Epistemic Excursions as Agentive Meaning Making within a Digital Plate Tectonics Curriculum

Abstract

Models and modeling are essential for mediating knowledge-building processes about geologic phenomena (Stillings, 2012). We draw on constructs of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987) and personal excursions (Azevedo, 2006) to analyze a case in which two secondary students develop geologic explanations using Seismic Explorer, a tool for visualizing information about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. We present four episodes in which the focal students conjecture and test ideas through modeling plate tectonics phenomena. Using methods of interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) we describe how the students actively build and revise their moment-by-moment explanations. Our analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of how the design of geologic models and data visualizations for classroom contexts can support sensemaking as a kind of journeyed relationship-building with the phenomena, associated data, and with peers, through relational events that we term epistemic excursions.