skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the NSF-PAR

  • NSF Public Access
  • Search Results
  • Instructor facilitation of STEM+CT discourse: engaging, prompting and guiding students’ computational modeling in physics
Title: Instructor facilitation of STEM+CT discourse: engaging, prompting and guiding students’ computational modeling in physics
The integration of computational modeling into instruction in science classrooms is complex in that it requires the synergistic application of students’ developing science and computational thinking knowledge. This is not only difficult for students, but teachers often find it hard to parse the science content from the computational constructs to guide students when they have difficulties. Leveraging past literature that highlights the beneficial impact instructors can have when they immerse themselves in group problem-solving discussions, this paper examines the instructors’ role in facilitating students’ construction of and problem-solving with computational models. We utilize a case study approach to analyze instructor-facilitated, synchronous group discussions during applications of synergistic learning processes to understand how instructors may elicit students’ knowledge, misunderstanding, and difficulties to help guide, prompt, and engage groups in this complex task for more productive integration in K-12 science classrooms. We hope that this will lead to better scaffolding of students' learning, and better support for teachers when they use such curricula in classrooms.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2017000
NSF-PAR ID:
10348699
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Editor(s):
Chinn, C.
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Computersupported collaborative learning
ISSN:
1573-4552
Page Range / eLocation ID:
631-639
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ( , British Journal of Educational Technology)
    Abstract  
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , American Society of Engineering education)
    Biologically inspired design has become increasingly common in graduate and undergraduate engineering programs, consistent with an expanding emphasis by professional engineering societies on cross-disciplinary critical thinking skills and adaptive and sustainable design. However, bio-inspired engineering is less common in K-12 education. In 2019, the NSF funded a K-12 project entitled Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE), to create socially relevant, accessible, and highly contextualized high school engineering curricula focusing on bio-inspired design. Studies have shown that women and underrepresented minorities are drawn to curricula, courses, and instructional strategies that are integrated, emphasize systems thinking, and facilitate connection building across courses or disciplines. The BIRDEE project also seeks to interest high school girls in engineering by providing curricula that incorporate humanistic, bio-inspired engineering with a focus on sustainable and authentic design contexts. BIRDEE curricula integrate bio-inspired design into the engineering design process by leveraging design tools that facilitate the application of biological concepts to design challenges. This provides a conceptual framework enabling students to systematically define a design problem, resulting in better, more well-rounded problem specifications. The professional development (PD) for the participating teachers include six-week-long summer internships in university research laboratories focused on biology and bio-inspired design. The goal of these internships is to improve engineering teachers’ knowledge of bio-inspired design by partnering with cutting-edge engineers and scientists to study animal features and behaviors and their applications to engineering design. However, due to COVID-19 and research lab closures in the summer of 2020, the research team had to transfer the summer PD experience to an online setting. An asynchronous, quasi-facilitated online course was developed and delivered to teachers over six weeks. In this paper, we will discuss online pedagogical approaches to experiential learning, teaching bio-inspired design concepts, and the integration of these approaches in the engineering design process. Central to the online PD design and function of each course was the use of inquiry, experiential and highly-collaborative learning strategies. Preliminary results show that teachers appreciated the aspects of the summer PD that included exploration, such as during the “Found Object” activity, and the process of building a prototype. These activities represented experiential learning opportunities where teachers were able to learn by doing. It was noted throughout the focus group discussions that such opportunities were appreciated by participating teachers. Teachers indicated that the experiential learning components of the PD allowed them to do something outside of their comfort zone, inspired them to do research that they would not have done outside of this experience, and allowed them to “be in the student's seat and get hands-on application”. By participating in these experiential learning opportunities, teachers were also able to better understand how the BIRDEE curriculum may impact students’ learning in their classrooms 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ( , Learning and individual differences)
    Grieff, S. (Ed.)
    Recently there has been increased development of curriculum and tools that integrate computing (C) into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) learning environments. These environments serve as a catalyst for authentic collaborative problem-solving (CPS) and help students synergistically learn STEM+C content. In this work, we analyzed students’ collaborative problem-solving behaviors as they worked in pairs to construct computational models in kinematics. We leveraged social measures, such as equity and turn-taking, along with a domain-specific measure that quantifies the synergistic interleaving of science and computing concepts in the students’ dialogue to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between students’ collaborative behaviors and their ability to complete a STEM+C computational modeling task. Our results extend past findings identifying the importance of synergistic dialogue and suggest that while equitable discourse is important for overall task success, fluctuations in equity and turn-taking at the segment level may not have an impact on segment-level task performance. To better understand students’ segment-level behaviors, we identified and characterized groups’ planning, enacting, and reflection behaviors along with monitoring processes they employed to check their progress as they constructed their models. Leveraging Markov Chain (MC) analysis, we identified differences in high- and low-performing groups’ transitions between these phases of students’ activities. We then compared the synergistic, turn-taking, and equity measures for these groups for each one of the MC model states to gain a deeper understanding of how these collaboration behaviors relate to their computational modeling performance. We believe that characterizing differences in collaborative problem-solving behaviors allows us to gain a better understanding of the difficulties students face as they work on their computational modeling tasks. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ( , International Journal of STEM Education)
    Abstract Background

