This brief draws on research supported by the National Science Foundation to highlight important considerations for educators and others who design and provide STEM educational experiences for young children.
This study offers insights into the ways in which two groups of elementary school students constructed approaches for participating in the engineering design practice of collaborative reflective decision-making.
In the growing field of K-12 engineering education, there is limited research that highlights the experiences of youth from historically marginalized communities within engineering learning environments. This study offers insights into the ways in which two groups of elementary school students constructed approaches for participating in the engineering design practice of collaborative reflective decision-making. Findings suggest that students conceptualized urban, engineering learning environments as spaces for risk management. This notion of managing risks informed their participation in collaborative decision-making, and the ways in which they viewed themselves as doers of engineering. Implications for this study include the continued need for the development of methodologies and frameworks that provide opportunities to uncover these potential risks, and design supports for student participation in engineering design practices.
This study offers insights into the ways in which two groups of elementary school students constructed approaches for participating in the engineering design practice of collaborative reflective decision-making.
In the growing field of K-12 engineering education, there is limited research that highlights the experiences of youth from historically marginalized communities within engineering learning environments. This study offers insights into the ways in which two groups of elementary school students constructed approaches for participating in the engineering design practice of collaborative reflective decision-making. Findings suggest that students conceptualized urban, engineering learning environments as spaces for risk management. This notion of managing risks informed their participation in collaborative decision-making, and the ways in which they viewed themselves as doers of engineering. Implications for this study include the continued need for the development of methodologies and frameworks that provide opportunities to uncover these potential risks, and design supports for student participation in engineering design practices.
Exploring how children’s conceptions might advance through their implicit knowledge provides a fundamental view into children’s mathematics and elucidates possible alternative definitions of “learning difference (LD)”. I present an evolving theoretical framework that depict children with LD’s knowing and learning as nascent understandings that emerge from a real-time negotiation of meaning within “small environments” of instructional intervention. These negotiations are supported, or not, by the teacher’s propensity to engage in the knowledge of children and use teaching to construct shared goals for learning. Implications of the work include new ways educators might define LDs as a complex phenomenon that reflects how children’s knowledge of mathematics advances, or not, through a shared cognition grounded in children’s unique knowing and learning.
Cognitive differences intrinsic to children with learning disabilities (LDs) have historically led to deficit assumptions concerning the mathematical experiences these children “need” or can access. We argue that the problem can be located not within children but instead as a mismatch between instruction and children’s unique abilities. To illustrate this possibility, we present the case of “Jim,” a fifth-grader with perceptual-motor LDs. Our ongoing analysis of Jim’s fractional reasoning in seven equal sharing based tutoring sessions suggests that Jim leveraged his knowledge of number facts and alternative representations to advance his reasoning.
In this study, we challenge the deficit perspective on mathematical knowing and learning for children labeled as LD, focusing on their struggles not as a within student attribute, but rather as within teacher-learner interactions. We present two cases of fifth-grade students labeled LD as they interacted with a researcher-teacher during two constructivist-oriented teaching experiments designed to foster a concept of unit fraction. Data analysis revealed three main types of interactions, and how they changed over time, which seemed to support the students’ learning: Assess, Cause and Effect Reflection, and Comparison/Prediction Reflection. We thus argue for an intervention in interaction that occurs in the instructional process for students with LD, which should replace attempts to “fix” ‘deficiencies’ that we claim to contribute to disabling such students.
This 2018 AERA structured poster session shed light on the DR K-12 portfolio of transformative research in online and blended teacher professional development.
Classroom Learning Partner (CLP) tools allow students and teachers to create, annotate, and manipulate visual representations to solve math problems. The tools may be used for a number of mathematical purposes, but were mainly conceived to assist in creating visual representations for multiplication and division. The underlying model of multiplication and division assumed by the current set of tools involves a repetition of groups of the same size.
CLP contains seven tools for use in creating visual representations, as shown in examples. More details about using each tool follow these examples.
Classroom Learning Partner (CLP) tools allow students and teachers to create, annotate, and manipulate visual representations to solve math problems. The tools may be used for a number of mathematical purposes, but were mainly conceived to assist in creating visual representations for multiplication and division. The underlying model of multiplication and division assumed by the current set of tools involves a repetition of groups of the same size.
CLP contains seven tools for use in creating visual representations, as shown in examples. More details about using each tool follow these examples.
Much of the literature on science teaching suggests that elementary teachers lack relevant prior experiences with science. This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. Our work uses identity as a lens to examine the complexities of elementary teachers’ narrative accounts of their experiences with science over the course of their lives.
This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. This work demonstrates that teachers’ storied lives are important for educational researchers and teacher educators, as they reveal elements of teaching knowledge that may be productive and resourceful for refining teachers’ science practice.
