Epistemology mediating conceptual knowledge: Constraints on data accessible from interviews

TL;DR

This paper explores how students' epistemological beliefs influence their reasoning and how researchers' inferences are shaped by these beliefs during interviews about physical phenomena.

Contribution

It highlights the role of epistemological stances in constraining reasoning and shaping data accessibility in qualitative educational research.

Findings

Memorized knowledge limits insight into reasoning processes.

Constructed knowledge reveals detailed reasoning about physical mechanisms.

Epistemological stance affects data interpretation in interviews.

Abstract

A student's epistemological stance (be it knowledge as memorized information, knowledge from authority, or knowledge as invented stuff) may constrain that student from reasoning in productive ways while also shaping the inferences a researcher can make about how that student reasons about a particular phenomenon. We discuss both cases in the context of an individual student interview on charge flow in wires. In the first part of the interview, her focus on memorized knowledge prevents the researcher from learning about her detailed reasoning about current. In the second part of the interview, her focus on constructed knowledge provides the researcher with a picture of her reasoning about the physical mechanisms of charge flow.