Supporting students to direct their own learning is challenging. Here, we introduce framing agency, a construct defined as taking up opportunities to make consequential decisions about problems and how to proceed in learning and developing solutions. We analyzed two cases of student teams to describe framing agency in practice. We argue framing agency clarifies the kinds of learning experiences students need to overcome past experiences dominated by solving archetypical well-structured problems with predetermined solutions. Both teams faced impasses; one navigated the impasse by framing the problem, whereas the other treated the problem as given. Using sociolinguistic content analysis, we identify markers of agency in students’ talk. We compare and contrast the cases to illuminate nuances of framing agency.
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Material agency with summer STEM youth designing with Micro:bits
In this poster, we report results related to an NSF EEC CAREER project that characterizes
framing agency, defined as making decisions and learning in the process of framing design
problems. Our past studies of framing agency have relied on discourse analysis to characterize
agency in talk [1-3]. However, this analytical approach, with its focus on talk, misses much
about the materials in the design process, and given that design is commonly cast as a
conversation with materials [4], a fuller understanding of framing agency could come from
attention to material interactions. This study aimed to investigate a design setting in which
materials played a consequential role, and to incorporate another analytic method to attend to the
roles of materials in framing agency. Specifically, we examined ways learners negotiated their
agency with materials in the context of an informal STEM camp focused on learning about the
past, present, and future of radio frequency communications.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1751369
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10495168
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exhibition
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- https://peer.asee.org/42945
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Background: Because of prior experience solving well-structured problems that have single, correct answers, students often struggle to direct their own design work and may not understand the need to frame ill-structured design problems. Purpose: Framing agency—defined as making decisions that are consequential to framing design problems and learning through this process—sheds light on students’ treatment of design problems; by framing, we mean the various actions designers take to understand, define, and bound the problem. Using the construct framing agency, we sought to characterize design team discourse to detect whether students treated design problems as ill- or well-structured and examine the consequences of this treatment. Method: Data were collected through extended participant observation of a capstone design course in a biomedical engineering program at a large research university. Data included audio and video records of design team meetings over the course of framing and solving industry-sponsored problems. For this paper, we analyzed three cases using sociolinguistic content analysis to characterize framing agency and compared the cases to illuminate the nuances of framing agency. Results: All teams faced impasses; one team navigated the impasse by framing the problem, whereas the others treated the problem as given. We identified markers of agency in students’ discourse, including tentative language, personal pronouns, and sharing ownership. Conclusions: Framing agency clarifies the kinds of learning experiences students need in order to overcome past experiences dominated by solving archetypical well-structured problems with predetermined solutions.more » « less
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Purpose. To make course-based, undergraduate design projects more manageable, instructors often reduce or remove the open-ended quality, which in turn limits opportunities for students to learn to frame design problems. Here we introduce and characterize the construct, framing agency, which involves taking up opportunities to make consequential decisions about design problems and how to proceed in learning and developing solutions. Methodology. We employed a multi-case study design, selecting cases of student design teams across different sites and levels, all in undergraduate engineering courses. Teams were audio/video recorded during their design process. We adapted a functional linguistics tool [1] to identify markers of agency in students’ design discourse, comparing and contrasting the cases to illuminate the nuances of framing agency. We also identified learning versus task-completion orientations. Results. All students exhibited agency in some form, but not all exhibited framing agency. Analysis suggests that framing agency is commonly shared across participants and tentative in nature early in the design process. Students who exhibited framing agency tended to adopt a learning rather than task-completion orientation. Students who exhibited agency, but not framing agency, made decisions that foregrounded accuracy and efficiency at the expense of exploring tentative ideas, and tended to treat the problem as having a single right answer. Conclusions. We argue that how students negotiate design problem framing depends on whether or not they consider the design problem relevant and authentic, the belief that each member brings different and potentially useful information to the task, and the opportunity to iterate design ideas over time. Framing agency provides a lens for understanding the kinds of design learning experiences students need to direct their own learning and negotiate that learning with peers in design projects.more » « less
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While project-based learning purportedly values student agency, supporting and managing this remains challenging. We conducted a design-based research study to understand how problem authenticity, and task and participant structures can contribute to students’ framing agency, in which students make decisions that are consequential to their learning through ill-structured problem framing. We compared three semesters of an undergraduate engineering design project (cohort 1 n=70; cohort 2 n=70; cohort 3 n=66). Discourse analysis of team talk highlights how task and participant structures supported students in the first and third cohorts to display framing agency. In contrast, cohort 2 displayed high agency over task completion, which they had framed as well-structured. We discuss implications for designing ill-structured learning in terms of participant and task structure and problem authenticity.
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In this research paper, we investigate the structure and validity of survey data related to students’ framing agency. In order to promote increased opportunities for students to engage in and learn to frame design problems that are innovative and empathetic, there is a need for instruments that can provide information about student progress and the quality of learning experiences. This is a complex problem because, compared to problem solving, design problem framing is less studied and harder to predict due to the higher levels of student agency involved. To address this issue, we developed a survey to measure framing agency, which is defined as opportunities to frame and reframe design problems and learn in the process. This study extends past research which focused on the construct of framing agency and developing an instrument to measure it following best practices in survey design, including using exploratory factor analysis of pilot data, which recovered six factors related to shared and individual consequentiality, problem structure and constrainedness, and learning. However, as a pilot, the sample limited generalizability; the current study addresses this limitation. We used a national cohort that included multiple engineering disciplines (biomedical, mechanical, chemical, electrical, computer, aerospace), types of formal design projects (e.g., first-year, design-spine, senior capstone) and institution types, including private religious; Hispanic-serving; public land-grant; and research flagship institutions (N=449). We report sample characteristics and used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to provide validity evidence, reporting the chi-square and standardized root mean square residual as estimates of fit. We report Cronbach’s alpha as a measure of internal consistency. We found that overall, the CFA aligned with the prior exploratory results, in this case, recovering four factors, measured on a seven-point scale: shared consequentiality (the extent to which the student identifies that their understanding of the problem changed as result of a teammate’s decision, M = 6.15; SD = 1.13); learning as consequentiality (the extent to which the student identifies learning as the result of decisions, M = 5.88; SD = 0.98); constrainedness (the extent to which the student reports the ability to make decisions despite design constraints, M = 4.95; SD = 1.49); and shared tentativeness (the extent to which the student identifies uncertainty about the problem and solution, M = 4.02; SD = 1.76). This suggests the survey can provide valid data for instructional decisions and further research into how students learn to frame engineering design problems and what role framing plays in their professional formation.more » « less
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