  This article reports on a study investigating how computational essays can be
used to redistribute epistemic agency--cognitive control and responsibility
over one's own learning--to students in higher education STEM. Computational
essays are a genre of scientific writing that combine live, executable computer
code with narrative text to present a computational model or analysis. The
study took place across two contrasting university contexts: an
interdisciplinary data science and modeling course at Michigan State
University, USA, and a third-semester physics course at the University of Oslo,
Norway. Over the course of a semester, computational essays were simultaneously
and independently used in both courses, and comparable datasets of student
artifacts and retrospective interviews were collected from both student
populations. These data were analyzed using a framework which operationalized
the construct of epistemic agency across the dimensions of programming,
inquiry, data analysis and modeling, and communication. Based on this analysis,
we argue that computational essays can be a useful tool in redistributing
epistemic agency to students within higher education science due to their
combination of adaptability and disciplinary authenticity. However, we also
argue that educational contexts, scaffolding, expectations, and student
backgrounds can constrain and influence the ways in which students choose to
take up epistemic agency.
