A Call to Explicitly Name and Account for Power in Epistemic Agency Research

Abstract

For decades, science and engineering education researchers in the United States have sought to understand ways to realize more equitable, student-centered learning experiences within K-12 classrooms. One important line of research aligned to this aim has centered on opportunities for developing and supporting students’ epistemic agency, focusing on shifting epistemic agency away from residing solely in the teacher toward instead being enacted across the collaborative classroom community. Yet, despite extant research around this area of inquiry, little is known about how students negotiate epistemic agency amongst themselves. As research begins to delve into these critical student dynamics, we argue that the field must explicitly account for the varied powered relations ingrained within school spaces and how those relations impact students’ learning experiences. We then offer an illustrative example of student data to share a possible direction for critical analysis that could offer insight into such powered relations and how they play out and impact students’ epistemic agency, specifically through the concept of epistemic exclusion. Finally, we conclude with a call to action for educators and researchers.