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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. 

Learning online is now ubiquitous. However, teachers’ self-directed and guided learning online deserves further exploration because most research on successful teacher professional learning has been conducted on in-person programs. The present study examined teacher behaviors in an online platform designed to support teachers’ professional learning in elementary mathematics. In particular, this study explored whether teacher behaviors on an online professional learning platform clustered in ways that suggest distinct use cases and whether those behaviors were associated with particular teacher characteristics. Results revealed a cluster of teachers who predominately focus their behaviors on the guided learning modules on the website, which was associated with teacher characteristics, including being less likely to enjoy teaching mathematics and being newer to teaching the curriculum supported on the website. Implications for future research and for supporting teacher learning are discussed. 

Gestures play a key role for physicists and physics students in representing physics entities, processes, and systems. One affordance of gesture is the ability to laminate or layer together representations of concrete physical features (e.g., objects and their interactions) and symbolic representations (e.g., coordinate systems) to make sense of and model physical scenarios. Using interaction analysis, we illustrate how students can laminate these different layers of abstraction together in gesture to generate complex explanations to solve physics problems. We argue that laminating different layers of abstraction (both the symbolic and concrete) constitute a key form of representational competence in physics. 

Gesture’s role as a powerful and versatile tool for instruction, especially in STEM domains, is well-established. However, many specific teaching moves accomplished through gesture remain understudied. Using interaction analysis, we examine how an introductory. university physics instructor uses gesture during whole-class discussion of graphical representations of energy conservation to synthesize multiple student groups’ solutions. This embodied, whole-class discussion orchestration move distills and summarizes the key points of the lesson while highlighting student contributions and addressing misunderstandings. 

Gesture has been shown to play an important role in how learners conceptualize phenomena in physics. However, we know little about how gesture is used to conceptualize instantaneity. Drawing on multimodal microanalysis of interaction, we examine how undergraduate physics students use representational gesture to make sense of instants while modeling energy dynamics. Our analysis describes four different forms of representational gesture used to capture instantaneity: These include (1) Replay loop of scenario, (2) Subinterval on timeline, (3) Freeze frame of scenario, and (4) Indexical location on timeline. 

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.