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1. Tools to Support High School Students' Creativity in Scientific Research: Creativity Support Tools for Research

   Matuk, C; d'Anjou, B; Mansukhani, P; Porteous, F; Burgas, K; Zerwas, F; Shevchenko, Y; Dikker, S (June 2024, ACM)

   As a creative endeavor, scientific research requires inspiration, innovation, exploration, and divergent thinking. Yet, in K-12 settings, it is often viewed as rigid and formulaic. MindHive is a web-based platform designed to facilitate student-teacher-scientist partnerships in research on human behavior. Features support research phases (e.g., question finding, study design, peer review, iteration), and their creative dimensions, including exploration, expressiveness, collaboration, and enjoyment. Interviews with teachers and students who used MindHive show how learners describe their experiences as creative agents. This work illustrates how educational technologies can broaden STEM participation by being authentic to methodical and creative aspects of STEM research. 

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2. Creativity and Critique: Gap Analysis of Support for Critical Research on Big Data

   Howard, Philip N; Shorey, S; Woolley, S; Guo, M. (January 2016, SSRN)

   We define big data as large amounts of information, collected about many people, over multiple devices. We define critical big data research as efforts to demonstrate how flaws — ethical or methodological — in the collection and use and of big have implications for social inequality. There are many critical and creative big data research endeavors around the world. Here we present an annotated catalog of projects that: are both critical and creative in their analysis of big data; have a distinct Principal Investigator (PI) or clear team; and, are producing an identifiable body of public essays, original research, or civic engagement projects. We have catalogued these endeavors with as much descriptive information as possible, and organized projects by the domains of big data critique and creativity in which they are having an impact. We identify some 35 distinct projects, and several dozen individual researchers, artists and civic leaders, operating in 16 domains of inquiry. We recommend expanding critical and creative work in several domains: expanding work in China; supporting policy initiatives in Latin America’s young democracies; expanding work on algorithmic manipulation originating in authoritarian countries; identifying best practices for how public agencies in the United States should develop big data initiatives. We recommend that the next stage of support for these lines of inquiry is to help publicize the output of these projects, many of which are of interest to a handful of specialists but should be made accessible to policy makers, journalists, and the interested public. 

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3. MindHive: A Community Science Platform for Human Brain and Behavior Research

   https://doi.org/10.1037/tms0000088  

   Dikker, S.; Shevchenko, Y.; Burgas, K.; Matuk, C. (January 2021, Technology, Mind & Society)

   Human brain and behavior research has traditionally—and paradoxically—taken place mostly in environments that are isolated from the public: In a typical human neuroscience study, scientists recruit university students to participate in well-controlled laboratory studies, i.e., outside of humans’ natural habitat. This model is currently under attack from multiple directions, ranging from scholars arguing that it generates biased data, to communities who express distrust toward scientists, to educators who are eager for more authentic science experiences for their students. While a growing number of researchers is turning to citizen science approaches to both educate and involve the general public in science, these initiatives are most pervasive in the ‘traditional’ sciences (e.g., ecology, astronomy), and often focus on recruiting the public to help collect data, rather than including non-scientists as partners in their scientific process. MindHive (www.mindhive.science) is an online community science platform for human brain and behavior research that engages its users in the full spectrum of scientific inquiry. Taking an open science approach, MindHive features a collaborative study design environment, comprising an experiment builder, a database of validated tasks and surveys, and a public-facing study page; a peer review center; and GDPR-compliant data collection, data management, and data visualization and interpretation functionality. We describe case studies from the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how MindHive envisions enabling scientists, students, educators, not-for-profit organizations, and community members globally to contribute studies, resources, and research data to the platform, as such supporting both STEM learning and scientific discovery. 

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4. MindHive: An Online Citizen Science Tool and Curriculum for Human Brain and Behavior Research

   Dikker, S; Shevchenko, Y; Burgas, K; Chaloner, K; Sole, M; Yetman-Michaelson, L; Davidesco, I; Martin, R; Matuk, C (April 2022, Connected Science Learning)

   MindHive is an online, open science, citizen science platform co-designed by a team of educational researchers, teachers, cognitive and social scientists, UX researchers, community organizers, and software developers to support real-world brain and behavior research for (a) high school students and teachers who seek authentic STEM research experiences, (b) neuroscientists and cognitive/social psychologists who seek to address their research questions outside of the lab, and (c) community-based organizations who seek to conduct grassroots, science-based research for policy change. In the high school classroom, students engage with lessons and studies created by cognitive and social neuroscientists, provide peer feedback on studies designed by students within a network of schools across the country, and develop and carry out their own online citizen science studies. By guiding them through both discovery (student-as-participant) and creation (student-as-scientist) stages of citizen science inquiry, MindHive aims to help learners and communities both inside and beyond the classroom to contextualize their own cognition and social behavior within population-wide patterns; to formulate generalizable and testable research questions; and to derive implications from findings and translate these into personal and social action. 

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5. Problem posing and creativity in elementary-school mathematics

   Goldenberg, E.Paul (January 2019, Constructivist Foundations)

   > Context • In 1972, Papert emphasized that “[t]he important difference between the work of a child in an elementary mathematics class and […]a mathematician” is “not in the subject matter […]but in the fact that the mathematician is creatively engaged […]” Along with creative, Papert kept saying children should be engaged in projects rather than problems. A project is not just a large problem, but involves sustained, active engagement, like children’s play. For Papert, in 1972, computer programming suggested a flexible construction medium, ideal for a research-lab/playground tuned to mathematics for children. In 1964, without computers, Sawyer also articulated research-playgrounds for children, rooted in conventional content, in which children would learn to act and think like mathematicians. > Problem • This target article addresses the issue of designing a formal curriculum that helps children develop the mathematical habits of mind of creative tinkering, puzzling through, and perseverance. I connect the two mathematicians/educators – Papert and Sawyer – tackling three questions: How do genuine puzzles differ from school problems? What is useful about children creating puzzles? How might puzzles, problem-posing and programming-centric playgrounds enhance mathematical learning? > Method • This analysis is based on forty years of curriculum analysis, comparison and construction, and on research with children. > Results • In physical playgrounds most children choose challenge. Papert’s ideas tapped that try-something-new and puzzle-it-out-for-yourself spirit, the drive for challenge. Children can learn a lot in such an environment, but what (and how much) they learn is left to chance. Formal educational systems set standards and structures to ensure some common learning and some equity across students. For a curriculum to tap curiosity and the drive for challenge, it needs both the playful looseness that invites exploration and the structure that organizes content. > Implications • My aim is to provide support for mathematics teachers and curriculum designers to design or teach in accord with their constructivist thinking. > Constructivist content • This article enriches Papert’s constructionism with curricular ideas from Sawyer and from the work that I and my colleagues have done 

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