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In this presentation, the research team discussed teachers' facilitation of argumentation in teaching computer programming (or coding) and how it related to their epistemic beliefs about mathematics and science. The preliminary results showed that teachers engaged their students in both justificatory and inquiry arguments when teaching coding. This was not the case with respect to mathematics and science, in which teachers described engaging students either in justificatory or inquiry argumentation exclusively. The team proposes that these siloed uses of argumentation in mathematics and science relate to the teachers' epistemic beliefs about the disciplines, and their use of argumentation in coding builds on and goes beyond their experiences with argumentation in teaching mathematics and science.
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Elementary teachers’ videos of instruction: Using argumentation in teaching mathematics, science, and coding
A collaborative team of STEM educators engaged teachers in sharing videos of their instruction focused on using argumentation and coding across disciplines. Attendees will extend their understandings of argumentation and consider how teacher-selected videos provide insight into teachers’ thinking
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- Award ID(s):
- 1741910
- PAR ID:
- 10250047
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- wenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 37
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Next Generation Science Standards [1] recognized evidence-based argumentation as one of the essential skills for students to develop throughout their science and engineering education. Argumentation focuses students on the need for quality evidence, which helps to develop their deep understanding of content [2]. Argumentation has been studied extensively, both in mathematics and science education but also to some extent in engineering education (see for example [3], [4], [5], [6]). After a thorough search of the literature, we found few studies that have considered how teachers support collective argumentation during engineering learning activities. The purpose of this program of research was to support teachers in viewing argumentation as an important way to promote critical thinking and to provide teachers with tools to implement argumentation in their lessons integrating coding into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (which we refer to as integrative STEM). We applied a framework developed for secondary mathematics [7] to understand how teachers support collective argumentation in integrative STEM lessons. This framework used Toulmin’s [8] conceptualization of argumentation, which includes three core components of arguments: a claim (or hypothesis) that is based on data (or evidence) accompanied by a warrant (or reasoning) that relates the data to the claim [9], [8]. To adapt the framework, video data were coded using previously established methods for analyzing argumentation [7]. In this paper, we consider how the framework can be applied to an elementary school teacher’s classroom interactions and present examples of how the teacher implements various questioning strategies to facilitate more productive argumentation and deeper student engagement. We aim to understand the nature of the teacher’s support for argumentation—contributions and actions from the teacher that prompt or respond to parts of arguments. In particular, we look at examples of how the teacher supports students to move beyond unstructured tinkering (e.g., trial-and-error) to think logically about coding and develop reasoning for the choices that they make in programming. We also look at the components of arguments that students provide, with and without teacher support. Through the use of the framework, we are able to articulate important aspects of collective argumentation that would otherwise be in the background. The framework gives both eyes to see and language to describe how teachers support collective argumentation in integrative STEM classrooms.more » « less
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This project, titled Collective Argumentation Learning and Coding (CALC), is based on our belief that if teachers had an instructional approach that allowed them to teach coding alongside mathematics and science in integrated ways, then coding would become a mainstream subject taught in the elementary school curriculum. However, few practicing elementary school teachers have the academic backgrounds that allow them to teach coding in a manner that goes beyond allowing students to learn how to code through trial-and-error experimentation and as an additive learning activity such as an after-school program. Current content and practice standards call for the use of argumentation in the teaching of mathematics and science. This project is focused on extending the collective argumentation framework for the teaching of mathematics to the teaching of coding. Teachers at our partnering school district have completed the first design of a prototype CALC course where they used collective argumentation to learn how to code educational robotics. At the end of this course, the teachers developed lesson plans that were implemented in grades 3, 4 and 5.This paper and conference presentation focused on the research question, how do elementary school teachers use the CALC approach to support their students’ learning of coding, mathematics, and science content and practices? Overall, the implementation of the CALC approach demonstrated the growth of the teachers in their ability to teach coding as a reasoning process and as a means to integrate it into everyday classroom activities.more » « less
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Abstract It is important to understand how students reason in K-12 integrated STEM settings to better prepare teachers to engage their students in integrated STEM tasks. To understand the reasoning that occurs in these settings, we used the lens of collective argumentation, specifically attending to the types of warrants elementary students and their teachers provided and accepted in integrated STEM contexts and how teachers supported students in providing these warrants. We watched 103 h of classroom instruction from 10 elementary school teachers and analyzed warrants that occurred in arguments in mathematics, coding, and integrated contexts to develop a typology of warrants contributed in mathematics and coding arguments. We found that these students made their warrants explicit the majority of the time, regardless of the teacher’s presence or absence. When teachers were present, they supported argumentation in various ways; however, they offered less support in integrated contexts. Additionally, we found students relied more on visual observations in coding contexts than in mathematics or integrated contexts, where they often provided warrants based on procedures required to accomplish a task. These findings have implications for improving integrated STEM instruction through engaging students in argumentation.more » « less
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Collective Argumentation Learning and Coding (CALC) is a research project that provides teachers with strategies to engage students in collective argumentation in mathematics, science, and coding. Thirty-two elementary teachers participated in a semester-long professional development course that included coding content and discussions about using collective argumentation across multiple disciplines. Ten teachers were selected for the enactment phase, in which classroom observations and coaching sessions were conducted during the semester after completing the professional development course.more » « less
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