Epistemic interaction - and counterplay: use of external knowledge resources in local development work

Abstract

The article shows that when school leaders and teachers interact in a regional development project that presuppose the use of external knowledge resources such as data and competence packages, they approach these knowledge resources with different knowledge discourses and ideas about knowledge use. This results in patterns of interaction which, to a varying degree, facilitates the epistemic commitment necessary for external knowledge resources to make sense in local development work.

Bernstein's (1999) distinction between vertical and horizontal knowledge discourse is used to describe the encounter between scientific knowledge and practical experience-based knowledge in the schools' local development work. Observations and interview data from three schools show that different knowledge discourses influence the interaction patterns that emerge between teachers and school leaders. When teachers and school leaders respond to each other's statements from their respective discourses of knowledge, situations characterized by epistemic counterplay arise, where both parties defend themselves and develop defensive strategies in the local school development work. Epistemic interaction presupposes that school leaders and teachers jointly examine and explore external knowledge resources, to develop knowledge-informed and experience-based, tacit, close to practice, context-dependent, local knowledge, across knowledge discourses.

It seems as if this interaction, or counterplay, is of decisive importance for which theories of use the actors practice when dealing with external knowledge resources. A prerequisite for external knowledge resources to make sense in local development work, is that school leaders and teachers evaluate their own practice, test their judgements and explanations, and assess their own role in the challenges the school faces.