Developing Teachers' Pedagogical Design Capacity to Amplify Students' Epistemic Agency through Curriculum Adaptation

Area of Science:

• Education
• Pedagogy
• Teacher Professional Development

Background:

• Teachers require enhanced pedagogical design capacity to foster student epistemic agency.
• Professional learning (PL) workshops are a key method for teacher development.
• Student epistemic agency involves their active participation in knowledge construction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze teachers' engagement in a PL workshop focused on pedagogical design capacity.
• To explore how teachers make sense of and deepen their understanding of student epistemic agency.
• To investigate the impact of workshop content on teachers' conceptions of epistemic agency.

Main Methods:

• A four-day professional learning workshop was designed and implemented.
• An analytic process was used to examine teacher participation and learning.
• Case studies of three teachers' sensemaking processes were conducted.

Main Results:

• Teachers began with varied conceptions of epistemic agency.
• All participating teachers demonstrated a shift toward deeper reflection on epistemic agency.
• Teachers recognized how talk, tasks, and teacher actions influence student knowledge co-construction.

Conclusions:

• Professional learning can effectively deepen teachers' understanding of student epistemic agency.
• Further research should explore the long-term impact of such workshops.
• Implications for teacher training and curriculum design are discussed.