We will be presenting a paper at IRNSSBS in Birmingham on 5th July 2019. Below is the Abstract for this presentation.
The Epistemic Insight Initiative
Berry Billingsley, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
Epistemic insight refers to knowledge about knowledge, and particularly knowledge about disciplines and how they interact. The EI (Epistemic Insight) Initiative aims to find strategies that can be used in schools to develop students’ expressed curiosity about Big Questions, counter uncritical scientism and help students to access a range of ways to think about how science and religion relate, including positive views of the relationship. This means addressing some pressures and barriers in education which are widely recognised such as that the teaching of epistemology tends to be fragmented, compartmentalised and disjointed in schools with a risk that developing students’ epistemic insight in relation to cross-discipline and multidisciplinary questions is likely to be neglected. Exploring questions that bridge disciplines and subjects in school and discussing them epistemologically gives students opportunities to examine their own and other people’s stances on the nature of science in real world contexts and multidisciplinary arenas. Appreciating the value of expressed curiosity as a stimulus for enquiry and how and why real life questions are shaped and reframed when we construct an enquiry in science – is an essential epistemic insight to reduce uncritical scientism.
For more information about this conference please see: https://www.scienceandbeliefinsociety.org/about/engage/events/annual-conference-2019/