Assistant Professor of Science Education at Brandon University with specific interests in physics education, science education, teacher education, epistemic beliefs, ways of knowing in science, and teacher advocacy.
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examinati... more [This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] Epistemic beliefs about physics are most often investigated using quantitative instruments that reflect binary conceptualizations of those beliefs. This study reports from a qualitative study which used continua to represent the epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge of sixteen Western Canadian, high school physics teachers. Unlike other research, this study did not intend to compare epistemic beliefs to any specific epistemology of science. This article presents a novel, more nuanced means of analyzing interview data to construct profiles to describe epistemic beliefs. The epistemic belief profiles of the physics teachers in this study reflect each of four areas of a literature-derived theoretical framework regarding epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge. These four areas are individuals’ beliefs about the (a) source, (b) content, (c) certainty, and (d) structure of physics knowledge. The use of thematic analysis research methods and reasons for the placement of participants along continua are discussed. Potential classroom applications of this research include prompting discussions about student epistemic beliefs and collecting more nuanced representations of students’ epistemic beliefs to inform teaching.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2018
In 2016 and 2017, the Faculty of Engineering made significant efforts to review the state of all ... more In 2016 and 2017, the Faculty of Engineering made significant efforts to review the state of all programs, and our course learning outcomes and redevelop them as necessary. This review was driven by new Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requirements to report course learning outcomes as part of the Course Information Sheets. This paper looks at the work done in collaboration with the University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) in undertaking this initiative.Generally speaking, the experiences gained through this process were that learning outcomes benefit the instructors, students, and program alignment; regular workshops and one-on-one interactions improved the culture around learning outcomes amongst faculty members; having up-to-date learning outcomes must be a continuing process; learning outcomes are invaluable in ensuring continuity and consistency in course offerings; and, pedagogical/teaching service units are valuable partners in propagating pedagogica...
The intensity of major events often leads us to remember minute details of where we were and what... more The intensity of major events often leads us to remember minute details of where we were and what we were doing when they occurred: what we wore as we watched the towers fall on September 11, 2001; the faces of our classmates when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986; the smell in the air when we lived through a major earthquake, fire, or other personal tragedy. Similarly, faculty, staff, and students will remember the series of moments that led to the closure of their schools and universities as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world--the timeline varies, but on the East Coast of America, this occurred in early March. Unprecedented became the word of the year in our emails and texts and Zoom calls. We adjusted our expectations; we pivoted our planning, instruction, and interactions; and we continue to do so
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2017
ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from... more ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from a traditional lecture format to a blended learning format employing multifaceted teaching and learning components. Key objectives were: to foster Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board Graduate Attribute development, to include the collaborative team project, and to maintain course quality while enabling course management with an enrollment increase to over 1,100 students per academic year. The new course structure focuses on the collaborative team project, as was implemented in Fall 2016. The new structure was observed to have developed student competencies in four Graduate Attributes, maintained course quality, delivered content specific to students’ field-of-study, managed enrollment increases, and improved course quality by maximizing face-to-face student-instructor and peer-to-peer discussions
ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from... more ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from a traditional lecture format to a blended learning format employing multifaceted teaching and learning components. Key objectives were: to foster Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board Graduate Attribute development, to include the collaborative team project, and to maintain course quality while enabling course management with an enrollment increase to over 1,100 students per academic year. The new course structure focuses on the collaborative team project, as was implemented in Fall 2016. The new structure was observed to have developed student competencies in four Graduate Attributes, maintained course quality, delivered content specific to students' field-of-study, managed enrollment increases, and improved course quality by maximizing face-to-face student-instructor and peer-to-peer discussions.
Teachers' beliefs about knowledge in their subject deeply impact their classroom practice. Th... more Teachers' beliefs about knowledge in their subject deeply impact their classroom practice. This study analyzed the epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge held by Saskatchewan high school physics teachers using a newly designed framework of epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge. Results suggest that teachers' epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge are relatively consistent within the areas of certainty and structure of physics knowledge; most participants believed that physics knowledge was tentative and subject to change as well as coherent and connected in its structure. However, participants rarely agreed on the source and content of physics knowledge. As teachers' beliefs likely influence the way a curriculum document is interpreted and implemented, students across the province of Saskatchewan might develop very different understandings of physics knowledge due to variations in teachers' epistemic beliefs. The findings of this study provide insights into...
