Title: Designing for epistemological-relational entanglements in STEM education
Abstract: The “practice turn” in K-12 science education, codified in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), calls for increased student involvement in figuring out key science ideas through participation in science practices. Participating in these practices requires students’ intellectual involvement in developing explanatory science ideas, particularly through talk and interaction. However, while both science education research and professional learning efforts have emphasized the epistemic dimension of students’ participation, the relational nature of these knowledge-building interactions has been underexamined. At the same time, broader educational theories that emphasize the central role of relationality with and among students for learning remain largely absent from the science education literature.
In this talk, I describe a trajectory of research that aims to articulate a science-specific version of striving for relationality in teaching. I first present a collection of paradigmatic case studies from video recordings of middle school classroom interactions that, when taken together, make visible how students’ and teachers’ attention to relational cues is deeply entangled with the support of students’ epistemologies in practice. I then present a series of findings from a design-based research study aiming to align the structural messaging of the features of large undergraduate physics lecture courses to support relationality and productive physics epistemologies in contexts with relatively low instructor interaction. I discuss the implications of these lines of work for supporting science teaching and learning across K-12 and undergraduate contexts.
Bio: Dr. Krist is an Associate Professor of science education in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her work focuses on supporting meaningful student participation in science practices, teacher professional learning, designing for more humanizing forms of science learning. Her current projects focus on bringing together various configurations of community organizations, teachers, families, and scientists to develop science learning experiences that promote communities’ visions for thriving. She received her PhD in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 2016 and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Maryland from 2016-2017 before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2017-2024. Her early career work has been supported by an NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship as well as grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She was recently recognized with NARST’s 2024 Early Career Research Award.
Host: Prof. Ryan Stowe