epistemic fluency

I’d say we’re 95% finished on the Epistemic Fluency book, but it may be that the last 5% will take longer than we’d like.

Chapter 19 (Teaching and Learning for Epistemic Fluency) is almost done.

“We address two major questions, primed by the issues raised in Chapters 17 and 18. How can students develop:

1. flexible conceptual resources that enable professional meaning-making and action?
2. flexible epistemic resources that enable inquiry that produces actionable understanding?

We claim that well-designed tasks for professional learning are simultaneously professional (actionable; situated), conceptual and epistemic. Such tasks involve the weaving of epistemic forms and epistemic games that are played in professions and a dynamic – embodied and embedded – assembling of actionable concepts. These tasks stimulate discourse that integrates generic (formal) and situated (functional) kinds of knowledge, and formal and functional ways of knowing. They involve knowledge that is both: coherent and contingent, structured and experiential, explicit and tacit.”

The book addresses the needs of two main audiences, which have an overlapping interest in the nature of professionals’ working knowledge and the reform of professional education.

The first audience consists of academic researchers, including research students, whose interests focus on understanding:

• contemporary workplaces
• the nature of (multidisciplinary and inter-professional) knowledge work
• the nature of professional knowledge and its role in solving novel and recurrent problems in professional practice
• the integration of personal and situational resources in professional problem-solving
• the strengths and limitations of programs of professional education.

The cross-disciplinary nature of these issues means that the book will be of interest to researchers from a variety of fields, including those researching in the learning sciences, higher education, workplace studies and organizational studies.

The second audience consists of those who have a leadership responsibility for programs of professional education in universities and elsewhere. The book will be of value to those considering major changes in such programs – from curriculum, assessment, accreditation, learning and teaching perspectives. It will also be useful to university teaching staff, workplace mentors and others who have responsibility for the successful running of professional education and personnel development programs, including the design and management of work-based learning experiences.

Although the empirical work reported in the book has been conducted in Australia, the book forges strong connections with research and practice in Europe, North America and elsewhere. The book will be of interest to an international audience.