Primary Contextualization of Science Learning through Immersion in Content-Rich Settings

This paper reports on a study of primary contextualization processes during science immersion trips and the resultant student learning. Four High School Ecology classes (n?=?67) and teachers participated. Through a pre-/post-assessment of science concept knowledge (Pathfinder Network Modeling) and follow-up interviews with students, it was determined that (1) significant learning was associated with these immersion experiences, though overcontextualization was problematic for some, (2) there was a positive interaction between degree of contextualization (primary vs. secondary) and degree of learning, and (3) key primary contextualization processes included the situating of knowledge in time and place as well as the collection of personalized visual or embodied evidence for science concepts. The study contributes to our understanding of contextualization in the learning process and has the potential to inform field, classroom, and virtual learning environments.     

EvoBuild: A Quickstart Toolkit for Programming Agent-Based Models of Evolutionary Processes

Extensive research has shown that one of the benefits of programming to learn about scientific phenomena is that it facilitates learning about mechanisms underlying the phenomenon. However, using programming activities in classrooms is associated with costs such as requiring additional time to learn to program or students needing prior experience with programming. This paper presents a class of programming environments that we call quickstart: Environments with a negligible threshold for entry into programming and a modest ceiling. We posit that such environments can provide benefits of programming for learning without incurring associated costs for novice programmers. To make this claim, we present a design-based research study conducted to compare programming models of evolutionary processes with a quickstart toolkit with exploring pre-built models of the same processes. The study was conducted in six seventh grade science classes in two schools. Students in the programming condition used EvoBuild, a quickstart toolkit for programming agent-based models of evolutionary processes, to build their NetLogo models. Students in the exploration condition used pre-built NetLogo models. We demonstrate that although students came from a range of academic backgrounds without prior programming experience, and all students spent the same number of class periods on the activities including the time students took to learn programming in this environment, EvoBuild students showed greater learning about evolutionary mechanisms. We discuss the implications of this work for design research on programming environments in K-12 science education.     

Examining whether touch sensory feedback is necessary for science learning through experimentation: A literature review of two different lines of research across K-16

The focus of this paper is on the contribution that active touch sensory feedback offered through physical or virtual (with haptic feedback) manipulatives, makes to students' learning through science experimentation. Both theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence are presented. The theoretical perspectives were drawn from two types of theories, namely embodied cognition and additional (touch) sensory channel, which were associated with the use of physical and virtual manipulatives for learning purposes. The empirical evidence was drawn from two different lines of research. The first line of research involves studies that have focused on comparing physical manipulatives and virtual manipulatives (without the provision of haptic feedback), whereas the second involves studies that have focused on comparing virtual manipulatives with and without the provision of touch sensory (haptic) feedback. Both theories supply strong arguments for providing touch sensory feedback during science experimentation, whereas the empirical research outcomes show that providing touch sensory feedback is not always a prerequisite for learning science through experimentation. Those instances for which touch sensory feedback does appear to be a necessity for learning science through experimentation are identified. However, science education studies are limited within the aforementioned research areas. In addition, their findings are inconsistent, especially for the research focused on comparing virtual manipulatives with and without haptic feedback. The latter makes it difficult to arrive at a solid framework that depicts when and how touch sensory feedback should be offered to students for learning science through experimentation. The article concludes with suggestions for future research that would contribute towards development of such a framework.     

What Images Reveal: a Comparative Study of Science Images between Australian and Taiwanese Junior High School Textbooks

From a social semiotic perspective, image designs in science textbooks are inevitably influenced by the sociocultural context in which the books are produced. The learning environments of Australia and Taiwan vary greatly. Drawing on social semiotics and cognitive science, this study compares classificational images in Australian and Taiwanese junior high school science textbooks. Classificational images are important kinds of images, which can represent taxonomic relations among objects as reported by Kress and van Leeuwen (Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2006). An analysis of the images from sample chapters in Australian and Taiwanese high school science textbooks showed that the majority of the Taiwanese images are covert taxonomies, which represent hierarchical relations implicitly. In contrast, Australian classificational images included diversified designs, but particularly types with a tree structure which depicted overt taxonomies, explicitly representing hierarchical super-ordinate and subordinate relations. Many of the Taiwanese images are reminiscent of the specimen images in eighteenth century science texts representing “what truly is”, while more Australian images emphasize structural objectivity. Moreover, Australian images support cognitive functions which facilitate reading comprehension. The relationships between image designs and learning environments are discussed and implications for textbook research and design are addressed.     

