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Studies have shown that students often struggle to solve quantitative science problems because they fail to make connections between mathematical equations and associated scientific phenomena. This struggle has been attributed to instructors providing limited sensemaking opportunities that connect science and mathematics sensemaking. Our prior research on college instructors teaching population growth shows that the types of sensemaking elicited varied and were organized in different ways. This case study extends the research by exploring sensemaking opportunities about mathematical equations provided by three instructors teaching Gibbs free energy. This study also examines different levels of connection between sensemaking types within and across the science and mathematics dimensions and analyzes factors (i.e., pedagogical approaches, equation types) that might shape the types of sensemaking that were provided. The Sci-Math Sensemaking Framework was used to identify sensemaking opportunities provided by three instructors during the lessons and a comparative case study approach was employed. Findings showed that while each instructor provided both science and mathematics sensemaking opportunities, they had distinct ways of sequencing their sensemaking even when teaching the same scientific phenomenon using mathematical equations. Mathematics sensemaking was mostly presented separately from science sensemaking, with only a few instances of connected sensemaking occurring in instructors’ lessons, albeit at varying levels. When instructors expose students to connected science and mathematics sensemaking, they model for students how to use resources from two different disciplines to understand scientific concepts or solve quantitative problems. We provide evidence to show that levels of connection between sensemaking types within science and mathematics dimensions reflect distinct approaches to developing more robust scientific explanations or to working with equations. Based on these case studies, we suggest that instructors’ equation choices and pedagogical approaches support specific types of sensemaking and levels of connection between sensemaking opportunities.
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“Our Dog Probably Thinks Christmas is Really Boring”: Re-mediating Science Education for Feminist-Inspired Inquiry
Feminist science approaches recognize the value of integrating empathy, closeness, subjectivity, and caring into scientific sensemaking. These approaches reject the notion that scientists must be objective and dispassionate, and expand the possibilities of what is considered valuable scientific knowledge. One avenue for engaging people in empathetically driven scientific inquiry is through learning activities about how our pets experience the world. In this study, we developed an augmented reality device we called DoggyVision that lets people see the world similar to dogs’ vision. We designed a scavenger-hunt for families where they explored indoor and outdoor environments with DoggyVision, collected data firsthand, and drew conclusions about the differences between how humans and dogs see the world. In this paper, we illustrate how our DoggyVision workshop re-mediated scientific inquiry and supported the integration of feminist practices into scientific sensemaking.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1736051
- PAR ID:
- 10177534
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 935-942
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2020.935
