Experiences in Sense Making: Health Science Students’I-Positioning in an Online Philosophy of Science Course

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative study on the dialogical approach to learning in the context of higher education. The aim was to shed light on the I-Position and multivoicedness in students' identity-building, and to provide empirical substantiation for these theoretical constructs, focusing especially on the connection between personal knowledge and theoretical knowledge.The study explored how health science students' reflections on their work and discipline-related experiences provided resources for making personal sense of and understanding the subject studied. The students undertook an online course on the philosophy of science. To study students' internal and external dialogue in terms of multivoicedness in their sense-making processes a discourse analysis combined with a dialogical approach was applied. The results showed that in reflecting on their experiences in the light of different scientific approaches, the students became engaged in dialogues with different voices, thereby experiencing tensions in their professional positioning. The reasoning tasks gave rise to internal dialogue, involving negotiation between different I-Positions of the self or heterodialogue with the texts. These identity negotiations were manifested in refining, strengthening, and re-constructing professional and scientific I-Positions, and in sharing and constructing a We-Position.

Facilitating awareness of philosophy of science, ethics and communication through manual skills training in undergraduate education

“…One can therefore say it is not only a matter of "what to learn" but also "how to learn". In line with a discipline-specific approach applied to health science students, Arvaja (2014) discusses how the students use reflect on their experiences. Based on a dialogical learning model, the students explored how they consider themselves and their activities in the light of philosophical approaches (Arvaja, 2014).…”

Constructions of the Self as Learner: Perspective-Taking and Positioning in Mathematics, History, and Science Learning

“…These foci complement recent analyses of learning processes in which positioning and identity are implicated, such as articles published in Journal of the Learning Sciences issue 24(1): Sullivan & Wilson (2015) on playful talk and identity exploration, Arvaja (2015) on professional identity exploration, and Langer-Osuna (2015) on positioning, agency, and math identity for African American students.…”

Towards practical reflexivity in online discussion groups

“…After the selected topic was initiated, participants were asked to explore the presented dilemma by providing comments, arguments, questions, alternatives or summaries based both on their experience and any literature they had read. Previous research shows that educational experience needs to be structured through activating tools of inquiry (dialogic provocations, engaging questions, contracting cases or statements and so on) to enable collective reflection (Arvaja 2015;Laurillard 2012;Leppa and Terry 2004). For instance, Dyke (2009) suggests the use of computer-mediated conferencing (e.g.…”

“…One of the issues in the online research is how the teacher instructs the discussion process. In Arvaja's (2015) study of an online university course, the structural design of the student-driven discussions was based on pedagogical guidance. The teacher planned the learning tasks related to 'dialogic provocations' beforehand, using diverse (also contradictory) perspectives from various philosophical texts.…”