Abstract: Questions are integral to the classroom experience. Teachers are schooled in posing goo... more Abstract: Questions are integral to the classroom experience. Teachers are schooled in posing good questions, yet, beyond the tendency to focus on teacher’s interpretations of being asked questions, literature on teachers’ experiences of being asked questions by students is thin. This phenomenological study seeks to reveal the lived experience of classroom teachers as they are asked an unexpected, yet relevant, question in their classroom. Using van Manen’s (1990 Using van Manen’s (2014) approach, this study sought to reveal the phenomenological themes unique to this experience for a secondary science or mathematics teacher. Themes uncovered included: being uncertain in front of students, feeling unprepared to answer a question, feeling the pressure of expertise, the frustration of being disrupted while teaching, shifting teacher focus, and embracing vulnerability while teaching. Throughout this study, the teacher experience is divulged to the reader with a focus on the question, “what is it like for a teacher in this moment?” Perhaps, it is in this moment, this created uncertainty, that a teacher truly experiences what it is like to teach as they move beyond the pre-prepared plan for that day.
Common on social media platforms, the hashtag (#) organizes users’ ideas, emotions, and comments.... more Common on social media platforms, the hashtag (#) organizes users’ ideas, emotions, and comments. Originally used to create a searchable platform, the hashtag and its ideology present interesting considerations for changes to education. As students using social media today most certainly use hashtags to converse, hashtag-informed teaching could connect education to students’ worlds instead of forcing students to fit into the pre-defined world of education. Prevalent in post-secondary education, K-12 educators have recently begun to integrate social media tools into their classrooms, but what are the pedagogical implications of the ideologies of these tools? In response, this study asked the following question: “How can the hashtag inform the K-12 classroom?” Using a systematic literature review and thematic analysis, this study analyzed eight articles that discussed the use of hashtags with K-12 students. Findings indicated four themes that could inform the alignment of K-12 classro...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
The CEAB accreditation requirement of graduate attributes and continual improvement processes (GA... more The CEAB accreditation requirement of graduate attributes and continual improvement processes (GACIP) has been a pervasive topic in the annual CEEA conference proceedings since 2010. The proceedings are a rich primary source of work being done in Canadian tertiary institutions. This narrative review of the literature consolidates and discusses the relevant CEEA papers for 2010-2017 in a manner that is useful to leadership and decision-makers at accredited faculties of Engineering nationwide. Four guiding research questions were asked of this literature: (1) What general frameworks are being implemented as accredited faculties of Engineering across Canada approach GACIP?; (2) What are the specific activities and methods of one or more of the GACIP steps?; (3) What are the roles and responsibilities of people involved?; and (4) What perspectives are taken in response to the CEAB accreditation criteria, including concerns, issues, and benefits? A qualitative content analysis was conduc...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2021
Assessment is an essential step in the teaching and learning process. Traditional examination met... more Assessment is an essential step in the teaching and learning process. Traditional examination methods (closed-book, time-constrained, invigilated, multiplechoice) prevail in higher education despite support foralternative approaches wherein students construct knowledge through active, authentic activities. A review ofthe scholarly literature focused on merits and limitations of traditional closed-book exams in-person and in anonline, remote course delivery context, as well as benefits, concerns, and considerations of transitioning to open-book exams at a time of upsurge in online learning. Within the dichotomy of traditional versus alterative exam strategies, the literature is inconclusive on shared matters, including student academic integrity, study habits, anxiety, performance, and long-term retention of information.
This collective autoethnography intends to:(1) bring attention to current power structures that p... more This collective autoethnography intends to:(1) bring attention to current power structures that prevent interaction between graduate students and teacher participants; and, (2) highlight the difficulty in completing graduate research caused by these hegemonic structures. We use Foucault’s (1997) ideas on power and state of domination to examine power structures and norms within school systems in Canada. Autoethnography encourages individuals to engage their experiences in relation to social discourses and analyses. Through collaboration, we were able to combine our experiences to find intersections and power relations between graduate students and the systems they attempt to study. We contend that i n blocking interactions between graduate students and teachers, school systems are able to maintain their state of domination over teachers, discouraging an ethic of truth-telling. T his opposes the ideals of a democratic education, which does not dictate a purpose of education but con...
