More Like this

1. Is this a Science Lesson? Is this an Engineering Lesson?: Understanding how Elementary Teachers Characterize Science and Engineering and its Connection to Practice

   Hammack, Rebekah; Robinson, Julie; Gist, Jenna Rae; Lee, Min_Jung; Boz, Tugba (January 2025, Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE))

   Many professional learning (PL) opportunities with inservice teachers often focus on enhancing their understanding of the nature of engineering and the work of engineers. However, few studies connect inservice teachers’ conceptualizations of science and engineering and how these inform their classroom practice. Therefore, this study explores inservice elementary teachers’ conceptions of teaching science and engineering and how they connect their understandings of these disciplines to classroom practice. We examined the breakout discussions of 11 inservice elementary teachers regarding five vignettes of science and engineering classroom activities in a completely online PL experience. We employed the Attending-Interpreting-Responding (AIR) Teacher Noticing Framework and followed a six-step thematic analysis process by Braun and Clark (2012). These steps included collaborative sense-making sessions to discuss the descriptive coding (Saldaña, 2021) generated during independent coding sessions. Our analysis revealed several consistent key (mis)conceptions about teaching science and engineering. Teachers often characterized engineering classroom activities as tasks where students should be building and solving a problem, while they characterized science as involving observation and learning content knowledge about a topic. When describing a vignette as engineering, teachers often used the words goal, problem, and purpose interchangeably. Additionally, we uncovered teachers’ misconceptions about science that do not align with the nature of science or science and engineering practices. This gap in how teachers make sense of classroom science and engineering tasks versus how they conceptualize science and engineering disciplines highlights a significant need to address in teacher education. 

   more » « less
2. Teaching Elementary Mathematics with Educational Robotics

   https://doi.org/10.30707/JSTE57.1.1664998343.900405  

   Yuling, Zhuang; Foster, Jonathan K.; Conner AnnaMarie; Crawford, Barbara A.; Foutz, Timothy; Hill, Roger B. (January 2022, Journal of STEM Teacher Education)

   Brown, Ryan; Antink-Meyer, Allison (Ed.)

   Current education reforms call for engaging students in learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in an integrative way. This critical case study of one fourth grade teacher investigated the use of educational robots (ER) not only for teaching coding, but as an instructional support in teaching mathematical concepts. To support teachers in teaching coding in an integrative and logical manner, our team developed the Collective Argumentation Learning and Coding (CALC) approach. The CALC approach consists of three elements: choice of task, coding content, and teacher support for argumentation. After a cohort of elementary teachers completed a professional development course, we followed them into their classrooms to support and document implementation of the CALC approach. Data for this case consisted of video recordings of two lessons, a Pre-interview, and Post-interview after each lesson. Research questions included: How does an elementary teacher use the CALC approach (integrative STEM approach) to teach mathematics concepts with ER? What are the teacher’s perspectives towards teaching mathematics with ER using an integrative STEM approach? Results from this critical case provide evidence that teachers can successfully integrate ER into the mathematics curriculum without losing coherence of mathematics topics and while remaining sensitive to students’ needs. 

   more » « less
3. Supporting Connections to Teaching in an Undergraduate Calculus Course

   Turner, Kyle R.; Álvarez, James A. (January 2021, Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning)

   Marchionda, H.; Bateiha, S. (Ed.)

   The Mathematical Education of Teachers II report by the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (2012) recommends that undergraduate programs enhance prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ (PSMTs) understanding of connections between the advanced undergraduate mathematics content and the mathematics they will teach. This paper examines the connections to teaching made by one instructor and one undergraduate PSMT after implementation of two calculus lessons aimed at supporting connections to teaching. Each lesson embedded approximations of practice tasks in the learning of calculus content. Findings suggest that these lessons enabled both deepening mathematical content knowledge and insight into the work of teaching. 

   more » « less
4. Collective Argumentation: Integration of Coding into Mathematics and Science Learning

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--32375  

   Foutz, Tim; Hill, Roger; Crawford, Barbara; Thompson, Sidney; Conner, AnnaMarie; Kim, ChanMin; Jackson, David (June 2019, In proceedings of the 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.)

   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
5. Making sense of coding and robotics: Professional learning with elementary school teachers.

   Boz, T. (April 2021, Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)

   n this paper we described the process of four in-service elementary school teachers learning coding in a blended professional learning course developed and delivered through a federally funded research practice partnership project. We focused on the collective nature of learning and use activity theory (Engeström, 1999) to analyze connections among mediations, contradictions, and meaningful practices that were occurring for teachers in the course over time. The results showed that professional learning programs to support elementary teachers’ implementation of robotics and coding teaching and learning can systematically foster teachers’ collaboration in learning coding/robotics and developing lesson activities incorporating coding and robotics in meaningful ways in the day to day curriculum and teaching in their elementary classrooms. 

   more » « less