An official website of the United States government
Abstract BackgroundElementary educators are increasingly asked to teach engineering design, motivating study of how they learn to teach this discipline. In particular, there is a need to examine how teachers reason about pedagogical situations and dilemmas in engineering—how they draw on their disciplinary understandings, attention to students' thinking, and pedagogical practices to support students' learning. Purpose/HypothesisThe purpose of our qualitative study was to examine elementary teachers' pedagogical reasoning in an online graduate program. We asked: What stances do teachers take toward learning and teaching engineering design? How do these stances shift over the course of the program? Design/MethodWe identified two teachers, Alma and Margaret, who exhibited productive shifts in their pedagogical reasoning during the program. Drawing on interviews and videos of their teaching, we developed case studies characterizing their stances toward teaching and learning engineering. ResultsAlma shifted in her reasoning about teaching the design process, from treating it as linear, discrete steps to recognizing the dynamic, overlapping nature of design practices. Similarly, Margaret shifted in how she reasoned about failure and iteration, recognizing the need to help students analyze unexpected design performances to learn from and iterate on their designs. For both teachers, these shifts were dynamic and nonlinear, reflecting both context‐sensitivity and growing stability in their reasoning. ConclusionsEngineering teacher educators should provide opportunities for teachers to reason about the specific pedagogical dilemmas in engineering and consider how teachers integrate disciplinary understandings with attention to students' reasoning and actions and pedagogical practices.
more »
« less
“That’s Bogus as Hell!”: Getting Under the Hood of Surveillance Technologies in an Out of School STEM Learning Environment
This study investigates how opportunities to learn about the ethics of advanced technologies emerged and were negotiated through interaction amongst students and instructors in YPRPT, an out of school STEM learning environment. We present a microethnographic analysis of a single pedagogical activity organized around GeoMedia, a tool we designed to mimic authentic surveillance technologies currently used by numerous law enforcement agencies. Our findings detail how the organization and unfolding of learning in the focal activity created opportunities for students to explore “under the hood” of advanced technologies, and to feel a sense of excitement and awe at the possibilities and perils of social media surveillance. Additionally, our findings show how opportunities to learn were not solely constructed through apriori pedagogical design, but also emerged through in-the-moment instructional decisions and sequences of activity. This study has implications for participatory design possibilities grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration between historically disparate disciplines like computer science and civics.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1855494
- PAR ID:
- 10207166
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Conference of the Learning Sciences
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
People attempting to immigrate to the U.S. (through a port of entry or other means) may be required to accept various forms of surveillance technologies after interacting with immigration officials. In March 2025, around 160,000 people in the U.S. were required to use a smartphone application—BI SmartLINK—that uses facial recognition, voice recognition, and location tracking; others were assigned an ankle monitor or a smartwatch. These compulsory surveillance technologies exist under Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE)’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, a combination of surveillance technologies, home visits, and in-person meetings with ICE officials and third-party “case specialists.” For migrants in the U.S. who are already facing multiple other challenges, such as securing housing, work, or healthcare, the surveillance technologies administered under ATD introduce new challenges. To understand the challenges facing migrants using BI SmartLINK under ATD, their questions about the app, and what role technologists might play (if any) in addressing these challenges, we conducted an interview study (n=9) with immigrant rights advocates. These advocates have collectively supported thousands of migrants over their careers and witnessed firsthand their struggles with surveillance tech under ATD. Among other things, our findings highlight how surveillance tech exacerbates the power imbalance between migrants and ICE officials (or their proxies), how these technologies (negatively) impact migrants, and how migrants and their advocates struggle to understand how the technologies that surveil them function. Our findings regarding the harms experienced by migrants lead us to believe that BI SmartLINK should not be used, and these harms fundamentally cannot be addressed by improvements to the app’s functionality or design. However, as this technology is currently deployed, we end by highlighting intervention opportunities for technologists to use our findings to make these high-stakes technologies less opaque for migrants and their advocates.more » « less
-
Do students learn from video lessons presented by pedagogical agents of different racial and gender types equivalently to those delivered by a real human instructor? How do the race and gender of these agents impact students’ learning experiences and outcomes? In this between-subject design study, college students were randomly assigned to view a six 9-minute video lesson on chemical bonds, presented by pedagogical agents varying in gender (male, female) and race (Asian, Black, White), or to view the original lesson with a real human instructor. In comparing learning with a human instructor versus with a pedagogical agent of various races and genres, ANOVAs revealed no significant differences in learning outcomes (retention and transfer scores) or learner emotions, but students reported a stronger social connection with the human instructor over pedagogical agents. Students reported stronger positive emotions and social connections with female agents over male agents. Additionally, there was limited evidence of a race-matching effect, with White students showing greater positive emotion while learning with pedagogical agents of the same race. These findings highlight the limitations of pedagogical agents compared to human instructors in video lessons, while partially reflecting gender stereotypes and intergroup bias in instructor evaluations.more » « less
-
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has rapidly emerged as a transformative tool in higher education, offering opportunities to enhance teaching and learning. This paper describes the design and implementation of ChatGPT-integrated curriculum activities, featuring coding learning in psychology and conceptual discussions in physics, and presents the findings of a year-long experimental study in both types of classrooms. Our findings suggest that students generally found ChatGPT easy to use and beneficial to their learning, reporting improved confidence, motivation, and engagement. However, its ability to address individual needs or replace instructors was viewed less favorably. Comparative analyses showed that coding activities in psychology led to higher levels of activity satisfaction and perceived usefulness of ChatGPT compared to the more abstract discussion activities in physics. While graduate students were more enthusiastic about using ChatGPT for skill acquisition than undergraduates, demographic factors such as gender, race, and first-generation college status showed no significant influence on such perceptions. Meanwhile, instructors’ reflections emphasize the importance of thoughtful integration, technical support, and pedagogical balance to maximize GAI’s potential while mitigating its limitations. Recommendations for integrating GAI into teaching practices and future research directions are discussed, contributing to the evolving discourse on GAI’s role in transforming modern classrooms.more » « less
-
With the advent of online educational platforms and the advances in pedagogical technologies, self-directed learning has emerged as one of the most popular modes of learning. Distance education---elevated by the COVID-19 pandemic---involves methods of instruction through a variety of remote activities which often rely on educational videos for mastery. In the absence of direct student engagement, the asynchronous nature of remote activities may deteriorate the quality of education for learners. Students often have an illusion of skill acquisition after watching videos, which results in overestimation of abilities and skills. We focus on the efficacy of skill acquisition through interactive technologies and assess their impact on computational thinking in comparison with delivery through other traditional media (e.g. videos and texts). In particular, we investigate the relationship between actual learning, perception of learning, and learners' confidence in adult learners. Our results reveal intriguing observations about the role of interactivity and visualization and their implications on the pedagogical design for self-directed learning modules.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
