Learning to Navigate Uncertainty & Evidence: Teaching for Epistemic Cognition

The scholarship provides support for one Doctoral candidate (PhD student) through a tuition fee waiver (domestic fees only), living allowance, and other associated research costs.

The position supports the Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project led by Assoc/Prof Simon Knight’s within his Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellowship “Navigating Uncertainty & Evidence: Teaching for Epistemic Cognition”.

See ‘further details’ for general project information. The candidate will be expected to submit a proposal that addresses the theme of the project. Proposals should draw on these areas of particular focus:

1. Developing materials that help navigate the design challenges of moving between research and practice, to support both, in a context of emerging technology (including chatGPT) and teacher practice and pedagogy. This addresses gaps in epistemic cognition literature and its relationship to practice.

2. Building approaches to synthesise and mobilise evidence in a way that supports both research and practice. This addresses gaps in methods for distilling or synthesising literature to support teacher practices, or to identify current teacher practices that could be conceptualised and evaluated through the lens of literature.

3. Conceptualising ‘epistemic cognition’ in light of both current societal challenges (bothsidesism, controversy avoidance, expert conflict), and advances in epistemology that recognise links to ethics and justice. This addresses present gaps in theory, and helps navigate a key challenge of practice.

To be eligible for this scholarship, applicants must:

• Be permanent residents or citizens of Australia or New Zealand (domestic students).
• Have completed a UTS recognised degree in a discipline related to the project (social sciences, psychology, education, learning technology, HCI, applied philosophy, information sciences, etc.)
• Have research experience, either through successful completion of Masters level research, professional research, or a Bachelor Honours degree with 1st Class, or 2nd Class Division 1, or division 1 honours, or an equivalent or higher qualification. Candidates may also submit other evidence (e.g., published works) of potential to pursue graduate research. 

This project is transdisciplinary, candidates should demonstrate knowledge across: 

• A relevant disciplinary field or fields (social sciences, psychology, education, learning technology, HCI, applied philosophy, information sciences, etc.) 
• The Australian educational context (e.g., experience in formal or informal learning settings, previous development of learning materials – ideally open educational resources, etc.)

It is expected the candidate will have, or develop, knowledge regarding key concepts in the project space including epistemic cognition, socioscientific issues, teaching of controversial issues, evidence synthesis, design-based research or/and participatory research approaches.

Applicants should send their CV, a cover letter outlining how their experience relates to the project, a research proposal indicating their planned research approach and focus. These should be sent to Associate Professor Simon Knight [email protected] ; candidates are strongly encouraged to get in touch prior to submission, in order to receive feedback at early stages of proposal development.

Just over half of Australians aged 15-74 have adequate or better prose & document literacy skills, while most students who graduate from high school are ill-prepared to comprehend, integrate & evaluate information from complex texts (Australian Bureau of Statistics & OECD data). This deficit impacts people’s abilities to participate in the workforce & make sustainable personal & civic decisions. Developing capacity to understand disagreement, navigate uncertainty & evaluate evidence is one of the most pressing social issues of our time in order to ensure inclusive & equitable quality education & promote lifelong learning opportunities for a sustainable society. Quality of teaching is crucial in influencing student outcomes, as noted by the 2005 OECD report on teachers. This research aims to understand how teachers support epistemic development in learners through their design of epistemically challenging tasks. The research aims for a sustainable impact, through designing professional development resources to support classroom pedagogy & align classroom practice with established learning sciences research.

The project aims to consider practical and theoretical issues around tackling difficult socioscientific issues in the classroom, addressing contemporary concerns such as ‘fake news’ and our ability to have ‘difficult conversations’ in the classroom. It does this through investigation and development of novel models for developing synchrony between teacher and research expertise, to develop scalable sustainable models for evidence-informed practice and practice-informed evidence.

The faculty/university: The doctoral researcher would become a member of the UTS TD School (Transdisciplinary School), an innovative faculty founded to build on and develop expertise from across disciplinary and professional knowledges, in the tackling of real-world problems. TD School embodies UTS’s strategic vision to be a leading public university of technology, recognised for its global impact. There may be further opportunities to collaborate or develop informal network across other centres at UTS including the Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society (CREDS, which Knight is Director of), and the Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC). 

The candidate will be supervised by Associate Professor Simon Knight (Fellowship holder), and co-supervisor(s). 

The University of Technology Sydney is Australia’s Top Young University and ranked within the Top 200 universities worldwide. Its vibrant campus is located in the center of Sydney, with easy access to all amenities and transport that is ideally suited for PhD student living.