skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Circular Reasoning: Shifting epistemological frames across mathematics and coding activities
STEM integration holds significant promise for supporting students in making connections among ideas and ways of thinking that might otherwise remain “siloed.” Nevertheless, activities that integrate disciplines can present challenges to learners. In particular, they can require students to shift epistemological framing, demands that can be overlooked by designers and facilitators. We analyze how students in an 8th grade mathematics classroom reasoned about circles, across math and coding activities. One student showed evidence of shifting fluently between different frames as facilitators had expected. The dramatic change in his contributions gauge the demands of the activities, as do the contributions of other students, who appeared to work within different frames. Our findings have relevance for the design and facilitation of integrated STEM learning environments to support students in navigating such frame-shifts.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2149356
PAR ID:
10575482
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Editor(s):
Olanoff, D; Johnson, K; Spitzer, M
Publisher / Repository:
North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education
Date Published:
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
Integrated STEM / STEAM, Computational Thinking, Geometry and Spatial Reasoning, Middle School Education
Format(s):
Medium: X
Location:
https://www.pmena.org/pmenaproceedings/PMENA%2043%202021%20Proceedings.pdf
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Olanoff, D. (Ed.)
    STEM integration holds significant promise for supporting students in making connections among ideas and ways of thinking that might otherwise remain “siloed.” Nevertheless, activities that integrate disciplines can present challenges to learners. In particular, they can require students to shift epistemological framing, demands that can be overlooked by designers and facilitators. We analyze how students in an 8th grade mathematics classroom reasoned about circles, across math and coding activities. One student showed evidence of shifting fluently between different frames as facilitators had expected. The dramatic change in his contributions gauge the demands of the activities, as do the contributions of other students, who appeared to work within different frames. Our findings have relevance for the design and facilitation of integrated STEM learning environments to support students in navigating such frame-shifts. 
    more » « less
  2. An important decision that professional development (PD) facilitators must make when preparing for activities with teachers is to select an appropriate tool for the intended learning goals of the PD (Sztajn, Borko, & Smith, 2017). One important and prevalent tool is artifacts of student thinking (e.g. Jacobs & Philipp, 2004). In this paper we add to the literature on artifact selection for professional development by discussing the affordances and constraints of different written artifacts of student thinking. Through a professional noticing assessment, we examine the interpretive frames (Sherin & Russ, 2014) that were invoked by 72 secondary teachers regarding 6 students’ written strategies to proportional reasoning tasks. We characterize different ways teachers might make sense of different artifacts of student thinking, and discuss for what purposes PD facilitators might select particular written solutions. 
    more » « less
  3. Many college students drop STEM majors after struggling in gateway courses, in part because these courses place large demands on students9 time. In three online experiments with two different lessons (measures of central tendency and multiple regression), we identified a promising approach to increase the efficiency of STEM instruction. When we removed lectures and taught participants exclusively with practice and feedback, they learned at least 15% faster. However, our research also showed that this instructional strategy has the potential to undermine interest in course content for less-confident students, who may be discouraged when challenged to solve problems without upfront instruction and learn from their mistakes. If researchers and educators can develop engaging and efficacy-building activities that replace lectures, STEM courses could become better learning environments. 
    more » « less
  4. Facilitators in informal spaces play an integral role in creating equitable and engaging STEM rich learning environments for youth. However, the complexity of facilitator’s practices is often undertheorized. Infrastructuring, or the process of dynamically designing with infrastructures (Karasti, 2014) gives us one lens to start to understand this complexity. Building on Azevedo’s lines of practice theory (2011), we aim to show the value in tracing infrastructuring work overtime in order to understand how facilitators’ preferences and constraints are shaping their practice. In this paper we present two traces, called lines of infrastructuring, that make visible the dynamic infrastructuring work of facilitators as they engage in a research practice partnership developing and implementing computing activities in their spaces. We argue that this analysis provides a new lens for understanding the practices of facilitators, and the realities of embedded infrastructures that can restrain the potential for equitable transformation in this work. 
    more » « less
  5. This qualitative study examined the college pathways of mostly working-class immigrant-origin youth of color (Black, East Asian, Latino/a) in New York City. Using a thematic analysis approach with bridging multiple worlds theory and social capital theory as guiding conceptual frameworks, we examined facilitators and barriers that 30 working-class immigrant-origin youth of color encountered in different worlds (family, school, peers, and community programs) in their college pathways. Our analysis found that most students received emotional but not instrumental support from their parents, notably that their parents mainly wanted them to be happy and to pursue a college degree that would lead to non-blue-collar work. Students received emotional and instrumental guidance from school staff, and many students received help from, and in return helped, their peers. Students who had access to community programs and external resources found them to be helpful in receiving feedback on college application materials and perspectives about different career paths. Students also noted barriers, including family circumstances and immigration status, that hindered their college pathways. We discuss similarities and differences in facilitators and barriers that different racial groups experienced, as well as contributions to literature and implications for removing barriers for immigrant-origin youth of color. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) 
    more » « less