Teaching and learning for knowledgeable action and innovation: An epistemic fluency perspective

Featuring: Lina Markauskaite, Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation, University of Sydney

All are welcome!

Abstract

What does it take to be a productive member of a multidisciplinary team working on a complex problem?How do people get better at these things?How can researchers get deeper insight in these valued capacities; andhow can teachers help students develop them? 

Working on realworld problems usually requires the combination of different kinds of specialised and contextdependent knowledge, as well as different ways of knowing. People who are flexible and adept with respect to different ways of knowing about the world can be said to possess epistemic fluency.

Drawing upon and extending the notion of epistemic fluency, in this research seminar, Iwill present some key ideas that we developed studying how university teachers teach andstudents learn complex professional knowledge and skills. Our account combines grounded andenacted cognition with sociomaterial perspectives of human knowing and focus on capacitiesthat underpin knowledgeable action and innovative professional work. In this seminar, I willdiscuss critical roles of grounded conceptual knowledge, ability to embrace professionalmaterially-grounded ways of knowing and students’ capacities to construct their epistemicenvironments.

‍

Speaker Bio

Lina Markauskaite is an associate professor at the University of Sydney and the deputy directorof the Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation (CRLI). Her primary research area isconcerned with understanding the nature of capabilities involved in complex (inter-)professionalknowledge work and learning. Her work combines grounded, enacted cognition and sociomaterial views of knowledge and knowing and look at professional learning from, so called, “epistemic fluency” perspective.

This theoretical account is elaborated in the co-authored book “Epistemic fluency and professional education: innovation, knowledgeable action and actionable knowledge” (2016, Springer, co-authored with Peter Goodyear).

Lina’s second research area is emerging interdisciplinary research methods. Her main work includes the coedited book “Methodological Choice and Design: Scholarship, Policy and Practice in Social and Educational Research” (2011, Springer, coedited with Peter Freebody and Jude Irwin) and the special issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology “e-Research for Education: Applied, Methodological and Critical Perspectives” (2014, co-edited with Peter Reimann). 

Click here for the lecture poster