Informed reflexivity: Enacting epistemic virtue Presentation (Faculty180)
Overview
cited authors
- Lunn, Jo; Bromme, Rainer; Feucht, Florian C.; Kienhues, Dorothe; Weinstock, Michael
description
- SUMMARY In this paper, we explore the usefulness of 'reflexivity' as a concept for describing and understanding the epistemic virtue of educational endeavors. 'Reflexivity' is sometimes implicitly, often explicitly a goal in the designing of learning environments and of curricula, for students as well as for teachers, in formal as well as informal learning settings. Reflexive thinking is the type of reasoning that the promotion of epistemic cognition should produce among students across domains. The paper will present analyses of how reflexive thinking appears in four domains with particular reference to educational efforts in these domains. The domains represent academic disciplines (science and history) and activities that cross disciplines (writing and critical thinking). Casting reflexive thinking as consideration of possible domain practices and their meaning in relation to domain-appropriate epistemic aims and reliable process is consistent with viewing epistemic cognition as a process and sensitive toward domain. However, also finding reflexive thinking as an epistemic virtue across domains suggests the value of a teacher education focus on reflexivity. Student teachers should learn to develop their teaching through the steps of the reflexivity cycle with specific attention to their practices around epistemic cognition. They should also learn to foster reflexivity in their students. Following the analyses of the domains, the paper will consider how interventions might look in teacher education that both encourage teachers to engage in reflexivity and have them foster reflexive thinking as an epistemic virtue within each domain.
authors
publication date
- 2017