“Maybe the Algae was from the Filter”: Maybe and Similar Modifiers as Mediational Tools and Indicators of Uncertainty and Possibility in Children’s Science Talk

Kirch, Susan A.; Siry, Christina

doi:10.1007/s11165-010-9197-y

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…It is that their presenting themselves as confused or uncertain, as a social position in their discourse, supported the emergence and persistence of the class's scientific pursuits. This finding supports earlier work showing that expressions of uncertainty can introduce and communicate new conceptual substance (Kirch & Siry, ), mitigate their peers' absolutist stances (Radinsky, ), and make space for sense‐making (Conlin, ) to support students' doing science. Here, we show that expressions of uncertainty were connected to how students interpret and negotiate what is taking place.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Some work has begun to consider social aspects of uncertainty in classroom dynamics, including how students express and respond to confusion and not‐understanding in environments that historically value certainty and accuracy. Research on classroom discourse has shown how students' use of hedging and other displays of uncertainty can help students communicate and understand disciplinary substance (Kirch & Siry, ), mitigate absolutist stances to allow for collaboration (Radinsky, ), and provide space for trying out new ideas and approaches to sense‐making (Conlin, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Positioning as not‐understanding: The value of showing uncertainty for engaging in science

Watkins

Hammer²,

Radoff

et al. 2017

J Res Sci Teach

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Not understanding is central to scientific work: what scientists do is learn about the natural world, which involves seeking out what they do not know. In classrooms, however, the position of not‐understanding is generally a liability; confusion is an unfortunate condition to resolve as quickly as possible, or to conceal. In this article, we argue that students' public displays of uncertainty or confusion can be pivotal contributions to the classroom dynamics in initiating and sustaining a class's science inquiry. We present this as a central finding from a cross‐case analysis of eight episodes of students' scientific engagement, drawing on literature on framing to show how participants positioned themselves as not‐understanding and how that was consequential for the class's scientific engagement. We show how participants enacted this positioning by asking questions or expressing uncertainty around a phenomenon or model. We then analyze how participants' displays of not‐understanding shaped the conceptual, epistemic, and social aspects of classroom activity. We present two cases in detail: one in which a student's positioning helped initiate the class's scientific engagement and another in which it helped sustain it. We argue that this work motivates considering how to help students learn to embrace and value the role of expressing one's confusion in science.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positioning as not‐understanding: The value of showing uncertainty for engaging in science

Watkins

Hammer²,

Radoff

et al. 2017

J Res Sci Teach

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In such a learning environment, uncertainty reaches a sociocultural level, encompassing controversy, conflict, or difference in interpretation of a phenomenon, raw data, or target issue (Harker, 2015; Leitão, 2000). Kirch and Siry (2012) argued that uncertainty, at a sociocultural level, “originates and exists in dialog and is a product of interaction with others and the world” (p. 263). Radinsky (2008) suggested that “managing this uncertainty is accomplished through discourse in which meanings and goals are co‐constructed, contested, and negotiated, as a range of communicative resources are brought to bear in assembling a representational state for reasoning about the world” (p. 147).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whole‐class discussion provides a discursive environment for students to socially express, articulate, and negotiate their individual uncertainty. For example, Kirch and Siry (2012) explored how second‐graders negotiated, during whole‐class discussion, their uncertainty about the life of mealworms. They found that the students came to clearly know what they were uncertain about, to reflect on the source of the uncertainty, and to know how they could resolve and reduce it.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing deep learning in science classrooms: Tactics to manage epistemic uncertainty during whole‐class discussion

Chen

Techawitthayachinda

2021

J Res Sci Teach

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Science teachers usually view students' uncertainty as a barrier to overcome, a negative experience to be avoided, a deficiency in need of remedy. Building on the theory of deep learning in science as a generative and sensemaking process, the purpose of this design‐based study is to identify tactics for teachers to manage their students' epistemic uncertainty as a pedagogical resource to develop student conceptual understanding during whole‐class discussion. Classroom observations of whole‐class discussion were collected from six teachers' classes ranging from third to eighth grade. A total of 18 whole‐class discussions were collected, transcribed, and analyzed. A storyline talk to manage uncertainty during whole‐class discussion was developed and consisted of three stages: (1) Raise epistemic uncertainty through creating ambiguous conditions; (2) Maintain epistemic uncertainty through preventing immature disclosure and discussing alternative explanations or conflicting ideas; and (3) Reduce epistemic uncertainty through making coherent connections among current uncertainty, prior knowledge, and familiar phenomena. Seven nuanced tactics used by teachers to achieve each stage of uncertainty management were identified. The results suggest that managing uncertainty goes beyond asking questions and problematizing phenomena. When engaging students in storyline‐based whole‐class discussion, teachers should focus on one specific uncertainty and establish a coherent, consistent storyline that raises, maintains, and reduces student uncertainty to horizontally and vertically construct a collective knowledge among students. The horizontal nature occurs within a stage of management, and the vertical nature of a storyline talk is related to moving along from stage to stage. Through the storyline talk focusing on students' epistemic uncertainty, students can truly become agents in the learning process when the lesson is centered on and driven by students' uncertainty.

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“…Then, each interactional unit was reviewed to identify markers of uncertainty within the teacher-student discourse. This included utterances where a student or teacher used modifiers, such as maybe, might, could, possibly, probably, perhaps (Kirch & Siry, 2012). This also included the use of attitudinal metadiscursive markers that indicated bids for further explanation, frustration, and interpretive markers or "hedges" that were used to qualify the strength, generality, or specificity of a claim (e.g., usually, sometimes, kind of, however; Tang, 2017).…”

Section: Discourse Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Leveraging curricular and students' resources to instigate and sustain problematizing

2021

Science Education

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Although existing literature suggests that teachers perceive, mobilize, and leverage resources to support ambitious instruction, less is known about how teachers and students jointly take up resources for co-constructing scientific knowledge. This study examines how teachersThere is a rich body of scholarship in educational policy, mathematics, and most recently, science education that has examined how teachers utilize resources to support and sustain ambitious instruction. Resources are the set of social, material, and intellectual tools that teachers use to support disciplinary learning in classrooms (Cohen et al., 2003;Lampert et al., 2011). Teacher-teacher interactions in professional learning communities or professional development sessions can become resources when they facilitate the exchange of new pedagogical ideas or support teachers use of new curriculum materials (Frank et al., 2004;Horn et al., 2020). Teacher's advice-seeking networks or district-level policies can also become resources when they help teachers build the social capital that is needed to sustain ambitious pedagogies within and across schools (Coburn et al., 2012). Policy documents, curriculum materials, or technological tools can stimulate teachers to re-examine what it means to know and understand a discipline, and bring their new knowledge about disciplinary inquiry into their classroom by experimenting with new discourse routines, texts, and tools (

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“Maybe the Algae was from the Filter”: Maybe and Similar Modifiers as Mediational Tools and Indicators of Uncertainty and Possibility in Children’s Science Talk

Cited by 23 publications

References 13 publications

Positioning as not‐understanding: The value of showing uncertainty for engaging in science

Positioning as not‐understanding: The value of showing uncertainty for engaging in science

Developing deep learning in science classrooms: Tactics to manage epistemic uncertainty during whole‐class discussion

Leveraging curricular and students' resources to instigate and sustain problematizing

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