GREGORY J.

KELLY

INQUIRY, ACTIVITY, AND EPISTEMIC PRACTICE

In “Reconsidering the character and role of inquiry in school science: Framing the
debates” Duschl and Grandy (this volume) draw from the philosophy of science,
the learning sciences, and educational research to discuss a number of important
and converging results from these multiple disciplines that can inform the practice
of science education. The argument I put forth in this paper is that this convergence
results from an underlying shift in the locus of reasoning. The philosophy of
science, the learning sciences, and educational studies focused on designing
learning environments converge in the following manner: They shift the epistemic
subject from an individual knower to a community of knowers with sociocultural
practices derived from a common history of activity. This shift has potentially
profound implications for research on inquiry in science education. To examine
these implications, I define epistemology for the purposes of the arguments
developed in this paper, review the importance of intersubjectivity for science and
science education, discuss some normative considerations of the epistemic
dimensions of inquiry derived from community activity, discuss ways activity
theory allows for the study of inquiry in time and space, and apply these ideas to a
set of studies focused on the epistemic practices of writing scientific arguments.

EPISTEMOLOGY AND EPISTEMIC PRACTICE

Before reviewing intersubjectivity in the fields of epistemology and education, I

clarify the meaning of epistemology and its use in this paper. Epistemology is the
study of knowledge. This field of research concerns itself with issues about the
origins, scope, nature, and limitations of knowledge (Boyd, Gasper & Trout, 1991;
Sosa, 1991). As a branch of philosophy, epistemology is a discipline, with a
history of common problems and arguments. Applied to science, epistemology
typically examines issues such as the growth of knowledge, the nature of evidence,
criteria for theory choice, and the structure of disciplinary knowledge. For the
purposes of this paper, epistemology should not be confused with individual
subjects’ views about knowledge, sometimes referred to as “personal”
epistemology (for review see Kelly & Duschl, 2002). Rather, I am concerned with
the ways that knowledge is constructed and justified within and for a particular
community. A community justifies knowledge through social practices. A social
practice is constituted by a patterned set of actions, typically performed by
members of a group based on common purposes and expectations, with shared
cultural values, tools, and meanings (Gee, 1999; Kelly & Green, 1998; Lave &
Wegner, 1991). When such patterns in actions concern knowledge they can be
labeled epistemic. Thus, I define epistemic practices as the specific ways members
of a community propose, justify, evaluate, and legitimize knowledge claims within
a disciplinary framework. My argument is that an important aspect of participating

Richard A. Duschl and Richard E . Grandy (eds.), Teaching Scientific Inquiry: Recommen-
dations for Research and Implementation, 99–117.
© 2008 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
KELLY

in science is learning the epistemic practices associated with producing,

communicating, and evaluating knowledge.

CHANGING THE EPISTEMIC SUBJECT

A refocusing of the subject of epistemic consideration emerges out of two

literatures. The first body of literature I consider is that of epistemology from three
schools of thought: discourse ethics, and feminist epistemology, and certain
philosophies of science. Each of these epistemological positions re-centers the
knowing subject to a relevant community. The convergence of descriptive studies
of science (e.g., Knorr-Cetina, 1999; Lynch, 1993), and philosophy of science
grounded in these empirical studies of scientific practices (Fuller, 1988; Giere,
2001; Longino, 2002), and normative studies of moral reasoning lends support to
the important epistemic role of a relevant community for considerations of
knowledge claims. A second literature focused on science learning, informed by
the learning sciences, similarly supports this move toward a more social view of
knowledge and reasoning.

Intersubjectivity in Epistemology
A common assumption of logical positivism, discovery learning, content/process
science instruction, and some forms of constructivism, is the central location of the
individual consciousness as the epistemic agent. The focus on how a consciousness
comes to know (subject-centered reason) defines a certain set of epistemological
problems. These problems include: translation of sense experience into knowledge,
rules for valid inference for an observer, and problems of meaning transfer among
interlocutors, among others. The consequence of these epistemological problems is
often skepticism (Strike, 1995), sometimes radical skepticism with all its
drawbacks as an epistemology of science (Kelly, 1997). In contrast, philosophies
of communicative action (Habermas, 1990) and feminist epistemology (Longino,
2002; Nelson, 1993) demonstrate an interest in changing the subject to a relevant
community (Kelly, 2006). This changing of the locus of epistemic concern to a
relevant social group, rather than a Cartesian subject, is well documented in The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Habermas, 1987). Habermas argued for a
view of reason centered on communicative action: the shared norms for argument
provide a basis for critique of current traditions and theories, thus forwarding the
goal of rationality through dialogue. Longino (2002) applies a similar set of ideas
to epistemological concerns in science. Her view calls for some levels pluralism in
science and dialogical processes of adjudication.
The move to an intersubjective paradigm for epistemology is particularly
relevant for science, where the social basis of disciplinary knowledge is
particularly glaring. The important roles community practices and values play in
empirical research have been well documented in historical, philosophical,
sociological and ethnographic research (Kuhn, 1996, Knorr-Cetina, 1999; Lynch,

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