    Small-group discussions are well established as an effective pedagogical tool to promote student learning in STEM classrooms. However, there are a variety of factors that influence how and to what extent K-12 teachers use small-group discussions in their classrooms, including both their own STEM content knowledge and their perceived ability to facilitate discussions. We designed the present study to specifically target these two factors in the context of photovoltaics, an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of all STEM disciplines with potential to yield widespread benefits related to the use of solar technologies as a sustainable, renewable energy source. Teachers engaged in a series of small-group discussions based on photovoltaic source material (e.g., scientific articles) to build both their STEM content knowledge and capability with discussions, promoting their potential to design and deliver STEM instruction in their own classrooms using small-group discussion.

     Results

    Overall, teachers productively engaged in rich STEM talk as they spent most of the time in the discussion asking authentic questions about photovoltaic topics in alignment with a variety of science and engineering disciplinary core ideas, responding to the questions with rich, elaborative talk, and taking on ownership of the discussions. Teachers also evidenced increases in their photovoltaic knowledge and their perceived capability to facilitate discussions. Finally, most teachers’ end-of-program lesson plans included the use of small-group discussions, and a subsample of teachers who completed a follow-up interview one year after the summer program reported greater enactment of discussion in their STEM classrooms.

     Conclusion

    Our manuscript forwards an important contribution that draws from a practice-based approach to professional development in a way that not only better prepares teachers on what to teach (i.e., through enhanced PV content knowledge), but it also supports their ability to implement this instruction into their classrooms more effectively (i.e., though the use of small-group discussion). As such, this manuscript illustrates an innovative pedagogical approach for potential use in supporting teacher education and informs ways to enable teachers to build enhanced curricula for their STEM students.

     
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ( , Journal of Research in Science Teaching)
    Phenomena‐based approaches have become popular for elementary school teachers to engage children's innate curiosity in the natural world. However, integrating such phenomena‐based approaches in existing science courses within teacher education programs present potential challenges for both preservice elementary teachers (PSETs) and for laboratory instructors, both of whom may have had limited opportunities to learn or teach science within the student and instructor roles inherent within these approaches. This study uses a convergent parallel mixed‐methods approach to investigate PSETs' perceptions of their laboratory instructor's role within a Physical Science phenomena‐based laboratory curriculum and how it impacts their conceptual development (2 instructors/121 students). We also examine how the two laboratory instructors' discursive moves within the laboratory align with their's and PSETs' perceptions of the instructor role. Qualitative data includes triangulation between a student questionnaire, an instructor questionnaire, and video classroom observations, while quantitative data includes a nine‐item open response pre‐/post‐semester conceptual test. Guided by Mortimer's and Scott's analytic framework, our findings show that students primarily perceive their instructors as a guide/facilitator or an authoritarian/evaluator. Using Linn's knowledge integration framework, analysis of pre‐/post‐tests indicates that student outcomes align with students' perceptions of their instructors, with students who perceive their instructor as a guide/facilitator having significantly better pre‐/post‐outcomes. Additional analysis of scientific discourse from the classroom observations illustrates how one instructor primarily supports PSETs' perspectives on authentic science learning through dialogic–interactive talk moves whereas the other instructor epistemologically stifles personally relevant investigations with authoritative–interactive or authoritative–noninteractive discourse moves. Overall, this study concludes by discussing challenges facing laboratory instructors that need careful consideration for phenomena‐based approaches. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email