Processes of Epistemic Change in Engagement with a Complex Teaching Case

Abstract

This study demonstrates how concepts from the field of epistemic cognition research can be used to examine professional perceptions of teaching cases. Different forms of reflection on tasks are compared. Think-aloud interviews were conducted with eight pre-service teachers as they worked through a case-based individual learning environment. This environment included a lesson vignette and related tasks that required the participants to position themselves in relation to different student statements, a didactic text, and additional contextual information. The vignette describes a situation in the context of a final discussion of a teaching unit on one of the failed legal attempts to prohibit the German far-right party NPD. The vignette addresses, among other things, common challenges for the didactics of Social Sciences in the teaching of controversial issues and the adequate handling of discriminatory student statements. The interviews were examined by means of qualitative content analysis. Students quickly adopt similar patterns of interpretation when dealing with the case, overlooking important elements. In subsequent tasks, differences emerged in how the interviewees dealt with unfamiliar positions and new information: Positions attributed to other students were more likely to stimulate dissent and elaboration. Sources perceived as authoritative were more likely to lead to a search for confirmation, but also to processes of questioning one’s own assumptions. The transfer of categories of epistemic thinking to the investigation of an examination of casework provides valuable information on knowledge-generating and knowledge-processing and the conclusions to be drawn from them for the development of learning materials.