study's most significant results as it highlights the potential usefulness of CCE as a framework for understanding how science literacy might be further operationalized in a non-majors lab.…”

Section: Discouraging Student Epistemic Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Graduate teaching assistants: sharing epistemic agency with non-science majors in the biology laboratory

McFadden

Fuselier

2020

Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res

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In teaching laboratories, scientific reasoning and argumentation are often taught in concert so students are provided opportunities to formulate a more nuanced understanding of science-as-practice and science as a social epistemology. Given recent calls to attend to the social aspects of science, we used Critical Contextual Empiricism, a social epistemology of science, as a framework for examining what features of a scientific community emerge in the introductory biology lab. In a case study of six graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), we explored how GTAs encouraged epistemic agency that encouraged their student's efforts at knowledge construction in a community by collecting multiple data sources (e.g. audio recordings, students written work, focus group interviews) over a four-week sequence. Data analysis strategies were inductive, as a series of initial and focused coding were applied to select exchanges garnered from within the lab. Comparative analysis identified common occurrences across each respective case, which then revealed three overarching themes. We intended for GTAs to readily encourage epistemic agency to their students so insights regarding the social nature of knowledge production could be experienced and discussed. When epistemic shifts did occur, GTAs executed discursive moves targeting students' experimental design practices (e.g. defining the dependent variable). Conversely, student's efforts were also delegitimized as GTAs provided specific directives to follow when challenges emerged for students. Finally, GTAs struggled to create a genuine community that modeled exemplary science-as-practice in the lab. Implications discuss how GTAs likely require more targeted support if community-driven learning is going to be successful in these uniquely challenging settings. Finally, working with non-science majors adds an additional layer of importance here given these lab-based experiences are limited and understanding the community's role in generating scientific knowledge is a key component of being scientifically literate.

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