Natural language contains a variety of means for expressing possibilities consistent with what is known. Particularly well-studied among them are the epistemic modal auxiliaries "might" and "must": (1) a. Ann: "Where is Peter?" b. Mary: "He {might/must} be in his office." There is broad agreement that…

This theoretical, methodological, and empirical networking study investigated the potential of inferentialism to contribute to the study of meaning and collective argumentation in mathematics. I carefully attended to my worldview and explicated my philosophical process for identifying inferentialism as my theory of choice. I then drew on Prediger…

This qualitative descriptive case study explores how genealogists describe the mechanism of epistemic change in their research, highlighting the roles of epistemological doubt, epistemological volition, and resolution strategies. It explores the integration of digital technologies in genealogical practices in the United States and their…

Human intelligence has the ability to capture abstract concepts from experience and utilize that learned knowledge for adaptation to new situations. Lifelong machine learning aims to achieve those same properties of human intelligence by designing algorithms to learn from a sequence of tasks, extract useful knowledge of previous tasks, and re-use…

Adults with developmental disabilities and educational researchers have identified many holes in the practices currently used to educate non-speaking youth with developmental disabilities, especially those with extensive support needs (Kapp, 2020; Taub, et al., 2017). While technology cannot provide a magical, sweeping fix to barriers to…

For centuries, the Bajau people sailed the seas between what we now refer to as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines on houseboats of their own construction. Adept sustenance divers, they forage the sea floor for sea cucumber, fish, black coral and more, often spending over 60% of their working day underwater. On a single breath, the best of…

This healing feminist autoethnography examines my gendered experiences as a school principal during the 2021-2022 school year, centering upon two research questions: How can personal accounts of sexist experiences disrupt gendered norms in educational leadership? And how can I, as a feminist leader, exist authentically and truthfully in…

This dissertation reports on research conducted to better understand how college student writers learned to work against their own biases as they researched and wrote arguments. I conducted a review of former studies to design a curriculum that would help students avoid bias and increase their ability to write arguments tailored to specific…

This study employed quantitative methods to analyze survey results related to the epistemic beliefs and classroom practices of economics educators. Studying economics has positive benefits at the individual, family, and social levels, but analysis of learning outcomes suggests that economics education needs to increase student engagement and…

This dissertation focused on the outcome of elementary science teachers' learning in theories and practices of epistemic tools in professional workshops over the course of two years, starting in the summer of 2019. Study one focuses on teachers' understanding of language as an epistemic tool. The data were teachers' written responses to a…

Teacher engagement in evidence-based practice has been a concern of the K-5 educational community for many years, with studies finding teachers' engagement with research may be growing, but is still not consistent. Epistemic beliefs are becoming a popular topic in the study of the learning process with a limited number of qualitative studies…

As psychology grows in popularity, most students select professions related to therapy, which constantly deem statistics courses as irrelevant and accentuate negative attitudes. This study explores perspectives of knowledge, also known as epistemological frames, that students enrolled in a psychology-based course in statistics generate and the…

Despite reform efforts emphasizing written communication implemented in the undergraduate science curriculum, college science students still struggle with scientific research writing. Further, science majors have few opportunities to engage in authentic disciplinary scientific research writing. This research was set in an upper-division Scientific…

Everything is designed. From the fork you hold in your hand, to the car you drive, to the public transportation you use, to the mechanisms for justice within a society, to the process of designing itself. Embedded in these designs are the assumptions that underlie the design methods and toolkits used in the design process. In practice, design…

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge (Hetherington, 2012; Moreland & Craig, 2017; Pritchard, 2014). Epistemology is central to the practice of research and education (Spears, 2003). The epistemological position that holds science as the best or only way of acquiring knowledge is known as scientism…