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1. Observing Intellectual Need and its Relationship with Undergraduate Students’ Learning of Calculus

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-022-00192-x  

   Weinberg, Aaron; Corey, Douglas L.; Tallman, Michael; Jones, Steven R.; Martin, Jason (September 2022, International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education)

   The concept of intellectual need, which proposes that learning is the result of students wrestling with a problem that is unsolvable by their current knowledge, has been used in instructional design for many years. However, prior research has not described a way to empirically determine whether, and to what extent, students experience intellectual need. In this paper, we present a methodology for identifying students’ intellectual need and report the results of a study that investigated students’ reactions to intellectual need-provoking tasks in first-semester calculus classes. We also explore the relationship between intellectual need, affective need, and students’ learning. Although the overall percentage of students who reported experiencing an intellectual need was low, we found positive associations between intellectual need and learning. 

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2. Observing Intellectual Need in Online Instructional Tasks

   Corey, Douglas L.; Weinberg, A.; Tallman, M. (January 2022, 24th Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education)

   Karunakaran, S. S.; Higgins, A. (Ed.)

   The idea of intellectual need, which proposes that learning is the result of students wrestling with a problem that is unsolvable by their current knowledge, has been used in instructional design for many years. However, prior research has not described a way to empirically determine whether, and to what extent, students’ experience intellectual need. In this paper, we present a methodology to identify students’ intellectual need and also report the results of a study that investigated students’ reactions to intellectual need-provoking tasks in first-semester calculus classes. 

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3. Designing and enacting lessons to promote students’ epistemic agency in middle school biology classrooms

   Akçil-Okan, Ö.; Tekkumru-Kisa, M.; Southerland, S. A. (January 2023, Annual Meeting of the National Association of Research in Science Teaching)

   Reform-based instruction that fosters all students’ intellectual engagement and sensemaking is possible. However, it is not yet prevalent across many science classrooms. To gain more insight into how to design and enact science instruction supporting students’ intellectual engagement, this investigation centered on understanding how to design and implement science lessons for promoting students’ intellectual engagement as epistemic agents who shape knowledge building happening in the classroom. We examined a middle school science teacher's design and implementation of four lessons that she did as part of a PD focused on fostering productive science talk in science classrooms. Our analysis revealed that her efforts in fostering opportunities for students’ epistemic agency were evident in both her lesson design and implementation. Her responsiveness to students’ thinking/intellectual engagement throughout the lesson implementations via principled improvisations supported opportunities for students’ epistemic agency. Her efforts allow us to understand how the design and implementation of science lessons with the focus of opening space and maintaining this space by being responsive to students’ thinking are critical for fostering students’ epistemic agency. These findings can provide implications for professional development efforts that seek to develop teachers’ capacity for reform-based instruction in science classrooms. 

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4. Fostering Students’ Epistemic Agency For Rigorous Science Instruction

   Akcil-Okan, O.; Tekkumru-Kisa, M. (January 2022, Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)

   Reform-based rigorous instruction which fosters all students’ thinking and sensemaking is possible; however, it is not yet prevalent in science classrooms. This study explored promoting rigorous instruction by enhancing students’ intellectual work through cognitively demanding tasks. We examined instruction during the five lessons in a science classroom. We found variations in students’ intellectual work across the lessons. Our analysis revealed that the instructional practices associated with promoting students’ engagement in rigorous thinking were consequential for promoting students’ epistemic agency. Thus, we argue that maintaining and enhancing demand on students’ intellectual engagement in cognitively demanding tasks requires the work of providing opportunities for students to learn science-as-practice by acting as epistemic agents. These findings can inform professional efforts regarding rigorous instruction. 

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5. Small Teacher Moves with Big Impacts in Shaping Students’ Sensemaking and Intellectual Authority in Science

   Schellinger, J.; Morandi, S.; Southerland, S.A.; Jaber, L.Z.; Tekkumru-Kisa, M.; & Krishnan, H. (January 2021, National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting 2021)

   null (Ed.)

   This study explores the epistemological framing dynamics in one middle school biology classroom and how those dynamics shape students’ collaborative sensemaking in science. We trace how the teacher’s instructional moves shaped students’ framing, and the ways in which that framing influenced students’ learning. Our analysis shows that while the teacher framed small group argumentation activities as spaces for students to generate and negotiate ideas, brief but influential moves at the end of the lesson, which emphasized the correct answer, undermined students’ sensemaking and intellectual authority. These findings have implications for the design of teacher education highlighting the need to promote teachers’ awareness of the impact of their instructional moves in terms of how students frame their efforts in the classroom. 

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