Epistemography and the Participant Structures of a Professional Practicum: A story behind the story of Journalism 828
Shaffer, D. W. (2005). Epistemography and the Participant Structures of a Professional Practicum: A story behind the story of Journalism 828 (WCER Working Paper No. 2005-8): University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research. http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/publications/workingPapers/Working_Paper_No_2005_8.pdf
This paper looks at the participant structures of a learning environment and proposes an alternative level of analysis for understanding how frameworks of participation help develop frameworks for thinking. As Palincsar and Lehrer (2004) argue in a recent special issue of Cognition and Instruction, for more than 4 decades education researchers have been examining participant structures: the ‘norms of participation . . . governing the type and quantity of interaction that make up [an] event’ (Cook-Gumperz & Gumperz, 1982, p. 21). Much of this work has been microgenetic or microsocial (Smardon, 2005) in nature, focusing on ‘small behaviors’ (Goffman, 1967, p. 1) of face-to-face interaction. Recent studies, for example, have focused on how participant structures function as participant frameworks, in which conversational turns systematically position students in relation to one another, to the teacher, and to the domain of inquiry (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004; O’Connor & Michaels, 1996). These detailed examinations of the conventions that operate in moment-by-moment interactions among students and teachers have produced an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how the ‘physical and social organization of the classroom can affect students’ willingness and ability to participate in classroom events’ (Palincsar & Lehrer, 2004, p. 389).
My claim in this paper is that the concept of epistemic frame (and the larger time scale of analysis it implies) is a useful lens through which to examine the organization of activities–the story behind the story–of Journalism 828. I argue that to the extent that this analysis sheds light on the conventional configurations of communicative activities and roles–the participant structures–within which these students and their mentors were working, epistemic frames may be another useful analytical tool for understanding the structure of learning environments.
