Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Research Works

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1649

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    Exploring Acculturative Joy in English Language Education
    (2024-04) Siebold, Connie; Fagan, Drew
    English language education has frequently centered the voices of educators rather than those of the students we seek to serve. Driven by institutional demands, the learner experience is often flattened into easily quantifiable measures that strip learners of their agency and ownership of the educational process. Rather than positioning students as vessels to be filled and measured, a student-centric narrative approach to research can illuminate critical sociocultural aspects to student success. Using the lens of Acculturative Joy, this study interviews 20 English language learners to understand their experiences of joy in the English language classroom. With an emic understanding of learner needs, we can then critically examine pedagogical practice and shift our focus to improvement of resources, thoughtful student-centric pedagogy, and equitable harm reduction in the English language classroom.
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    Improving Science Assessments by Situating Them in a Virtual Environment
    (MDPI, 2013-05-30) Ketelhut, Diane Jass; Nelson, Brian; Schifter, Catherine; Kim, Younsu
    Current science assessments typically present a series of isolated fact-based questions, poorly representing the complexity of how real-world science is constructed. The National Research Council asserts that this needs to change to reflect a more authentic model of science practice. We strongly concur and suggest that good science assessments need to consist of several key factors: integration of science content with scientific inquiry, contextualization of questions, efficiency of grading and statistical validity and reliability.Through our Situated Assessment using Virtual Environments for Science Content and inquiry (SAVE Science) research project, we have developed an immersive virtual environment to assess middle school children’s understanding of science content and processes that they have been taught through typical classroom instruction. In the virtual environment, participants complete a problem-based assessment by exploring a game world, interacting with computer-based characters and objects, collecting and analyzing possible clues to the assessment problem. Students can solve the problems situated in the virtual environment in multiple ways; many of these are equally correct while others uncover misconceptions regarding inference-making. In this paper, we discuss stage one in the design and assessment of our project, focusing on our design strategies for integrating content and inquiry assessment and on early implementation results. We conclude that immersive virtual environments do offer the potential for creating effective science assessments based on our framework and that we need to consider engagement as part of the framework.
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    Framing Engineering: The Role of College Website Descriptions
    (MDPI, 2017-12-31) Da Costa, Romina B.; Stromquist, Nelly P.
    This study contributes to the literature on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by examining the framing of engineering on college websites, a major recruitment tool. We take websites to be key sources of textual data that can provide insights into the discourses surrounding the field of engineering. We ask whether women-only institutions (WOIs) frame engineering in ways that appeal more broadly to women. Our sample comprises the full range of WOIs offering engineering degrees in the US (14) and a comparison sample of 14 coeducational universities also offering engineering degrees. We employ established methods for discourse analysis, and both deductive and inductive coding processes in analyzing the textual data. Our main findings indicate that WOIs’ framing of engineering places a greater emphasis on collaboration, supports for students, interdisciplinarity, and the potential for engineering to contribute to improvements for society. In contrast, co-ed institutions tend to place a greater emphasis on the financial returns and job security that result from majoring in engineering. We conclude that co-ed engineering programs should consider a broadening of the descriptions surrounding the engineering field, since the inclusion of a wider set of values could be appealing to women students.
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    Designing a framework for teachers' integration of computational thinking into elementary science
    (Wiley, 2023-07-29) Cabrera, Lautaro; Ketelhut, Diane Jass; Mills, Kelly; Killen, Heather; Coenraad, Merijke; Byrne, Virginia L.; Plane, Jandelyn Dawn
    As professional science becomes increasingly computational, researchers and educators are advocating for the integration of computational thinking (CT) into science education. Researchers and policymakers have argued that CT learning opportunities should begin in elementary school and span across the K-12 grades. While researchers and policymakers have specified how students should engage in CT for science learning, the success of CT integration ultimately depends on how elementary teachers implement CT in their science lessons. This new demand for teachers who can integrate CT has created a need for effective conceptual tools that teacher educators and professional development designers can use to develop elementary teachers' understanding and operationalization of CT for their classrooms. However, existing frameworks for CT integration have limitations. Existing frameworks either overlook the elementary grades, conceptualize CT in isolation and not integrated into science, and/or have not been tested in teacher education contexts. After reviewing existing CT integration frameworks and detailing an important gap in the science teacher education literature, we present our framework for the integration of CT into elementary science education, with a special focus on how to use this framework with teachers. Situated within our design-based research study, we (a) explain the decision-making process of designing the framework; (b) describe the pedagogical affordances and challenges it provided as we implemented it with a cohort of pre- and in-service teachers; (c) provide suggestions for its use in teacher education contexts; and (d) theorize possible pathways to continue its refinement.
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    “I Don't Let What I Don't Know Stop What I Can do”—How Monolingual English Teachers Constructed a Translanguaging Pre-K Classroom in China
    (Wiley, 2022-12-28) Shi, Lijuan; Rolstad, Kellie
    Guided by translanguaging pedagogy, this study examines how monolingual English teachers in a Pre-K school in China navigate between English and Chinese to construct a translanguaging classroom. Findings based on classroom observations and interviews reveal that, despite being constrained by their monolingualism, the English teachers enacted translanguaging in multiple ways creating three translanguaging components: translanguaging assistance, translanguaging assessment, and translanguaging showcases. Translanguaging assistance enables children to learn English with the assistance of their first language; translanguaging assessment evaluates children's English language skills within a spectrum of multilingual funds of knowledge, and translanguaging showcases define strategic activities to unlock children's full linguistic repertoires, activate their creative voices, and let their bilingualism shine. This study provides pedagogical guidelines that balance the goal of learning a language and developing children's bilingualism through an iterative enactment of the three translanguaging components.
