In this study, College STEM Literacy Workers act as co-teachers in 9th and 10th grade classrooms alongside mathematics teachers as they both learn to integrate a 30-hour integrated computer science/mathematics curriculum. As part of the curriculum for educator learning, we adapted the Algebra Project’s “Model of Excellence” for culturally relevant-sustaining pedagogies. We used the framework to explore how teachers understand College STEM Literacy Workers’ contributions in the model as well as College STEM Literacy Workers’ own experiences in the classroom. We found that while teachers and College STEM Literacy Workers did not individually instantiate the model of excellence, they were able to achieve its constituent components between them. We explore differences between teachers and College STEM Literacy Workers and the ways in which they worked together. We end with implications for a new model of excellence.
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Abstract Background Computational approaches in STEM foster creative extrapolations of ideas that extend the bounds of human perception, processing, and sense-making. Inviting teachers to explore computational approaches in STEM presents opportunities to examine shifting relationships to inquiry that support transdisciplinary learning in their classrooms. Similarly, play has long been acknowledged as activity that supports learners in taking risks, exploring the boundaries and configurations of existing structures, and imagining new possibilities. Yet, play is often overlooked as a crucial element of STEM learning, particularly for adolescents and adults. In this paper, we explore
computational play as an activity that supports teachers’ transdisciplinary STEM learning. We build from an expansive notion of computational activity that involves jointly co-constructing and co-exploring rule-based systems in conversation with materials, collaborators, and communities to work towards jointly defined goals. We situate computation within STEM-rich making as a playful context for engaging in authentic, creative inquiry. Our research asksWhat are the characteristics of play and computation within computational play? And, in what ways does computational play contribute to teachers’ transdisciplinary learning? Results Teachers from grades 3–12 participated in a professional learning program that centered playful explorations of materials and tools using computational approaches: making objects based on rules that produce emergent behaviors and iterating on those rules to observe the effects on how the materials behaved. Using a case study and descriptions of the characteristics of computational play, our results show how familiarity of materials and the context of play encouraged teachers to engage in transdisciplinary inquiry, to ask questions about how materials behave, and to renegotiate their own relationships to disciplinary learning as they reflected on their work.
Conclusions We argue computational play is a space of wonderment where iterative conversations with materials create opportunities for learners to author forms of transdisciplinary learning. Our results show how teachers and students can learn together in computational play, and we conclude this work can contribute to ongoing efforts in the design of professional and transdisciplinary learning environments focused on the intersections of materiality, play, and computation.
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null (Ed.)Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the designed cultural ecology of a hip-hop and computational science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) camp and the ways in which that ecology contributed to culturally sustaining learning experiences for middle school youth. In using the principles of hip-hop as a CSP for design, the authors question how and what practices were supported or emerged and how they became resources for youth engagement in the space. Design/methodology/approach The overall methodology was design research. Through interpretive analysis, it uses an example of four Black girls participating in the camp as they build a computer-controlled DJ battle station. Findings Through a close examination of youth interactions in the designed environment – looking at their communication, spatial arrangements, choices and uses of materials and tools during collaborative project work – the authors show how a learning ecology, designed based on hip-hop and computational practices and shaped by the history and practices of the dance center where the program was held, provided access to ideational, relational, spatial and material resources that became relevant to learning through computational making. The authors also show how youth engagement in the hip-hop computational making learning ecology allowed practices to emerge that led to expansive learning experiences that redefine what it means to engage in computing. Research limitations/implications Implications include how such ecologies might arrange relations of ideas, tools, materials, space and people to support learning and positive identity development. Originality/value Supporting culturally sustaining computational STEM pedagogies, the article argues two original points in informal youth learning 1) an expanded definition of computing based on making grammars and the cultural practices of hip-hop, and 2) attention to cultural ecologies in designing and understanding computational STEM learning environments.more » « less
