Search for: All records

Elementary grade teachers are often not fully prepared to teach a computing-rich curriculum, and the demand of the digital age to integrate Computational Thinking (CT) into their classrooms has put them at a challenge. Under the larger umbrella, abstraction lies at the heart of CT. Abstraction allows moving between various information levels while targeting complex problems and creating rich design solutions. This study focuses on how one pair of elementary-grade teachers collaborated, using abstraction to solve a maze challenge, helping each other move between different layers of information. The videotaped data of one day of teachers' professional development was analyzed through three dimensions of Community of Practice (CoP). Results suggest that through mutual engagement in pursuing a joint enterprise and their shared repertoire, elementary-grade teachers moved their focus between different levels of abstraction simultaneously and effectively. 

This empirical case study utilizes conjecture mapping to capture and systematically map conjectures about the support needed for K-12 teachers to incorporate computational thinking into teaching. The case analysis highlighted a teacher’s year-long professional development experience focused on integrating computational thinking. The evolving conjecture map provides a framework to trace and understand relationships between the learning designs, activities, and teacher outcomes. Using rich data from the teacher's experience, the study tests and refines the hypothesized connections laid out in the original conjecture map to build an understanding of effective computational thinking professional development design. 

This exploratory research analyzes the video-recorded data of four elementary-grade teachers debugging a school tour activity while utilizing a programable robot, Photon. This summer’s professional development session on computational thinking (CT) integration was four hours long and was focused on debugging as a key CT component. The results indicate that teachers worked collaboratively to debug their way through errors using different strategies, such as step-by-step execution or incremental code development. 

This study involved a 7-lesson generalized arithmetic classroom teaching experiment (CTE) with kindergarten students. We interviewed four students individually before and after the seven weeks to explore their understandings and representations of arithmetic properties. Here, we report on students' responses to questions on the additive inverse property. Using Skemp’s framework of relational and instrumental understandings (2006), our analysis revealed that most of the interviewed kindergarteners could understand the additive inverse relationally by the end of the CTE. Our interviews revealed that tables and number lines enabled students to articulate more sophisticated understandings of the additive inverse. 

This case study explores how middle-grade learners use a game-based app for math learning at an informal site, the Nature Center. We apply distributed and self-directed learning theories, emphasizing learning in specific contexts, social settings, and through tools like an iPad app. We employ the embodied action conversation framework to analyze critical interactions. Two cases emerged: (1) learners followed MathExplorer app rules, and (2) learners went on personal excursions, creating their own rules to improve their MathExplorer rankings. We discuss implications for designing technologies for informal math learning. 

This study explores STEM identity among Underrepresented and Underserved Racially and Ethnically Minoritized (UUREM) middle school girls within informal learning settings. Focusing on micro-level interactions, we explored a single-gendered STEM summer camp where UUREM middle school girls comprised 81% of the participants (N=59). Guided by ecological systems theory as a methodological approach to developing well-designed informal STEM activities, we sought to positively shape UUREM middle school girls’ STEM identity. STEM identity is complex, multi-layered, and inseparable from the intersectionality of their racial and gender identities. This approach is particularly salient in affective factors such as self-efficacy, ability-belief, and a sense of belonging during their pivotal middle school years. Critical implications include (a) single-gender spaces, like STEM camps, provide affirming, safe environments for authentic discussion and belonging in STEM, and (b) role models of similar racial and gender backgrounds support positive STEM identity formation for UUREM middle school girls. 

Science learning reforms require shifting epistemic and power structures so students and teachers build knowledge together within the context of meaningful questions and problems. Curricular customization allows teachers to preserve these reform-oriented goals while adapting for their specific contexts and students. This paper presents three cases from professional learning communities (PLCs) who followed the same curriculum customization model, but with different equity goals: supporting bi/multilingual learners’ ownership of learning, increasing the relevance of curriculum for students, and encouraging more student voices and multiple perspectives. Together, these cases highlight how the collaborative customization model facilitated productive tensions that lead to teacher learning. 

Fostering locally relevant and community-centered forms of science learning that develop students’ critical science agency problematizes a “one-size-fits-all” model of teacher learning; teachers must examine how community needs and resources, local inequities and justice issues, and curriculum materials can converge to design novel learning opportunities for science learners. This paper presents the core commitments of EMPOWER, a cross-institutional effort that aims to support teachers' sensemaking and adaptations of curriculum materials to promote student ownership, engagement, and relevance at multiple sites across the U.S. 

Science curricula require new conceptualizations of how teachers relate to their materials. In this study of teacher learning, we analyze an experienced group of practicing Storylines teachers’ use of metaphor to describe the roles and responsibilities of students and teachers in curriculum enactment. We found that every metaphor that teachers used to describe the uses of Storylines curriculum entailed a sort of wayfinding: a destination, a timeframe, a place, a journey, or the students’ or teachers’ respective position in that pursuit. These findings continue to indicate the usefulness of metaphor in foregrounding the central role that students play in NGSS-aligned instruction/materials, as well as the institutional forces that shape how curriculum materials get enacted inside the classroom. This study builds and contributes to current scholarship that aims to support teachers in reconceptualizing their role, relationship to students, and the institution of schooling, in the context of constructivist curricula.