学习科学研究之发展综述

学习科学是在反思认知科学等学科关于学习的研究方法和观点的基础上新近兴起的一门科学,它借鉴建构主义、认知科学、信息技术、社会文化研究和关于知识工作等相关领域的研究成果,汇集和整合关于脑的研究和内隐学习、非正式学习、正式学习等已有对于学习的研究,采用多种现场研究的方法,对不同情境脉络中的学习发生机制进行分析和探索,提出的若干关于学习的新观点,并通过创新性项目的实践和基于设计的研究,创设新型学习环境,革新学习实践。本文就学习科学兴起的背景、基础、发展历程、主要观点、主要研究方法、国际学术界动向等方面进行了梳理、分析和概括,以期给予国内学者的了解和把握。     

More than science: family learning in a Mexican science museum

Latin American audiences living in their countries of origin are poorly understood as museum learners due to the scarcity of research in this field. Through a case study approach, I investigate and report on the ways of learning of 20 Mexican family groups. In particular, I examine the influence of the Mexican sociocultural context on the participant family members’ learning outcomes from a Mexican science museum. Conducted in Universum Museo de las Ciencias, a science museum located in Mexico City, this research study is based on the premise that understanding the role of the sociocultural elements of learning is essential to understanding the nature of learning in museums. The cognitive and social outcomes of the participants are discussed in the light of the sociocultural elements that define Mexicans as museum learners.     

Family learning: the missing exemplar

As a supporter of informal and alternative learning environments for science learning I am pleased to add to the discussion generated by Adriana Briseño-Garzón’s article, “More than science: family learning in a Mexican science museum”. I am keenly aware of the value of active family involvement in education in general, and science education in particular, and the portrait provided from a Mexican science museum adds to the literature of informal education through a specific sociocultural lens. I add, however, that while acknowledging the powerful the role of family in Latin American culture, the issue transcends these confines and is instead a cross-cutting topic within education as a whole. I also discuss the ease at which in an effort to call attention to cultural differences one can, by the very act, unintentionally marginalize others.     

Taking an active stance: How urban elementary students connect sociocultural experiences in learning science

ABSTRACT

In this interpretive case study, we draw from sociocultural theory of learning and culturally relevant pedagogy to understand how urban students from nondominant groups leverage their sociocultural experiences. These experiences allow them to gain an empowering voice in influencing science content and activities and to work towards self-determining the sciences that are personally meaningful. Furthermore, tying sociocultural experiences with science learning helps generate sociopolitical awareness among students. We collected interview and observation data in an urban elementary classroom over one academic year to understand the value of urban students’ sociocultural experiences in learning science and choosing science activities.     

A sociocultural perspective on mediated activity in third grade science

This ethnographic study of a third grade classroom examined elementary school science learning as a sociocultural accomplishment. The research focused on how a teacher helped his students acquire psychological tools for learning to think and engage in scientific practices as locally defined. Analyses of classroom discourse examined both how the teacher used mediational strategies to frame disciplinary knowledge in science as well as how students internalized and appropriated ways of knowing in science. The study documented and analyzed how students came to appropriate scientific knowledge as their own in an ongoing manner tied to their identities as student scientists. Implications for sociocultural theory in science education research are discussed. John Reveles is an assistant professor in the Elementary Education Department at California State University, Northridge. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Before pursuing his Ph.D., he worked as a bilingual elementary school teacher for 3 years. His research focuses on the development of scientific literacy in elementary school settings; sociocultural influences on students' academic identity; equity of access issues in science education; qualitative and quantitative research methods. Within the Michael D. Eisner College of Education, he teaches elementary science curriculum methods courses, graduate science education seminars, and graduate research courses. Gregory Kelly is a professor of science education at Penn State University. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer and physics teacher. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1994. His research focuses on classroom discourse, epistemology, and science learning. This work has been supported by grants from Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Education. He teaches courses concerning the uses of history, philosophy, sociology of science in science teaching and teaching and learning science in secondary schools. He is editor of the journal Science Education. Richard Durán is a Professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and publications have been in the areas of literacy and assessment of English Language Learners and Latino students. He has also conducted research on after school computer clubs, technology and learning as part of the international UC Links Network. With support from the Kellogg Foundation, he is implementing and investigating community and family-centered intervention programs serving the educational progress of Latino students in the middle and high school grades.     

Same place,different experiences: exploring the influence of gender on students’ science museum experiences

Providing learning environments that are motivating for female students and male students alike is a challenge for science educators. This overview of the research conducted in science museums provides initial insights into informal educational settings that allow female visitors to have experiences which foster development of science interest and learning. The discussion of the influence of gender on learning experiences in informal science environments raises questions and calls for further research and more comprehensive reporting of research results. Findings related to gender‐equitable learning in settings such as science museums would be beneficial and extend the present knowledge base in science education.     