At a comprehensive, public university in Western Canada, a fourth-year course in risk and safety ... more At a comprehensive, public university in Western Canada, a fourth-year course in risk and safety management was recently made a requirement for all engineering students; depending on their program, students may take this course in their second, third, fourth, or fifth year of their program. As a result of increasing class sizes, this course was shifted from traditional to blended instruction. Since blending and opening this course to students with varying years of undergraduate engineering experience, instructors noted a difference in students’ maturity (e.g., a change in quantity and quality of in-class discussion, questions, participation, student-teacher interactions, and problem solving capabilities) and questioned whether this impacted their interactions with online material. Research examining the impact of blended learning in Engineering has primarily focused on large first-year undergraduate courses; research about blended learning in upper-year engineering courses is sparse...
Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology
Background Blended-learning (BL) radiographic interpretation activities were implemented into the... more Background Blended-learning (BL) radiographic interpretation activities were implemented into the dental hygiene curriculum with the aim of increasing student confidence in interpretation and to address this perceived gap in students’ education. Objective(s) This study assessed senior dental hygiene (DH) students’ self-reported confidence in interpreting dental radiographs after the introduction of a BL module for radiology interpretation. Preliminary results were presented at the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology (AAOMR) meeting in 2017. This abstract further describes the effectiveness of this qualitative approach and the subsequent changes that were implemented into the radiology curriculum. Study Design In order to capture the context, descriptions, and differences of students’ experience and confidence, a qualitative research approach was selected. Data were captured using a semistructured interview process and analyzed using the phenomenographic approach. This method involves researchers coding transcripts of the interviews to determine categories of description (commonalities and their variations) of the participants’ various ways of thinking about and describing their experiences. Sixteen students, 5 months from graduation, consented to participate and were interviewed. Blinded transcripts were analyzed by the research team, and the main themes relating to confidence were extracted and arranged into categories. The categories were coded as to how confident (low, medium or high) each of the students felt, specific to varying contexts and complexities of radiographic interpretation. Quotations were extracted to exemplify each category. Results The BL module had a positive impact on DH students’ confidence in interpretation of radiographic findings. However, when asked about their level of overall confidence in interpreting dental radiographs, the students still did not describe themselves as confident with regard to all potential findings on radiographs at this point in their education. Discussion/Conclusions The phenomenographic approach revealed important themes relating to confidence and provided useful insights on the issues and attitudes affecting the students’ confidence levels that can inform further course and curriculum development.
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examinati... more [This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] Epistemic beliefs about physics are most often investigated using quantitative instruments that reflect binary conceptualizations of those beliefs. This study reports from a qualitative study which used continua to represent the epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge of sixteen Western Canadian, high school physics teachers. Unlike other research, this study did not intend to compare epistemic beliefs to any specific epistemology of science. This article presents a novel, more nuanced means of analyzing interview data to construct profiles to describe epistemic beliefs. The epistemic belief profiles of the physics teachers in this study reflect each of four areas of a literature-derived theoretical framework regarding epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge. These four areas are individuals’ beliefs about the (a) source, (b) content, (c) certainty, and (d) structure of physics knowledge. The use of thematic analysis research methods and reasons for the placement of participants along continua are discussed. Potential classroom applications of this research include prompting discussions about student epistemic beliefs and collecting more nuanced representations of students’ epistemic beliefs to inform teaching.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2018
In 2016 and 2017, the Faculty of Engineering made significant efforts to review the state of all ... more In 2016 and 2017, the Faculty of Engineering made significant efforts to review the state of all programs, and our course learning outcomes and redevelop them as necessary. This review was driven by new Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requirements to report course learning outcomes as part of the Course Information Sheets. This paper looks at the work done in collaboration with the University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) in undertaking this initiative.Generally speaking, the experiences gained through this process were that learning outcomes benefit the instructors, students, and program alignment; regular workshops and one-on-one interactions improved the culture around learning outcomes amongst faculty members; having up-to-date learning outcomes must be a continuing process; learning outcomes are invaluable in ensuring continuity and consistency in course offerings; and, pedagogical/teaching service units are valuable partners in propagating pedagogica...
