skip to main content


Title: Emergent Bilingual Middle Schoolers’ Syncretic Reasoning in Statistical Modeling
Background/Context: Bi/multilingual students’ STEM learning is better supported when educators leverage their language and cultural practices as resources, but STEM subject divisions have been historically constructed based on oppressive, dominant values and exclude the ways of knowing of nondominant groups. Truly promoting equity requires expanding and transforming STEM disciplines. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article contributes to efforts to illuminate emergent bi/multilingual students’ ways of knowing, languaging, and doing in STEM. We follow the development of syncretic literacies in relation to translanguaging practices, asking, How do knowledges and practices from different communities get combined and reorganized by students and teachers in service of new modeling practices? Setting and Participants: We focus on a seventh-grade science classroom, deliberately designed to support syncretic literacies and translanguaging practices, where computer science concepts were infused into the curriculum through modeling activities. The majority of the students in the bilingual program had arrived in the United States at most three years before enrolling, from the Caribbean and Central and South America. Research Design: We analyze one lesson that was part of a larger research–practice partnership focused on teaching computer science through leveraging translanguaging practices and syncretic literacies. The lesson was a modeling and computing activity codesigned by the teacher and two researchers about post–Hurricane María outmigration from Puerto Rico. Analysis used microethnographic methods to trace how students assembled translanguaging, social, and schooled practices to make sense of and construct models. Findings/Results: Findings show how students assembled representational forms from a variety of practices as part of accomplishing and negotiating both designed and emergent goals. These included sensemaking, constructing, explaining, justifying, and interpreting both the physical and computational models of migration. Conclusions/Recommendations: Implications support the development of theory and pedagogy that intentionally make space for students to engage in meaning-making through translanguaging and syncretic practices in order to provide new possibilities for lifting up STEM learning that may include, but is not constrained by, disciplinary learning. Additional implications for teacher education and student assessment practices call for reconceptualizing schooling beyond day-to-day curriculum as part of making an ontological shift away from prioritizing math, science, and CS disciplinary and language objectives as defined by and for schooling, and toward celebrating, supporting, and centering students’ diverse, syncretic knowledges and knowledge use.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1837446 1738645
NSF-PAR ID:
10352913
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education
Volume:
124
Issue:
5
ISSN:
0161-4681
Page Range / eLocation ID:
206 to 228
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Bilingual education has described a process called translanguaging by which students use linguistic resources across and beyond multiple named languages to learn. Here, we examine how bilingual learners translanguage while learning computer science. These middle schoolers participated in a curricular intervention which infused computational thinking into their Spanish-English bilingual language arts class. Through a descriptive qualitative methodology, we document classroom moments supporting four claims: 1) students’ translanguaging blurs linguistic, disciplinary, and modal boundaries, 2) computational literacies are intertwined with students’ other literacies , 3) students’ attitudes about language and the contexts around them play a role in their translanguaging, and 4) students translanguage to engage in specific CT practices. 
    more » « less
  2. Three Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone–serving districts formed a researcher–practitioner partnership with the Wyoming Department of Education, the American Institutes for Research®, and BootUp Professional Development to advance the computer science (CS) education of their elementary students in ways that strengthen their Indigenous identities and knowledges. In this paper, we share experiences from 2019 to 2022 with our curriculum development, professional development (PD), and classroom implementation. The researcher–practitioner partnership developed student and teacher materials to support elementary CS lessons aligned to Wyoming’s CS standards and “Indian Education for All” social studies standards. Indigenous community members served as experts to codesign culturally relevant resources. Teachers explored the curriculum resources during three 4-hour virtual and in-person PD sessions. The sessions were designed to position the teachers as designers of CS projects they eventually implemented in their classrooms. Projects completed by students included simulated interviews with Indigenous heroes and animations of students introducing themselves in their Native languages. Teachers described several positive effects of the Scratch lessons on students, including high engagement, increased confidence, and successful application of several CS concepts. The teachers also provided enthusiastic positive reviews of the ways the CS lessons allowed students to explore their Indigenous identities while preparing to productively use technology in their futures. The Wind River Elementary CS Collaborative is one model for how a researcher–practitioner partnership can utilize diverse forms of expertise, ways of knowing, and Indigenous language to engage in curriculum design, PD, and classroom implementation that supports culturally sustaining CS pedagogies in Indigenous communities. 
    more » « less
  3. null (Ed.)
    Engaging students in science learning that integrates disciplinary knowledge and practices such as computational thinking (CT) is a challenge that may represent unfamiliar territory for many teachers. CompHydro Baltimore is a collaborative partnership aimed at enacting Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)–aligned instruction to support students in developing knowledge and practice reflective of the goals laid out in A Framework for K–12 Science Education (National Research Council 2012) “... that by the end of 12th grade, all students possess sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussion on related issues … and are careful consumers of scientific and technological information related to their everyday lives.” This article presents the results of a partnership that generated a new high school level curriculum and teacher professional development program that tackled the challenge of integrating hydrologic learning with computational thinking as applied to a real-world issue of flooding. CompHydro Baltimore produced Baltimore Floods, a six-lesson high school unit that builds students’ water literacy by engaging them in computational thinking (CT) and modeling practices as they learn about water system processes involved in urban flooding (See Computational Thinking and Associated Science Practices). CompHydro demonstrates that broad partnerships can address these challenges, bringing together the diverse expertise necessary to develop innovative CT-infused science curriculum materials and the teacher supports needed for successful implementation. 
    more » « less
  4. In this article, we share examples from our project, Participating in Literacies and Computer Science (PiLaCS), which focuses on how students' language practices shape their participation and engagement in language arts projects that integrate code. Integrating Code into Language Arts: Ashley's Multimodal Translanguaging Approach Tasked with fulfilling her school's commitment to CS for All within her sixth grade bilingual language arts class, Ashley chose to teach a unit with a software and programming language called Scratch, created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to support creative approaches to code (https://scratch.mit.edu/). What follows are examples from Ashley's class that demonstrate how a CS-integrated language arts curriculum provided her students with space to engage, create, and communicate using language, text, and their bodies in dynamic expressions. Álvaro's dynamic expression of sliding across the room animated his understanding of the connection between the text and the code, showing how integrating code into language arts provides a forum for students' language practices to be integrated and validated. 
    more » « less
  5. Research in science education with multilingual learners (MLs) has expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion can be situated within a larger dialogue about what it means to provide minoritized students with an equitable education. Whereas some conceptions of equity focus on ensuring all students have access to the knowledge, practices, and language normatively valued in K‐12 schools (equity as access), increasingly prominent conceptions focus on transforming those knowledge, practices, and language in ways that center minoritized students and their communities (equity as transformation). In this article, we argue that conceptions of equity provide a useful lens for understanding emerging research in science education with MLs and for charting a research agenda. We begin by tracing how conceptions of equity have evolved in parallel across STEM and multilingual education. Then, we provide an overview of recent developments from demographic, theoretical, and policy perspectives. In the context of these developments, we provide a conceptual synthesis of emerging research by our team of early‐career scholars in three areas: (a) learning, (b) assessment, and (c) teacher education. Within each area, we unpack the research efforts in terms of how they attend to equity as access while pushing toward equity as transformation. Finally, we propose a research agenda for science education with MLs that builds on and extends these efforts. We close by offering recommendations for making this research agenda coherent and impactful: (a) being explicit about our conceptions of equity, (b) paying attention to the interplay of structure and agency, and (c) promoting interdisciplinary collaboration. 
    more » « less