More Like this

1. The information won't just sink in: Helping teachers provide technology‐assisted data literacy instruction in social studies

   https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13255  

   Shreiner, Tamara L. ; Guzdial, Mark ( July 2022 , British Journal of Educational Technology)

   In this study, support for teaching data literacy in social studies is provided through the design of a pedagogical support system informed by participatory design sessions with both pre‐service and in‐service social studies teachers. It provides instruction on teaching and learning data literacy in social studies, examples of standards‐based lesson plans, made‐to‐purpose data visualization tools and minimal manuals that put existing online tools in a social studies context. Based on case studies of eleven practicing teachers, this study provides insight into features of technology resources that social studies teachers find usable and useful for using data visualizations as part of standards‐ and inquiry‐based social studies instruction, teaching critical analysis of data visualizations and helping students create data visualizations with online computing tools. The final result, though, is that few of our participating teachers have yet adopted the provided resources into their own classrooms, which highlights weaknesses of the technology acceptance model for describing teacher adoption.

   What is already known about this topic

   Data literacy is an important part of social studies education in the United States.

   Most teachers do not teach data literacy as a part of social studies.

   Teachers may adopt technology to help them teach data literacy if they think it is useful and usable.

   What this paper adds

   Educational technology can help teachers learn about data literacy in social studies.

   Social studies teachers want simple tools that fit with their existing curricula, give them new project ideas and help students learn difficult concepts.

   Making tools useful and usable does not predict adoption; context plays a large role in a social studies teachers' adoption.

   Implications for practice and/or policy

   Designing purpose‐built tools for social studies teachers will encourage them to teach data literacy in their classes.

   Professional learning opportunities for teachers around data literacy should include opportunities for experimentation with tools.

   Teachers are not likely to use tools if they are not accompanied by lesson and project ideas.

    

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2. Student inquiry in interesting lessons

   Nieves, Hector I. ; Singh, Rashmi ; Dietiker, Leslie ( January 2020 , Mathematics Education Across Cultures: Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)

   Sacristán, A. I. ; Cortés-Zavala, J. C. ; Ruiz-Arias, P. M. (Ed.)

   What impact, if any, do interesting lessons have on the types of questions students ask? To explore this question, we used lesson observations of six teachers from three high schools in the Northeast who were part of a larger study. Lessons come from a range of courses, spanning Algebra through Calculus. After each lesson, students reported interest via lesson experience surveys (Author, 2019). These interest measures were then used to identify each teachers’ highest and lowest interest lessons. The two lessons per teacher allows us to compare across the same set of students per teacher. We compiled 145 student questions and identified whether questions were asked within a group work setting or part of a whole class discussion. Two coders coded 10% of data to improve the rubric for type of students’ questions (what, why, how, and if) and perceived intent (factual, procedural, reasoning, and exploratory). Factual questions asked for definitions or explicit answers. Procedural questions were raised when students looked for algorithms or a solving process. Reasoning questions asked about why procedures worked, or facts were true. Exploratory questions expanded beyond the topic of focus, such as asking about changing the parameters to make sense of a problem. The remaining 90% of data were coded independently to determine interrater reliability (see Landis & Koch, 1977). A Cohen’s Kappa statistic (K=0.87, p<0.001) indicates excellent reliability. Furthermore, both coders reconciled codes before continuing with data analysis. Initial results showed differences between high- and low-interest lessons. Although students raised fewer mathematical questions in high-interest lessons (59) when compared with low-interest lessons (86), high-interest lessons contained more “exploratory” questions (10 versus 6). A chi-square test of independence shows a significant difference, χ2 (3, N = 145) = 12.99, p = .005 for types of students’ questions asked in high- and low-interest lessons. The high-interest lessons had more student questions arise during whole class discussions, whereas low-interest lessons had more student questions during group work. By partitioning each lesson into acts at points where the mathematical content shifted, we were able to examine through how many acts questions remained open. The average number of acts the students’ questions remained unanswered for high-interest lessons (2.66) was higher than that of low-interest lessons (1.68). Paired samples t-tests suggest that this difference is significant t(5)=2.58, p = 0.049. Therefore, student interest in the lesson did appear to impact the type of questions students ask. One possible reason for the differences in student questions is the nature of the lessons students found interesting, which may allow for student freedom to wonder and chase their mathematical ideas. There may be more overall student questions in low-interest lessons because of confusion, but more research is needed to unpack the reasoning behind student questions. 

