THE DISCOURSIVE CHOICES OF THE SCIENCE AND ELEMENTARY SCIENCE EDUCATION EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

2022-8
AKILLIOĞLU, FATMA ÇAĞLİN
This critical research aimed to investigate the discursive choices of science education and elementary science education epistemic communities to reveal the characteristics of their promoted discourses, the power differences, and how these differences were created by their discursive choices. The lack of prior research on epistemic communities in science education led this research to investigate epistemic communities in two contexts, science and elementary science education, and to conduct a co-citation analysis guided by the definition of epistemic communities to locate these communities in the literature. Two epistemic communities were located with this analysis forming around the same theoretical framework; nature of science. Therefore, the located epistemic communities were named as the nature of science epistemic community of science education and elementary science education. An article representing each epistemic community was sampled among the most influential articles identified in the co-citation analysis, and these two articles constituted the sample of this research. Critical discourse analysis was employed to investigate the discursive choices of the located epistemic communities. Findings revealed many ways to create power differences with discursive choices and showed that actors of science education can be positioned in hierarchies, and even particular objectives or terminologies can be put in the position of power with these choices. Suggesting that critical paradigm can also be utilized for emancipatory goals that are not particularly addressing the struggles of the oppressed, this research showed a way to study subtle power structures and reveal numerous questions for future researchers to investigate from its critical perspective.

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Citation Formats
F. Ç. AKILLIOĞLU, “THE DISCOURSIVE CHOICES OF THE SCIENCE AND ELEMENTARY SCIENCE EDUCATION EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2022.