Epistemic Games

Perkins, D. N. (1997). Epistemic games. [doi: DOI: 10.1016/S0883-0355(97)88443-1]. International Journal of Educational Research, 27(1), 49-61.


Investigating something can be a regular pattern of action analyzable into forms, moves, goals and rules, a pattern that recurs across a particular content within a domain or across domains, and so people can be following the same pattern of action while investigating different things.
Perkins calls these patterns epistemic games, and their forms of outcome epistemic forms.
He refers them as games because of the goals, moves, rules, and because they are action systems.

Three kinds of epistemic games:
characterization: can be broad or specific like taxonomies
explanation: explanans explains the thing about which we are puzzled, the explanandum
there can be informal or formal explanations, informal won't have any technical support
justification: asserting of reasons to support a claim,

Why are these related to inquiry?

-when people inquire into something, they need to construct a statement -characterization.
-then they need explanation to understand it
-finally claims and explanations may be questionable so justification is needed

Epistemic games guide the inquiry, they point toward discovery and verification

Epistemic games are across professions and disciplines. They also can be specialized in a special area of knowledge.