EPISTEMIC SOPHISTICATION:

A CASE STUDY OF COLLEGE

STUDENTS
María Andrea PEREA, Laura BUTELER, Enrique COLEONI

Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, Medina Allende s/n 5000,

Córdoba. Argentina.
 INTRODUCTION
Personal epistemologies allow to answer the implicit question “what is
this activity about?

Argumentation
Broader understanding of the
cognitive tasks that take place
during learning processes.
Problem solving
 Facilitates the approach about problem
solving in physics from a perspective
focused on what students do.

Cognitive resources Assume the existence of a set of

framework cognitive resources (epistemic
(Bing & Redish, 2009) resources).

Postulates that the existence and

activation of such resources are
deeply linked to the context in which
that resource is useful.
 THE SOURCE OF DATA FOR THIS
RESEARCH
• We interviewed undergraduate Physics and Astronomy students in the second year of their
careers in a public university of Argentina, while they solved specifically designed physics
problems.

• We have worked with small groups of 2 or 3 students at a time, in an extra-classroom setting,

while they solved physics problems. Their participation was voluntary.

• The interviews were recorded.

 EPISTEMIC SOPHISTICATION:
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS
Previous research on
epistemic We defined the term “Epistemic
sophistication do not Sophistication”.
provide
straightforward and
operational definition
of this term. A student shows signs of "epistemic sophistication", when the way in which
he/she builds that epistemic knowledge is technically complex or advanced.

Epistemic knowledge is the set of resources, and their articulated activation, that allows
subjects to decide the pertinent (cognitive) actions in a particular situation.
Our students showed different degrees of sophistication. In some cases, they appeared to be more
epistemically sophisticated than in others.

We constructed a graduation for that epistemic sophistication

The scale goes since grade 0 to grade 4.

Grade 0 corresponds to the Grade 4 corresponds to the

least epistemic sophistication of highly
development. experienced subjects

Grade (n) is more sophisticated than grade (n-1) and less sophisticated than grade (n + 1)
 Grade 0: When students are stuck in the use of a particular epistemic resource and
they are not able to get out of it for a “long” interval of time.

Grade 1: When the subjects are capable of activating two or more epistemic
resources, but not at the same time.

Grading scale for the Grade 2: When the subjects are capable of nesting two or more epistemic resources.
epistemic
sophistication
Grade 3: When at least two different epistemic resources are activated, not at the
same time, and there may be nesting (the latter is not a necessary condition), and
there is a search for an assessment of the coherence between the reasoning coming
from each one of them.

Grade 4: When students are capable of nesting at least two epistemic resources, and
value the coherence of the reasoning coming from both resources.
• This scale allowed us to graduate the different degrees of epistemic sophistication shown by
students.

• Based on this graduation we can affirm that students have shown signs of different degrees of
sophistication at different times. Grades 0, 1, 2, and 3 of epistemic sophistication have emerged.
We have also observed grades 1 and 2 much more frequently but grade 2 was recurrent.
 CONCLUSIONS
• We defined the term "epistemic sophistication" and made it operational. That constitute an
important result of our research and a significant contribution to the framework of cognitive
resources.

• We have verified then that the interviewed students "do know and know how to do", regardless
of whether they have reached correct results or not.

• These students have a certain level of epistemic sophistication, and depending on the context and
the moment, they can perform with more or less sophistication.