The practical epistemologies of the classroom: A study of laboratory work

Abstract The practical epistemologies of university students during laboratory work in chemistry are analyzed to enhance understanding of how teaching practices interact with learners. The purpose is to develop a theoretical framework of learning as action that can be used by educational researchers to examine meaning‐making, but also by teachers in close association with their daily work to understand the course learning takes in their own classrooms. Here this framework is adopted to demonstrate how the sequence of learning may affect the subject content learnt. It is also demonstrated how learning can be understood in terms of habits, and how observations of such habits could be used by a teacher to inform her/his teaching. The theory of practical epistemologies is based on the later Wittgenstein, pragmatics, and sociocultural approaches identifying learning with talk, action, and habits situated in practices. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 88: 325–344, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/.sce10129