Experts’ adaptation of apt epistemic performance: The role of practical knowledge

Abstract

Background Today’s complex information environment requires effective navigation and analysis of multiple sources to make reliable decisions about complex topics. Learners must enact thinking that reliably leads to well-justified decisions, adapt thinking to specific problems and contexts, and recognize the limits of their existing knowledge (i.e. demonstrate fully apt epistemic performance). Experts can enact such performance in their own discipline but questions of whether and how they adapt that expertise to other disciplines remain. More research is needed regarding whether and how experts adapt disciplinary knowledge to tasks for which they have practical knowledge.

Methods We used inductive coding to analyze think-aloud data gathered from professors from a variety of disciplines (i.e. education, social sciences, and natural sciences) as they read and responded to a flipped classroom pedagogy scenario.

Findings Education experts demonstrated fully apt epistemic performance and more nuanced conclusions than other participants. The social and natural scientists successfully adapted their epistemic performance grounded in practical knowledge, particularly about statistics and higher education careers, to their analysis of the scenario. However, natural scientists overgeneralized their research methods knowledge, demonstrating lower epistemic meta-competence.

Contribution Our findings suggest ways in which practical knowledge supports or hinders adaptation of epistemic performance.