Teachers' Epistemic Cognition in the Context of Dialogic Practice: A Question of Calibration?

Abstract

In this article, we argue that teachers' epistemic cognition, in particular their thinking about epistemic aims and reliable processes for achieving those aims, may impact students' understanding of complex, controversial issues. This is because teachers' epistemic cognition may facilitate or constrain their implementation of instruction aiming to engage students in reasoned argumentation through classroom dialogue. We also suggest that teachers may need to reflect on their own epistemic cognition in the context of dialogue-based instruction in order to calibrate it with the aim of deep understanding and the reliable process of reasoned argumentation, which underlie such instruction. Based on our discussion of relevant theoretical frameworks and related empirical evidence, we identify several promising directions for future theoretical and empirical work in this area. In a unique way, this article brings together theoretical frameworks and bodies of empirical work that hitherto have been discussed separately to provide new insights into the potential relationship between teachers' epistemic cognition and students' understanding.

Investigating elementary school students’ text-based argumentation with multiple online information resources

“…Moreover, several researchers have studied argumentative reasoning about multiple perspectives or multiple resources, as displayed in written products, in this age group (e.g., Kuhn & Crowell, 2011;Schwarz, Neuman, Gil, & Ilya, 2003;Wissinger & De La Paz, 2016). In this research, it has been found that without extensive intervention, preferably in the form of collaborative dialogic argumentation about ill-structured problems or controversial issues (Bråten Muis, & Reznitskaya, 2017;Kuhn, 2015Kuhn, , 2018, students tend to disregard counterarguments and rebuttals and fail to integrate opposing arguments to reach a more balanced conclusion. This is consistent with other research focusing on the effects of students' preexisting positions or stances, to which we turn next.…”

Moving Beyond Reflection: Reflexivity and Epistemic Cognition in Teaching and Teacher Education

“…The construct of the epistemic climate (Bendixen & Rule, 2004;Feucht, 2010a;Muis & Duffy, 2013) provides a broader context for the 3R-EC Framework. The educational model for personal epistemology (Feucht, 2010a) describes how the nature of knowledge and processes of knowing emerge from different epistemic entities in REFLECTION AND REFLEXIVITY classroom settings.…”

'why teachers’ beliefs and values are important in p4c research: a victorian perspective

“…Also in the same article by Bråten et al (2017) is evidence that supports the statements mentioned earlier by Haynes and Murris (2011) about teacher difficulty in implementing P4C. Although the article does not specifically reference P4C, it discusses facilitating classroom dialogue related to reasoning and argumentation, which is closely aligned to P4C.…”

“…Although the article does not specifically reference P4C, it discusses facilitating classroom dialogue related to reasoning and argumentation, which is closely aligned to P4C. Bråten et al (2017) say that this "poses a serious challenge for both new and experienced teachers" (p. 256), that more research is required to "explain why teachers still may find it challenging to teach deep understanding by engaging students in argumentation through inquiry dialogue" (p. 257), and that "engaging students in reasoned argumentation through classroom dialogue also poses new challenges to many teachers" (p. 265; cf. (Alverman & Hayes, 1989;Hammer & Schifter, 2001;Juzwik, Sherry, Caughlan, Heintz, & Borsheim-Black, 2012).…”

“…Research into teachers' beliefs and values about P4C is currently insufficient to comprehensively understand teachers' perspectives. Teachers' perspectives are important when implementing policy change to understand how the changes may impact and influence teachers in their everyday practice.Recent research fromBråten, Muis, and Reznitskaya (2017) has also investigated similar issues to how teachers' beliefs and values affect their teacher practice and student performance. Their research focussed on the "extent to which teachers' thinking about knowledge and the process of knowing, termed epistemic…”