Research in teacher education is still a field dealing with open questions. One of these open fields is the incorporation of new pedagogical principles such as inquiry-based processes. In this transition encouraged by most national curricula, knowledge involved in study processes changes heavily: it moves from well-established and static knowledge…

Abduction and abductively-driven research approaches have been foregrounded by researchers as a way to introduce new concepts, ideas and insights. This paper argues that while abduction allows for the introduction of new concepts, ideas and insights, abduction as articulated by many scholars is welded to representational thought, which stifles the…

One particular challenge in chemistry learning is developing students' atomic level understanding of chemical processes. It is necessary to help students learn how to critique atomic models rather than accept them as ''truth.'' In this study, we used a resources-based framework to examine how students made sense of macroscopic level information to…

Contemporary epistemologists of education have raised concerns about the distorting effects of some of the processes and structures of contemporary academia on the epistemic practice and character of academic researchers. Such concerns have been articulated using the concept of epistemic corruption. In this article, we lend credibility to these…

In this article, I present an analysis of the epistemic value of the students' conceptions, as employed in the current constructivist research. I focus on the conceptions about natural kinds. Since natural kind terms are a crucial part of the discourse of the natural sciences, my conclusions are particularly relevant in science education. To…

The goal of this article is to investigate Davydov's concept of the concept against the backdrop of its philosophical system, namely, dialectical materialism. In the first part, after briefly sketching the context of Davydov's work, I consider some ontological and epistemological ideas on which Davydov bases his concept of the concept. I pay…

This paper reports the first empirical investigation of the hypothesis that epistemic appraisals form part of the structure of concepts. To date, studies of concepts have focused on the way concepts encode properties of objects and the way those features are used in categorization and in other cognitive tasks. Philosophical considerations show the…

Scholars of epistemology have identified two conceptions of epistemic injustice: discriminatory epistemic injustice and distributive epistemic injustice. The former refers to wrongs to one's capacity as a knower that are the result of identity prejudice. The latter refers to violations of one's right to know what one is entitled to know. This…

This article argues that a UK education system is required such that it specifically recognises the particular dynamic, co-constructive nature of complex and rapid contemporary entanglements (both human and non-human) and how they inform the epistemic and ontological development of students. This article draws from posthumanist theory and uses the…

In this article I explore a disposition towards a critique of 'reductionism' and 'determinism' that seems to me to be very much prevalent within British sociology. I take a qualitative educational sociology that uses Bourdieusian concepts as one body of research where this disposition is expressed with particular fervour. A close examination of…

Understanding how people resist European colonial modernity by collaboratively constructing southern epistemological positionalities is crucial for plotting plans about what applied linguists can do to promote social justice in the third decade of the 21st century. Epistemological positionalities describe how speakers metapragmatically theorize…

Do educational theories affect enfranchisement asymmetrically? This article analyses two sets of thinking skills in religious education as apparatuses, taking observations and political documents as a starting point. The thinking skills are described in terms of the roles they allocate, the attention and affect they direct, values and…

In this article, I argue that critical discourse in Mezirow's theory of transformative learning is a constructionist, ontological act that serves to support an individual's critical reflection, which, in turn, is a constructivist, epistemological act. The notion of onto-epistemology is helpful in bringing to the fore the entanglement of these two…

The 'knowledge turn' in curriculum studies has drawn attention to the central role that knowledge of the disciplines plays in education, and to the need for new thinking about how we understand knowledge and knowledge-building. "Knowing History in Schools" explores these issues in the context of teaching and learning history through a…

In this ninth chapter of "Interpreting Kant in Education," I respond to familiar criticisms in education theory of a dualism that is seen to be at the heart of Kant's philosophy. This, and related charges of a detached conception of mind, are addressed through a discussion of concepts--conceptual unity, conceptual distinctions, how these…