Description
TitleExploring the role of epistemic cognition in social justice thinking
Date Created2021
Other Date2021-05 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (viii, 200 pages)
DescriptionIn recent decades there has been an increased call for teacher preparation programs to incorporate social justice themes into their curricula. This is in response to glaring educational inequities that fall along racial, linguistic, and socio-economic lines, among others (Ladson-Billings, 2006). These problems emerge, in part, from a mixture of conscious and unconscious biases that are exercised by teachers. In response to these problems, many schools of education work to help their teacher candidates (TCs) adopt social justice ways of thinking and to apply social justice pedagogies in their future instruction.
Researchers of social justice education (SJE) have routinely identified the problematic beliefs that teacher candidates hold as they enter the field (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015). Moreover, they have shown that TCs often still hold these views even after they engage in social justice-themed coursework. However, there is a dearth of research that has investigated the ways in which TCs evaluate knowledge about social issues. As teacher candidates engage in sensemaking about these issues, they are inherently engaging in epistemic thought. Specifically, they are making knowledge evaluations and considerations about social issues. For example, when TCs evaluate information about social inequity they may weigh that information against their personal beliefs and experiences or even popular narratives of how the world works; yet, few studies frame TC learning in this way.
In the present study, using a lens of epistemic cognition and cultural-historical activity theory, I observed a cohort (n=15) of TCs as they engaged in different aspects of SJE. Specifically, I investigated the kinds of evidence TCs used to evaluated microaggressions in their school placements; the role of a SJE program in producing structural thinking and individualistic thinking in TCs; and, the pedagogical decisions TCs proposed during a simulated teaching activity. I found that TCs relied on a nuanced repertoire of evidence to identify microaggressions, however, they lacked confidence in their assessments; they expressed structural thinking in abundance but that was heavily influenced by the rules and activities that were present in the learning environment, which also hid their individualistic thinking; and, TCs proposed pedagogical decisions that required more refinement in order to reflect core aspects of social justice pedagogies. The findings from this investigation can support teacher educators and researchers in identifying key epistemic considerations that could improve social justice education programs.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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