Everyday objects of learning about health and healing and implications for science education

The role of science education in rural development is of great interest to science educators. In this study I investigated how residents of rural Kirumi, Kenya, approach health and healing, through discussions and semistructured and in‐depth interviews with 150 residents, 3 local herbalists, and 2 medical researchers over a period of 6 months. I constructed objects of learning by looking for similarities and differences within interpretive themes. Objects of learning found comprise four types of personal learning tools, three types of relational learning tools, three genres of moral obligation, and five genres of knowledge guarding. Findings show that rural people use (among other learning tools) inner sensing to engage thought processes that lead to health and healing knowledge. The sociocultural context is also an important component in learning. Inner sensing and residents' sociocultural context are not presently emphasized in Kenyan science teaching. I discuss the potential use of rural objects of learning in school science, with specific reference to a health topic in the Kenyan science curriculum. In addition, the findings add to the literature in the Science, Technology, Society, and Environment (STSE) approach to science education, and cross‐cultural and global science education. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 172–193, 2006     

‘Brown Paper Packages’? A Sociocultural Perspective on Young Children's Ideas in Science

How do we see young children's thinking in science? Is it, as much previous research has led us to believe, that their ideas can be neatly boxed like “brown paper packages tied up with strings” – as the song from The Sound of Music goes? Or are their ideas like “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings” (Sound of Music): fluid, complex, rich.?.?.? Drawing on the author's research into young children's ideas about natural phenomena such as the rain and clouds, and on Rogoff's three foci of analysis (personal, interpersonal and contextual), this paper illustrates how a consideration of sociocultural theory can be useful in framing research with young children, and allow us to see beyond the boxes. Emphasis is placed on recognising that children's thinking in science is embedded within particular sociocultural contexts, is guided by others and integrated with their use of certain mental and physical cultural tools. Thus, the article aims to present an alternative method for the generation of data on young children's thinking. Specific analysis of this data will, it is intended, be presented in a subsequent article.     

Teaching With and About Nature of Science, and Science Teacher Knowledge Domains

The ubiquitous goals of helping precollege students develop informed conceptions of nature of science (NOS) and experience inquiry learning environments that progressively approximate authentic scientific practice have been long-standing and central aims of science education reforms around the globe. However, the realization of these goals continues to elude the science education community partly because of a persistent, albeit not empirically supported, coupling of the two goals in the form of ‘teaching about NOS with inquiry’. In this context, the present paper aims, first, to introduce the notions of, and articulate the distinction between, teaching with and about NOS, which will allow for the meaningful coupling of the two desired goals. Second, the paper aims to explicate science teachers’ knowledge domains requisite for effective teaching with and about NOS. The paper argues that research and development efforts dedicated to helping science teachers develop deep, robust, and integrated NOS understandings would have the dual benefits of not only enabling teachers to convey to students images of science and scientific practice that are commensurate with historical, philosophical, sociological, and psychological scholarship (teaching about NOS), but also to structure robust inquiry learning environments that approximate authentic scientific practice, and implement effective pedagogical approaches that share a lot of the characteristics of best science teaching practices (teaching with NOS).     

The social construction of a Teacher Support Team: an experience of university lecturers’ professional development in STEM

Abstract

This paper focuses on understanding and exploring how a group of university engineering and science tutor educators learn and assimilate new conceptions about their role in the face of the forces of globalisation that are transforming the system of higher education. This research paper adopts the notion of the Teacher Support Team (TST) as developed by Daniels and grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural account of the social formation of mind. These structures of meaning provide insight into the role played by the context, the interactions, the needs and the demands of actual activities, agreements and learning processes that this group of STEM lecturers undertook as they sought to transform their usual teaching methods that were focused on individual and isolated work in order to create more innovative practices and impact on their students’ performance. The analysis of this experience, which was based on the epistemological principles of the sociocultural approach, focused on the educational model that emerges from needs that are perceived and shared through the group’s interactions, as well as the transitions that such a team undergoes in its actions and decisions.     

Communities of innovation: Individual,group, and organizational characteristics leading to greater potential for innovation

In this paper I will explain what I see as some of the core attributes of Communities of Innovation, or communities fostering collaborative creativity, and what we have learned from the research literature about each attribute. There is a critical need to design learning environments that foster creative thinking in students, particularly in the area of collaborative creativity. Many of the current problems and challenges graduates will face in society and industry are too large to be faced alone. However, the research and pedagogical understanding of how to develop skills in collaborative creativity is still underdeveloped. In seeking to understand what collaborative creativity would look like in education, I reviewed the literature on organizational and social creativity, along with social learning theory, to develop a framework of characteristics common to most environments that foster collaborative creativity in students (West, 2009). This framework describing Communities of Innovation explains some of the similar characteristics at the individual, group, and organizational levels of innovative communities.     

