The Epistemography of Journalism 335: Complexity in Developing Journalistic Expertise

Hatfield, David & Shaffer, DW (2010). The epistemography of journalism 335: Complexity in developing journalistic expertise. Paper to be presented at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), Chicago, Illinois.

http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/hatfield-ICLS2010-review.pdf

As bloggers and mobile phone eye-witnesses increasingly supplement the ‘news,’ it is more important than ever to understand how professional journalists develop their expertise. In this paper, we examine an intermediate level reporting practicum course to explore the learning processes therein. Using a new method called Epistemic Network Analysis, we also explore emergent relationships within developing journalistic expertise. Understanding these relationships should be useful for journalism education as well as the design of research on learning environments.