Epistemic insight refers to ‘knowledge about knowledge’, and particularly knowlege about disciplines and how they interact. Gaining epistemic insight is about developing an appreciation of the strengths and limitations of individual discipline. One way to do this is to explore how two disciplines each investigate a cross-disciplinary question. Consider for example how science and history can each investigate ‘Why did the Fire of London spread so quickly?’

This Community is lead by the LASAR Centre at Canterbury Christ Church University. The Epistemic Insight initiative is designed to enable researchers, tutors, student teachers and teachers to work together to understand and address gaps, confusions and misperceptions in students’ opportunities and understanding.

The research develops and tests strategies to engage school students in more dialogue about Big Questions, find ways to build their understanding of different types of disciplinary knowledge and help students to explore ways that areas of knowledge interact to address questions that bridge subjects and disciplines. At its heart it is a community that is concerned with the co-creation of research, with teachers and student teachers engaging with questions of pedagogy and curriculum as action researchers, and involving the educational communities we are working with to understand what works in their school or classroom.