Affordances of ICT in science learning: implications for an integrated pedagogy

This paper presents an analysis of how affordances of ICT‐rich environments identified from a recent review of the research literature can support students in learning science in schools within a proposed framework for pedagogical practice in science education. Furthermore other pedagogical and curriculum innovations in science education (promoting cognitive change, formative assessment and lifelong learning) are examined to see how they may be supported and enhanced by affordances of ICT‐rich environments. The affordances that I have identified support learning through four main effects: promoting cognitive acceleration; enabling a wider range of experience so that students can relate science to their own and other real‐world experiences; increasing students' self‐management; and facilitating data collection and presentation. ICT‐rich environments already provide a range of affordances that have been shown to enable learning of science but integrating these affordances with other pedagogical innovations provides even greater potential for enhancement of students' learning.     

Identity Construction Environments: Developing Personal and Moral Values Through the Design of a Virtual City

We live in a society where concepts of self, community, and "what is right and wrong" are constantly changing. This makes it particularly challenging for young people to construct a sense of self and to identify their most cherished values. Therefore, there is an amounting pressure in schools and society to create learning environments to explore these issues. Two research questions are at the heart of the work presented in this article: What kind of learning environment will afford opportunities for young people to naturally engage in reflection and discussion about issues of identity, in particular personal and moral values? and How can technologies have an impact on character and moral education? I propose identity construction environments (ICEs) as technological tools purposefully designed with the goal of supporting young people in the exploration of these issues.

I first describe the design principles that distinguish these environments from other learning technologies. I also specify the learning experiences they do afford-namely the understanding of identity as a complex construction composed by different elements, including personal and moral values. Then I present the conceptual foundations and implementation of the Zora ICE. Zora is a three dimensional multi-user virtual environment that engages learners in the design of a graphical virtual city and its social organization. I describe a summer workshop conducted with a multicultural group of teenagers using Zora. They designed a virtual city populated with objects and characters representing aspects of themselves and their values. In this participatory microcommunity those values were put to test. Finally I conclude with reflections and future work that points toward a new research agenda in the area of the learning sciences.     

The nanny in the schoolhouse: the role of femme-Caribbean identity in attaining success in urban science classrooms

A growing body of teacher identity-based research has begun to embrace that the development of self-understanding about being a teacher is critical to learning how to teach. Construction of a professional teacher identity requires much more beyond mere content, skills and a foundational pedagogy. It also includes an intersection of the personal and professional self, which gives way to the emergence of multiple identities in the classroom. An educator’s gender, nationality, language and interests among other tenets all permeate the classroom field and coexist alongside the professional role identity. This paper aims to use narrative as a way to discuss how science educators can mediate holding several identities in the classroom in order to create an environment characterized by successful teaching and learning. Drawing from an array of sociocultural theoretical perspectives, complementary constructs of identity by Jonathan Turner (Face to face: toward a sociological theory of interpersonal behavior. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2002) and Amartya Sen (Identity and violence: the illusion of destiny. W. W. Norton, New York, 2006), George Lakoff’s (Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980) work on metonymy, and David Bloome’s (2005) theorization of the power of caring relationships, I explore the ways in which my Black female Caribbean identity has transformed the science classroom field and created positive resonance for some of my privileged White students who have Caribbean caretakers at home. To begin, I unpack how Afro-Caribbean immigration to urban centers in the United States continues to produce childcare occupational opportunities in places like New York City. Being a first generation Trinidadian immigrant, my many identities have structured my science teaching praxis and consequently transformed the way my students learn science. A significant part of this paper is a reflexive account of experiences (primarily dialogue) with science students situated both within and outside the science classroom. Conversations with students who were raised through the hired help of Caribbean nannies have revealed that there is a strong resemblance to the way they perceive their caretakers as they do me—their instructor. These conversations serve as a backdrop to illuminate the dynamic nature of identity construction and its relationship to the development of ongoing dialogue. The hope is that this autoethnographic work illustrates the salience of student lifeworlds in affording opportunities for success in the science classroom. Additionally, this research seeks to illustrate how understanding the unconscious ‘backgrounding’ and ‘foregrounding’ of certain identities in the classroom can improve one’s praxis in the urban science classroom and possibly increase student success in science. It is also hoped that this story reiterates the importance of using stories for purposes of scholarship, for moving towards better understandings of the social situations we are concerned to investigate as researchers and for better communication of those understandings.     

Stories of learning,identity, navigations and boundary crossings in STEM in non-dominant communities: new imaginaries for research and action

Marta Civil’s paper “STEM learning research through a funds of knowledge lens” can be read as a story about her trajectory as a researcher of everyday and school mathematics over time, grounded in sociocultural historical theory. Building on her work, I explore three issues. First, I address the grounding of STEM research in studies of learning and show what this may imply in the context of multilingualism and transculturism. Second, I explore how funds of knowledge can put into question what counts as science. Third, I discuss some of the methodological challenges the article raises. I conclude with some comments to think with for the future of the STEM field and equitable science.