In this article, I connect self-efficacy and social constructivism and how this shaped me as a researcher and academic, as well as how connections to my advisor, Dr. Terry Wood, gave me the self-efficacy to persevere during the personal and scholarly challenges of my doctoral program. I discuss, using Bandura's social cognitive sources of…

Within plural democracies, the concept of 'religious literacy' is commonly understood as denoting the knowledge, skills and understanding "vis-à-vis" religious diversity required of the citizen. In schools across Europe such learning is traditionally housed within Religious Education (RE), the aims of which are increasingly framed in…

The democratization of knowledge is liberating and has presented some new and difficult challenges. When everyone can position themselves as an expert, how do we create new frames of intellectual and pragmatic knowledge with integrity? How do we understand the histories of expert privilege and harm that have led us to this time of uncertainty? 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…

Divergence is not a new phenomenon in RE in England and Wales. A diverse range of aims and approaches have been promoted since RE provision became compulsory in 1944. Approaches include the phenomenological, interpretative, and dialogic with current debates centring around the benefits and challenges of a 'worldviews approach'. There have been a…

This study advances a concept of science religion encounter (SRE), with preliminary theorisation and shares findings on the extent and nature of such encounters reported by secondary religious education and science teachers. SREs are interdisciplinary engagements in classrooms involving subject knowledge from more than one subject. The researchers…

This paper argues that public accountability discourse and research quality processes designed to support it are associated with the validation of methodological approaches in social research which claim to capture the real condition of the social world and to remedy its ailments, supporting an expansion of representative modes of scholarship, and…

In recent years, Forest Education has gained increasing traction around the world. Yet its unique features, as well as their relations with other outdoor environmental education approaches, remain undertheorized. This study explores the pedagogical practices of one emerging strand of Forest Education, and the epistemology underpinning it, in order…

Expanded conceptions of I-Other relationships in critical service learning impact ideas of self, ways in which self is understood to be autonomous and/or relational, and holistic concepts of self and other/s. This manuscript engages core ontological questions in contemporary service learning: Can social epistemological and ontological approaches…

When students learn, they activate, use, revise, and acquire knowledge. As such, knowledge is a fundamental asset. We advocate for an asset-based approach which capitalizes on students' knowledge through prompts and activities that invite learners to leverage what they already know. Considering knowledge as an asset means that educators must…

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…

In previous work, we described how three teachers differentially create opportunities for students to act as epistemic agents and to engage in collective knowledge-building work (Alzen et al., 2020). The descriptive nature of this previous research provided information about what variability can look like in classrooms attempting these…

Student participation in the science practices is more than following directions to conduct pre-determined experiments and analyze data with expected solutions. This requires classroom shifts that increase the epistemic agency of students: increase student involvement and authority in developing science knowledge and practices, rather than the…

Decolonising work in Higher Education (HE) has become increasingly mainstreamed. One issue is the relationship between such work and that of equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI), or the potential reduction and co-option of decolonising for EDI purposes. This article discusses the characterisations of, and drivers for, decolonising inside UK…