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3. Co‐designing teacher support technology for problem‐based learning in middle school science

   https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13363  

   Hutchins, Nicole M. ; Biswas, Gautam ( July 2023 , British Journal of Educational Technology)

   This paper provides an experience report on a co‐design approach with teachers to co‐create learning analytics‐based technology to support problem‐based learning in middle school science classrooms. We have mapped out a workflow for such applications and developed design narratives to investigate the implementation, modifications and temporal roles of the participants in the design process. Our results provide precedent knowledge on co‐designing with experienced and novice teachers and co‐constructing actionable insight that can help teachers engage more effectively with their students' learning and problem‐solving processes during classroom PBL implementations.

   What is already known about this topic

   Success of educational technology depends in large part on the technology's alignment with teachers' goals for their students, teaching strategies and classroom context.

   Teacher and researcher co‐design of educational technology and supporting curricula has proven to be an effective way for integrating teacher insight and supporting their implementation needs.

   Co‐designing learning analytics and support technologies with teachers is difficult due to differences in design and development goals, workplace norms, and AI‐literacy and learning analytics background of teachers.

   What this paper adds

   We provide a co‐design workflow for middle school teachers that centres on co‐designing and developing actionable insights to support problem‐based learning (PBL) by systematic development of responsive teaching practices using AI‐generated learning analytics.

   We adapt established human‐computer interaction (HCI) methods to tackle the complex task of classroom PBL implementation, working with experienced and novice teachers to create a learning analytics dashboard for a PBL curriculum.

   We demonstrate researcher and teacher roles and needs in ensuring co‐design collaboration and the co‐construction of actionable insight to support middle school PBL.

   Implications for practice and/or policy

   Learning analytics researchers will be able to use the workflow as a tool to support their PBL co‐design processes.

   Learning analytics researchers will be able to apply adapted HCI methods for effective co‐design processes.

   Co‐design teams will be able to pre‐emptively prepare for the difficulties and needs of teachers when integrating middle school teacher feedback during the co‐design process in support of PBL technologies.

    

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4. First Year Experience from RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing

   Zhu, W. ( January 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   In 2019, University of Houston (UH) at Houston, Texas was awarded an NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site grant titled “RET Site: High School Teacher Experience in Engineering Design and Manufacturing.” The goal of the project is to host 12 high school teachers each summer to participate in engineering design and manufacturing research and then convert their experience into high school curriculum. In summer of 2021, the first cohort of 12 teachers from Region 4 of Southeast Texas participated in the RET program at UH College of Technology (COT). This six-week program, open to local high school STEM teachers in Texas, sought to advance educators’ knowledge of concepts in design and manufacturing as a means of enriching high school curriculums and meeting foundational standards set by 2013’s Texas House Bill 5. These standards require enhanced STEM contents in high school curricula as a prerequisite for graduation, detailed in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standard. Due to the pandemic situation, about 50% of the activities are online and the rest are face to face. About 40% of the time, teachers attended online workshops to enhance their knowledge of topics in engineering design and manufacturing before embarking on applicable research projects in the labs. Six UH COT engineering technology professors each led workshops in a week. The four tenure-track engineering mentors, assisted by student research assistants, each mentored three teachers on projects ranging from additive manufacturing to thermal/fluids, materials, and energy. The group also participated in field trips to local companies including ARC Specialties, Master Flo, Re:3D, and Forged Components. They worked with two instructional track engineering technology professors and one professor of education on applying their learnings to lesson plan design. Participants also met weekly for online Brown Bag teacher seminars to share their experiences and discuss curricula, which was organized by the RET master teacher. On the final day of the program, the teachers presented their curriculum prototype for the fall semester to the group and received completion certificates. The program assessment was led by the assessment specialist, Director of Assessment and Accreditation at UH COT. Teacher participants found the research experience with their mentors beneficial not only to them, but also to their students according to our findings from interviews. The mentors will visit their mentees’ classrooms to see the lesson plans being implemented. In the spring of 2022, the teachers will present their refined curricula at a RET symposium to be organized at UH and submit their standards-aligned plans to teachengineering.org for other K-12 educators to access. 

