#650: Exploring Epistemic Affect in Middle School Students’ Peer Critique

Peer critique is a social epistemic practice. Productive engagement in critique requires attention to its affective dynamics. We conducted discourse analysis of two focus groups across two rounds of peer critique. The groups showed different understandings and enactments of epistemic ideals for critique. The negative epistemic affect that emerged signaled differences in students’ epistemic ideals. Yet students strategically managed affect and negotiated epistemic ideals, thereby transforming affective tensions into opportunities for shared understanding.