Keeping our Research Plumb: Theory-Driven Design and Analysis for the Study of Instructor Epistemologies

The field of chemistry education is increasingly interested in thinking beyond what content our courses explicitly teach and toward thinking about implicit ways of knowing and learning (i.e., epistemologies) our courses elevate. Previous scholarship gives us reason to believe that studying epistemologies in undergraduate chemistry will provide us with important insight into how students navigate and learn in our courses. However, we are only beginning to explore the ways in which instructors' goals for knowing and learning shape (or not) students' experiences in our courses. If we want to make progress in understanding student and instructor epistemologies, then we must design research in a way that matches our theoretical model of its ontology. To assist the community in considering how theory might drive design and analysis in studies related to epistemology, we trace decisions we made while exploring the dynamics underlying instructors' epistemology around assessment. This coherence-seeking journey illustrates that alignment between theoretical commitments and study activities is far from straightforward. Additionally, our experiences suggest that it may be generative for members of our community to unpack assumptions undergirding their theoretical framework and explore how these show up across study activities.