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5. Supporting collaborative classroom networks through technology: An actor network theory approach to understanding social behaviours and design

   https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13274  

   Kumar, Vishesh ; Tissenbaum, Mike ( September 2022 , British Journal of Educational Technology)

   This paper presents an implementation of Connected Spaces (CxS)—an ambient help seeking interface designed and developed for a project‐based computing classroom. We use actor network theory (ANT) to provide an underutilized posthumanist lens to understand the creation of collaborative connections in this Computational Action‐based implementation. Posthumanism offers an emerging and critical extension to sociocultural perspectives on understanding learning, by pushing us to decenter the human, and consider the active roles that human and non‐human entities play in learning environments by actively shaping each other. We analyse how students in this class adjusted their help‐seeking and collaborative habits following the introduction of CxS, a tool designed to foster (more inter‐group) collaboration. ANT proposes generalized symmetry—a principle of considering human, non‐human and more than human entities with equivalent and comparable agency, leading to describing phenomena as networks of actors in different evolving relationships with each other. Analysing collaborative interactions as fostered by CxS using an ANT approach supports design‐based research—an iterative design revision process highlighting understandings about design as well as learning—by providing a temporal and informative lens into the relationship between actors and tools within the environment. Our key findings include a framing of technologies in classrooms as bridgingagentic gapsbetween students and becoming actors engaging in different behaviours; learners enacting new agencies through technologies (for instance a more comfortable non‐intrusive help seeker), and the need for voicing and teachers to connect help networks in CxS equipped classrooms.

   What is already known about this topic

   Collaborative learning is a valuable skill and practice; opportunities to mentor others are critical in empowering minoritized learners, especially in STEM and computing disciplines.

   School norms solidify a power and expertise hierarchy between teachers and learners and fail to productively support learners in learning from each other.

   Additionally, lack of awareness about peers' knowledge is a common hindrance in students knowing who to ask for help and how.

   What this paper adds

   An example of a designed interface called Connected Spaces with potential to foster more inter‐student collaboration, especially outside of mandated within‐group collaboration—in the form of cross‐group help seeking and help giving.

   A design based research study using actor network theory highlighting the limitations of Connected Spaces in sparking notable behaviour change among students by itself but being retooled as a teacher support tool in enabling cross‐group collaborations.

   Presenting conceptions of collaboration through technologies as bridging agentic gaps and acting with new agencies in performing help‐seeking related actions.

   Provoking the idea of testing emerging technologies in classrooms along with sharing our analyses and reflections with the classroom as a key idea in computing education—surfacing the gap between designed intentions and the different kinds of extra social work needed in the on‐ground success of different technologies.

   Implications for practice and/or policy

   Designers and researchers should create and test more interfaces alongside teachers across different classrooms and contexts aimed at supporting different kinds of voluntary collaborative interactions.

   Curricula, standards and school practices should further center providing students with opportunities to engage as mentors and build communities of learning across disciplines to empower minoritized students.

   Researchers engaging in design based research should consider using more posthumanist lenses to examine educational technologies and how they affect change in learning environments.

    

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