Broadening Participation

This session focuses on broadening participation for students with disabilities and difficulties through a cross-project discussion around the essential questions of responsiveness and of tackling pervasive deficit models. The presenters find deficit models unacceptable. Learning is framed as a form of adaptation that respects the knowledge students bring to learning environments.

The crosscutting themes in the NGSS call for forms of thinking that often are contrary to everyday forms of thinking and are not familiar to most students, especially students from underrepresented populations. Within each theme, there are supporting skills and understandings that students must have in order to understand the broader theme. For example, to reason well about cause and effect, students need to know when to attempt to isolate and control for variables and when to look for interactions, multiple contributing causes, and indirect causes.

Students have traditionally faced difficulties in creating their own computational models due to steep learning curves associated with programming, difficulties in formulating mathematical equations, and lack of student-centered tools to facilitate the use of data from real-world phenomena to inform model design. Addressing these issues will make it possible to broaden participation by engaging students in computational thinking and modeling at younger ages, and by providing a pathway for students who struggle with mathematical formulas and data/graph literacy to participate.

This roundtable discussion begins by framing the affordances and challenges in the context of broadening the participation of Latinx middle school students in STEM+C using an equity lens (Gutiérrez, 2012). Four axes are included as part of this framework: access, achievement (in our case, understandings), identity, and power. Participants are asked to share their understandings of the issues in relation to this equity lens and share stories of opportunities and challenges, as well as ideas of how to address those challenges.

This roundtable session begins with the presentation of a model of language-rich STEM inquiry for broadening participation of English learners (ELs) in formal and informal spaces. This model, developed through the work of this DRK–12 project, brings together EL students, their families, and their STEM teachers in both formal and informal STEM learning spaces. The goal of the model is to support teachers in better utilizing their EL students’ conceptual and linguistic assets to support STEM learning goals with the larger aim of broadening participation in STEM to include more ELs.

This session contributes to a methodological strand involving experienced researchers on learning trajectories and/or learning progressions (LTs/LPs). All these researchers have empirically demonstrated the potential of LT/LP work to broaden participation by leveraging student ideas and offering engaging task designs. Presenters share new LT research on computational thinking. This topical session asks participants to respond to critical questions on the topics of validity and change followed by audience questions and comments.

For decades, the STEM education community has been moving toward modes of collaborative inquiry and social constructivism within rich and deep contexts for investigation. This includes situated learning models (e.g., cognitive apprenticeship) and student-centered learning in project-based learning environments. A primary focus in recent science education reform efforts encourages students and teachers to engage in more open inquiry and problem-solving practices that are inherent in the scientific discovery process.

Researchers agree that scientific concepts do not stand alone and are meaningless if they are introduced as isolated facts. Instead, they suggest that science concepts be taught by engaging in the process of science (French, 2004; Gelman & Brenneman; 2004; Yoon & Onchwari; 2006). This science-as-practice approach is especially appropriate in early childhood.

This interactive session helps all participants view their work in an important new light. Through a combination of presentation and active discussion, participants investigate several ways that data science education (DSE) can be integrated into STEM learning, and work together to answer driving questions about how DSE looks and feels in practice. Specifically, presenters (1) increase awareness of the importance of DSE, (2) help participants understand how DSE intersects with their work, and (3) expand views on data use in STEM learning to involve DSE contexts.