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ABSTRACT Although there is a push to provide more student agency in science classrooms, teachers and students may become frustrated when inquiry activities and equipment do not work as planned—teachers because of the time crunch to “cover” topics and students because of the perceived lack of value in activities that are “off task.” In classroom implementations of a data‐rich high school physics activity sequence as part of the InquirySpace 2 (IS2) project, numerous episodes of equipment troubleshooting were observed. Teachers questioned whether the time spent had disciplinary value. Students expressed concern regarding what, if anything, they were learning. This qualitative case study of one such episode considers students' activity in terms of their engagement with the “mangle of practice” and misalignments between their conceptual and material worlds, their exercise of epistemic agency in recognizing and repairing those misalignments, and their epistemic affect during and after the activity. Video analysis revealed all three aspects deeply intertwined with evidence of student engagement in multiple science practices. The students expressed their feelings about the episode immediately afterward and the teacher and IS2 observer when interviewed much later, at the end of the project. One reason for the negative perceptions of teacher and students may be that the alignments being explored were related to the instrumentation more than to the target phenomenon. This study argues that in such situations, students may not recognize or value science practices that emerge, and may need explicit support to reframe their activity as valid scientific practice. 

Abstract It is widely recognized that we need to prepare students to think with data. This study investigates student interactions with digital data graphs and seeks to identify what might prompt them to shift toward using their graphs as thinking tools in the authentic activity of doing science. Drawing from video screencast data of three small groups engaged in sensor‐based and computer simulation‐based experiments in high school physics classes, exploratory qualitative methods are used to identify the student interactions with their graphs and what appeared to prompt shifts in those interactions. Analysis of the groups, one from a 9th grade class and two from 11th/12th grade combined classes, revealed that unexpected data patterns and graphical anomalies sometimes, but not always, preceded deeper engagement with the graphs. When shifts toward deeper engagement did occur, transcripts revealed that the students perceived the graphical patterns to be misaligned with the actions they had taken to produce those data. Misalignments between the physical, digital, and conceptual worlds of the investigations played an important role in these episodes, appearing to motivate students to revise either their experimental procedures or their conceptions of the phenomena being explored. If real‐time graphs can help foster a sense in students that there should be alignments between their data production and data representations, it is suggested that pedagogy leverage this as a way to support deeper student engagement with graphs. 

Abstract We face complex global issues such as climate change that challenge our ability as humans to manage them. Models have been used as a pivotal science and engineering tool to investigate, represent, explain, and predict phenomena or solve problems that involve multi-faceted systems across many fields. To fully explain complex phenomena or solve problems using models requires both systems thinking (ST) and computational thinking (CT). This study proposes a theoretical framework that uses modeling as a way to integrate ST and CT. We developed a framework to guide the complex process of developing curriculum, learning tools, support strategies, and assessments for engaging learners in ST and CT in the context of modeling. The framework includes essential aspects of ST and CT based on selected literature, and illustrates how each modeling practice draws upon aspects of both ST and CT to support explaining phenomena and solving problems. We use computational models to show how these ST and CT aspects are manifested in modeling. 

Examination of matched whole class and small group discussions during use of an interactive physics simulation revealed that in the whole class discussions there was more time spent on important concepts, more time spent addressing student conceptual difficulties, and more episodes providing support for using visual features of the simulations. Abstract: This study investigates student interactions with simulations, and teacher support of those interactions, within naturalistic high school classroom settings. Two lesson sequences were conducted, one in 11 and one in 8 physics class sections, where roughly half the sections used the simulations in a small group format and matched sections used them in a whole class format. Unexpected pre/post results, previously reported, had raised questions about why whole class students, who had engaged in discussion about the simulations while observing them projected in front of the class, had performed just as well as small group students with hands-on keyboards. The present study addresses these earlier results with case studies (four matched sets of classes) of student and teacher activity during class discussions in one of the lesson sequences. Comparative analyses using classroom videotapes and student written work reveal little evidence for an advantage for the small group students for any of the conceptual and perceptual factors examined; in fact, if anything, there was a slight trend in favor of students in the whole class condition. We infer that the two formats have counter-balancing strengths and weaknesses. We recommend a mixture of the two and suggest several implications for design of instructional simulations.