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    Preparing K-12 Students to Meet their Data: Analyzing the Tools and Environments used in Introductory Data Science Contexts
    (Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), 2023-06-23) Israel-Fishelson, Rotem; Moon, Peter F.; Tabak, Rachel; Weintrop, David
    Data science education has gained momentum in recent years. Along with the development of curricula to teach data science, the number and diversity of tools for introducing data science to learners are also multiplying. The tools used to teach data science play a central role in shaping the learning experience. Therefore, it is important to carefully choose which tools to use to introduce learners to data science. This article presents a systematic review of 25 data science tools that are, or can be, used in introductory data science education for K-12 students. The identified tools list includes spreadsheets, visual analysis tools, and scripting environments. For each tool, we examine facets of its capabilities, interactions, educational support, and accessibility. This paper advances our understanding of the current state of introductory data science environments and highlights opportunities for creating new tools to better prepare learners to navigate the data-rich world surrounding them.
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    The Tools Being Used to Introduce Youth to Data Science
    (Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), 2023-06-19) Moon, Peter F.; Israel-Fishelson, Rotem; Tabak, Rachel; Weintrop, David
    Data is increasingly shaping the way people interact with each other and the world more broadly. For youth growing up in an increasingly data-driven society, it is critical they have foundational data literacy skills. A central component of data literacy is the ability to collect, analyze, visualize, and make meaning from data. All of these activities are mediated and shaped by the tools that youth use to carry out these data practices. Given the essential role tools play in enabling and supporting youth in engaging with and interpreting data, understanding what tools are used and how they are used in educational contexts will help us understand how youth are being prepared to be data-literate citizens. In this paper, we present the analysis of the data collection and analysis tools used in 4 widely adopted high school data science curricula. The analysis attends to both what tools are used as well as what datasets they are used to analyze. This work contributes to our understanding of the way youth are being introduced to concepts and practices from the field of data science and the role the tools play in shaping those experiences.
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    Analyzing identity trajectories within the physics community
    (American Physical Society, 2022-10-12) Quan, Gina M.; Turpen, Chandra; Elby, Andrew
    We analyze the identity trajectory of a single case study, Cassidy, within the physics community. We focus our analysis on two settings in the physics community: an undergraduate research experience, and undergraduate coursework. We use video data from three interviews (spanning roughly fifteen months) to longitudinally analyze shifts in participation. We discuss Cassidy’s experience through two constructs: normative identities, Cassidy’s sense of the valued roles within physics, as well as personal identity, who Cassidy is within the physics community and the extent to which she aligns with normative identities. In attending to shifts in the alignment between personal and normative identities, we identify several entry points, or salient events that open up new opportunities for participation.
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    Rethinking the division of labor between tutorial writers and instructors with respect to fostering equitable team dynamics
    (American Physical Society, 2020-12-04) Sabo, Hannah C.; Elby, Andrew
    [This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] This paper proposes the rethinking of the division of labor between physics education research curriculum developers and classroom instructors. Historically, both curriculum developers and instructors have taken responsibility for fostering students’ conceptual development, epistemological development, and other learning goals related to physics content knowledge and practices or process skills. By contrast, responsibility for fostering productive group dynamics has been taken up almost entirely by instructors. Tutorial and lab developers structure their materials to be used in small groups, but have not generally designed, tested, and refined their materials to minimize problematic group dynamics. In this paper, we argue that the written tutorial can and should do more to prevent negative group dynamics from arising. To make this claim plausible, we describe an example from our own experience. While revising a tutorial, we noticed some problematic dynamics emerging; one of the students was unfairly blamed for a simulation-setting mistake and was later left out of a conversation. We came up with hypotheses about factors that might have contributed to those dynamics. A few of those factors, we argue, could be addressed in part through tutorial revision. While acknowledging that instructors will always have more capacity and hence more responsibility than curriculum writers to foster productive group dynamics, we call for tutorial writers, during the testing and revision of their materials, to monitor how the tutorial impacts team dynamics and to be transparent (in publications and presentations) about how they modified the tutorial to address problematic dynamics they observed.
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    Rethinking the relationship between instructors and physics education researchers
    (American Physical Society, 2020-12-04) Elby, Andrew; Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda
    [This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] In the “standard” physics education research curriculum-development model, researchers are cast primarily as producers of curricula and instructors are cast primarily consumers, i.e., adopters and adapters. We illustrate a complementary model in which researchers’ curricular modules, and also their “pure” research unattached to curriculum development, can serve as instructionally generative fodder that inspires and loosely guides instructors in creating their own curricular materials. Drawing on experiences from our graduate student days, we show how particular curricula and research papers influenced our curriculum development and instruction in particular ways. We then argue that the physics education ecosystem could benefit if researchers were more intentional about creating potential instructionally generative fodder, and we suggest ways to do so. Although not intended to replace the standard curriculum-development model, which has a history of producing effective tutorials and other curricular modules, our alternative model casts the researcher and instructor as co-equal contributors to the research-based yet creative process of curriculum generation.