The intensity of major events often leads us to remember minute details of where we were and what... more The intensity of major events often leads us to remember minute details of where we were and what we were doing when they occurred: what we wore as we watched the towers fall on September 11, 2001; the faces of our classmates when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986; the smell in the air when we lived through a major earthquake, fire, or other personal tragedy. Similarly, faculty, staff, and students will remember the series of moments that led to the closure of their schools and universities as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world--the timeline varies, but on the East Coast of America, this occurred in early March. Unprecedented became the word of the year in our emails and texts and Zoom calls. We adjusted our expectations; we pivoted our planning, instruction, and interactions; and we continue to do so
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2017
ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from... more ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from a traditional lecture format to a blended learning format employing multifaceted teaching and learning components. Key objectives were: to foster Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board Graduate Attribute development, to include the collaborative team project, and to maintain course quality while enabling course management with an enrollment increase to over 1,100 students per academic year. The new course structure focuses on the collaborative team project, as was implemented in Fall 2016. The new structure was observed to have developed student competencies in four Graduate Attributes, maintained course quality, delivered content specific to students’ field-of-study, managed enrollment increases, and improved course quality by maximizing face-to-face student-instructor and peer-to-peer discussions
ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from... more ENGG404 Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta was restructured from a traditional lecture format to a blended learning format employing multifaceted teaching and learning components. Key objectives were: to foster Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board Graduate Attribute development, to include the collaborative team project, and to maintain course quality while enabling course management with an enrollment increase to over 1,100 students per academic year. The new course structure focuses on the collaborative team project, as was implemented in Fall 2016. The new structure was observed to have developed student competencies in four Graduate Attributes, maintained course quality, delivered content specific to students' field-of-study, managed enrollment increases, and improved course quality by maximizing face-to-face student-instructor and peer-to-peer discussions.
Teachers' beliefs about knowledge in their subject deeply impact their classroom practice. Th... more Teachers' beliefs about knowledge in their subject deeply impact their classroom practice. This study analyzed the epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge held by Saskatchewan high school physics teachers using a newly designed framework of epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge. Results suggest that teachers' epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge are relatively consistent within the areas of certainty and structure of physics knowledge; most participants believed that physics knowledge was tentative and subject to change as well as coherent and connected in its structure. However, participants rarely agreed on the source and content of physics knowledge. As teachers' beliefs likely influence the way a curriculum document is interpreted and implemented, students across the province of Saskatchewan might develop very different understandings of physics knowledge due to variations in teachers' epistemic beliefs. The findings of this study provide insights into...
Abstract: Questions are integral to the classroom experience. Teachers are schooled in posing goo... more Abstract: Questions are integral to the classroom experience. Teachers are schooled in posing good questions, yet, beyond the tendency to focus on teacher’s interpretations of being asked questions, literature on teachers’ experiences of being asked questions by students is thin. This phenomenological study seeks to reveal the lived experience of classroom teachers as they are asked an unexpected, yet relevant, question in their classroom. Using van Manen’s (1990 Using van Manen’s (2014) approach, this study sought to reveal the phenomenological themes unique to this experience for a secondary science or mathematics teacher. Themes uncovered included: being uncertain in front of students, feeling unprepared to answer a question, feeling the pressure of expertise, the frustration of being disrupted while teaching, shifting teacher focus, and embracing vulnerability while teaching. Throughout this study, the teacher experience is divulged to the reader with a focus on the question, “what is it like for a teacher in this moment?” Perhaps, it is in this moment, this created uncertainty, that a teacher truly experiences what it is like to teach as they move beyond the pre-prepared plan for that day.
