The co-construction of epistemological framing in clinical interviews and implications for research in science education

Science educators demonstrated that students' framings - their expectations of what is going on - influence how they participate, and what science knowledge they reveal, in clinical interviews. This paper complements research that explores how interviewers are likely to affect student framings,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of science education Vol. 41; no. 12; pp. 1579 - 1599
Main Authors Shaban, Yara, Wilkerson, Michelle Hoda
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Routledge 13.08.2019
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Clinical interviews
Epistemological framing
Epistemology
Expectation
Frame analysis
Interaction
Interviews
Middle School Students
Positioning
Positioning theory
Public Schools
Science Education
Science Instruction
Science Process Skills
Scientific Concepts
Student Behavior
Students
Water
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Summary:Science educators demonstrated that students' framings - their expectations of what is going on - influence how they participate, and what science knowledge they reveal, in clinical interviews. This paper complements research that explores how interviewers are likely to affect student framings, by exploring how subtler interactions can lead students to change their framings, and thus their behaviour, in unexpected ways. We present data from interviews with two students, Sarah and Omar, as they reasoned about evaporation and condensation. Sarah demonstrated spontaneous changes in how she participated over the course of the interview, whereas Omar demonstrated subtler changes that existing methods may not capture. These changes affected the nature of scientific knowledge and reasoning demonstrated by each participant, but could not be fully explained by response to interviewer behaviour. We use the constructs of footing and positioning theory to examine how students participated during the interviews, and how this affected the ways they demonstrated knowledge and reasoning about the interview topic. In both cases, footing and positioning theory allowed us to better understand the dynamic ways students engage in the interview. This paper contributes new methods for analysing complex interview dynamics, and suggests situations for which such methods are necessary.
ISSN:0950-0693
1464-5289
DOI:10.1080/09500693.2019.1620972