Instructors can encourage student idea-offering by incrementally adding epistemic distancing to their questions¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (3 for, 1 mixed) · 1 study (1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

When students dismiss a productive question, an instructor can rephrase it with hedges ("What do you think happened there, any idea?"), rising intonation, and lowered body position to reduce the stakes of contributing uncertain ideas. TA Joey used this pattern, then used the resulting discussion "to make repairs to the Silver group's understanding of what it is they are supposed to be doing in tutorial." The group then continued sensemaking without him.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Instructor proximity to groups during discussion to overhear dismissive moments
• An open investigative activity (motion detector graphs) with genuine discrepancies to explain

Constraints¶

• The article documents this with one group on a short timescale

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate physics students in small-group tutorials

Target Learning Goals¶

• offering and evaluating ideas about physical mechanisms

Affordances¶

• Epistemic Distancing Resource

Claims¶

• A TA's intervention that incrementally added epistemic distancing to his questions shifted a dismissive group into sensemaking with a lasting effect [+W]
• Both too much and too little epistemic distancing can shut down group discussion [~W]
• A new group member's heavily distanced bid to discuss shifted the Bronze group's norms toward sharing and evaluating ideas [+W]
• Epistemic distancing plays a critical role in student groups' construction of a safe space for collaborative sensemaking in physics tutorials [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Scaffolded Questioning
• Give Hints and Clues to Help Students Answer Questions

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Conlin, L. D., & Scherr, R. E. (2012). Making Space to Sensemake: Epistemic Distancing in Small Group Physics Discussions. Preprint under review. https://eric.ed.gov/?q=Making+Space+to+Sensemake