Common on social media platforms, the hashtag (#) organizes users’ ideas, emotions, and comments.... more Common on social media platforms, the hashtag (#) organizes users’ ideas, emotions, and comments. Originally used to create a searchable platform, the hashtag and its ideology present interesting considerations for changes to education. As students using social media today most certainly use hashtags to converse, hashtag-informed teaching could connect education to students’ worlds instead of forcing students to fit into the pre-defined world of education. Prevalent in post-secondary education, K-12 educators have recently begun to integrate social media tools into their classrooms, but what are the pedagogical implications of the ideologies of these tools? In response, this study asked the following question: “How can the hashtag inform the K-12 classroom?” Using a systematic literature review and thematic analysis, this study analyzed eight articles that discussed the use of hashtags with K-12 students. Findings indicated four themes that could inform the alignment of K-12 classro...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
The CEAB accreditation requirement of graduate attributes and continual improvement processes (GA... more The CEAB accreditation requirement of graduate attributes and continual improvement processes (GACIP) has been a pervasive topic in the annual CEEA conference proceedings since 2010. The proceedings are a rich primary source of work being done in Canadian tertiary institutions. This narrative review of the literature consolidates and discusses the relevant CEEA papers for 2010-2017 in a manner that is useful to leadership and decision-makers at accredited faculties of Engineering nationwide. Four guiding research questions were asked of this literature: (1) What general frameworks are being implemented as accredited faculties of Engineering across Canada approach GACIP?; (2) What are the specific activities and methods of one or more of the GACIP steps?; (3) What are the roles and responsibilities of people involved?; and (4) What perspectives are taken in response to the CEAB accreditation criteria, including concerns, issues, and benefits? A qualitative content analysis was conduc...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2021
Assessment is an essential step in the teaching and learning process. Traditional examination met... more Assessment is an essential step in the teaching and learning process. Traditional examination methods (closed-book, time-constrained, invigilated, multiplechoice) prevail in higher education despite support foralternative approaches wherein students construct knowledge through active, authentic activities. A review ofthe scholarly literature focused on merits and limitations of traditional closed-book exams in-person and in anonline, remote course delivery context, as well as benefits, concerns, and considerations of transitioning to open-book exams at a time of upsurge in online learning. Within the dichotomy of traditional versus alterative exam strategies, the literature is inconclusive on shared matters, including student academic integrity, study habits, anxiety, performance, and long-term retention of information.
This collective autoethnography intends to:(1) bring attention to current power structures that p... more This collective autoethnography intends to:(1) bring attention to current power structures that prevent interaction between graduate students and teacher participants; and, (2) highlight the difficulty in completing graduate research caused by these hegemonic structures. We use Foucault’s (1997) ideas on power and state of domination to examine power structures and norms within school systems in Canada. Autoethnography encourages individuals to engage their experiences in relation to social discourses and analyses. Through collaboration, we were able to combine our experiences to find intersections and power relations between graduate students and the systems they attempt to study. We contend that i n blocking interactions between graduate students and teachers, school systems are able to maintain their state of domination over teachers, discouraging an ethic of truth-telling. T his opposes the ideals of a democratic education, which does not dictate a purpose of education but con...
At a comprehensive, public university in Western Canada, a fourth-year course in risk and safety ... more At a comprehensive, public university in Western Canada, a fourth-year course in risk and safety management was recently made a requirement for all engineering students; depending on their program, students may take this course in their second, third, fourth, or fifth year of their program. As a result of increasing class sizes, this course was shifted from traditional to blended instruction. Since blending and opening this course to students with varying years of undergraduate engineering experience, instructors noted a difference in students’ maturity (e.g., a change in quantity and quality of in-class discussion, questions, participation, student-teacher interactions, and problem solving capabilities) and questioned whether this impacted their interactions with online material. Research examining the impact of blended learning in Engineering has primarily focused on large first-year undergraduate courses; research about blended learning in upper-year engineering courses is sparse...
Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology
Background Blended-learning (BL) radiographic interpretation activities were implemented into the... more Background Blended-learning (BL) radiographic interpretation activities were implemented into the dental hygiene curriculum with the aim of increasing student confidence in interpretation and to address this perceived gap in students’ education. Objective(s) This study assessed senior dental hygiene (DH) students’ self-reported confidence in interpreting dental radiographs after the introduction of a BL module for radiology interpretation. Preliminary results were presented at the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology (AAOMR) meeting in 2017. This abstract further describes the effectiveness of this qualitative approach and the subsequent changes that were implemented into the radiology curriculum. Study Design In order to capture the context, descriptions, and differences of students’ experience and confidence, a qualitative research approach was selected. Data were captured using a semistructured interview process and analyzed using the phenomenographic approach. This method involves researchers coding transcripts of the interviews to determine categories of description (commonalities and their variations) of the participants’ various ways of thinking about and describing their experiences. Sixteen students, 5 months from graduation, consented to participate and were interviewed. Blinded transcripts were analyzed by the research team, and the main themes relating to confidence were extracted and arranged into categories. The categories were coded as to how confident (low, medium or high) each of the students felt, specific to varying contexts and complexities of radiographic interpretation. Quotations were extracted to exemplify each category. Results The BL module had a positive impact on DH students’ confidence in interpretation of radiographic findings. However, when asked about their level of overall confidence in interpreting dental radiographs, the students still did not describe themselves as confident with regard to all potential findings on radiographs at this point in their education. Discussion/Conclusions The phenomenographic approach revealed important themes relating to confidence and provided useful insights on the issues and attitudes affecting the students’ confidence levels that can inform further course and curriculum development.
Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2017
Common on social media platforms, the hashtag (#) organizes users’ ideas, emotions, and comments.... more Common on social media platforms, the hashtag (#) organizes users’ ideas, emotions, and comments. Originally used to create a searchable platform (Lu, 2014), the hashtag, and its ideology, presents interesting considerations for changes to education. The hashtag easily connects users with others discussing the same topic, irrespective of location or space; this connection may encourage collaboration between estranged users, perhaps contributing to virtual, decentralized learning spaces. Prevalent in post-secondary education, K-12 educators have recently begun to integrate social media tools into their classrooms; what are the pedagogical implications of the ideologies of these tools? In response, this paper asks: “how can the hashtag inform the K-12 classroom?” Literature and ideals surfacing from the ideology of the hashtag are explored and applied to the K-12 classroom. Findings focus on raising voice, the potential of self-organization, network hetero/homogeneity, and connecting to a space without a common physical space.
Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, 2018
It has been shown in educational literature that teachers’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing, r... more It has been shown in educational literature that teachers’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing, referred to as epistemic beliefs, affect how they approach classroom instruction. However, there has been a lack of study into epistemic belief profiles of science teachers and their relationship to epistemic development in a Western Canadian context. In this study, teachers were recruited from high school science departments in an Alberta, Canada school district. They were asked to respond to a short, online survey about their epistemic beliefs of science. Teacher responses were analyzed based on various demographic information and its relationship to an epistemic development framework. Findings discuss the differences between these demographic groups within particular dimensions of epistemic beliefs developed within the survey, particularly in the certainty of the knowledge dimension. Surprisingly, little difference was found between the two groups in regards to years of experience, conflicting with other literature around epistemic development.
Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association, 2019
Using Foucault’s (1997) conception of power, this collaborative autoethnography highlights and ch... more Using Foucault’s (1997) conception of power, this collaborative autoethnography highlights and challenges hegemonic power structures in school systems currently preventing interaction between teachers and educational research(ers). The authors assert that the prevention of educational research(ers) access to teachers may be indicative of larger issues including a silencing of teacher voice and denial of teacher agency. As the authors interrogate their past complicity with school system structures and explore their frustrations as educational researchers attempting to gain access to teacher participants, they recognize the misrepresentation of the ideal “ethical” teacher and the maintenance of the teacher role as cog enabling the school system as dominator. Perhaps, school system permission is unnecessary for teachers to interact with educational research(ers).
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Prevalent in post-secondary education, K-12 educators have recently begun to integrate social media tools into their classrooms; what are the pedagogical implications of the ideologies of these tools? In response, this paper asks: “how can the hashtag inform the K-12 classroom?” Literature and ideals surfacing from the ideology of the hashtag are explored and applied to the K-12 classroom. Findings focus on raising voice, the potential of self-organization, network hetero/homogeneity, and connecting to a space without a common physical space.
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