Previously, we have argued that an account of personal epistemologies based on epistemological resources shows generativity and explanatory power, especially for understanding variability in a student's behavior. In this chapter, we argue that a resources framework is generative for instruction and is therefore worth teaching to teachers. Using for illustration a case study of middle school Earth science students learning about the rock cycle, we argue that the resources framework: (1) predicts the existence of coherent networks of resources that correspond to what teachers can recognize, and what novice teachers can learn to recognize, in students’ approaches to learning; (2) invites close attention to context when evaluating whether a given student utterance or behavior reflects a productive stance toward knowledge, leading to more nuanced assessments of the student's approach to learning; and (3) provides guidance about how to foster epistemological sophistication over both short and long time scales. To support these points, we first extend the resources framework to address a challenge it presents: epistemological resources are rarely apparent in isolation. Instead, the main observable grain-size of student epistemologies corresponds to an epistemological frame, a locally coherent activation of a network of resources that may look like a stable belief or theory. A particular epistemological resource, we argue, can play different roles in different frames, and this feature of our framework has instructional implications.

Introduction

A growing body of research on personal epistemologies contends that how students understand the nature of knowledge, knowing, and learning affects how they reason and learn (Hammer, 1994; Hofer and Pintrich, 1997; Hogan, 1999; May and Etkina, 2002; Sandoval, 2005; Schommer, 1993; Schommer et al., 1992).