Suparna Sinha

Collaborative group engagement in a computer-supported inquiry learning environment

Computer-supported collaborative learning environments provide opportunities for students to collaborate in inquiry-based practices to solve authentic problems, using technological tools as a resource. However, we have limited understanding of the quality of engagement fostered in these contexts, in part due to the narrowness of engagement measures. To help judge the quality of engagement, we extend existing engagement frameworks, which have studied this construct as a stable and decontextualized individual difference. We conceptualize engagement as multi-faceted (including behavioral, social, cognitive and conceptual-to-consequential forms), dynamic, contextualized and collective. Using our newly developed observational measure, we examine the variation of engagement quality for ten groups. Subsequently, we differentiate low and high quality collaborative engagement through a close qualitative analysis of two groups. Here, we explore the interrelationships among engagement facets and how these relations unfolded over the course of group activity during a lesson. Our results suggest that the quality of behavioral and social engagement differentiated groups demonstrating low quality engagement, but cognitive and conceptual-to-consequential forms are required for explaining high quality engagement. Examination of interrelations indicate that behavioral and social engagement fostered high quality cognitive engagement, which then facilitated consequential engagement. Here, engagement is evidenced as highly interrelated and mutually influencing interactions among all four engagement facets. These findings indicate the benefits of studying engagement as a multi-faceted phenomenon and extending existing conceptions to include consequential engagement, with implications for designing technologies that scaffold high quality cognitive and conceptual-to-consequential engagement in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment.

Balancing broad ideas with context: an evaluation of student accuracy in describing ecosystem processes after a system-level intervention

Promoting student understanding of ecosystem processes is critical to biological education. Yet, teaching complex life systems can be difficult because systems are dynamic and often behave in a non-linear manner. In this paper, we discuss assessment results from a middle school classroom intervention in which a conceptual representation framework is embedded in a suite of technology tools. We use both hand-drawn models and open-ended written responses to evaluate student understanding. While we speculated that our intervention would help students use ecosystem mechanisms to describe broader processes, we found instead that students tended to express constructs in isolation (as opposed to a unified picture of ecosystem processes). In addition, students provided greater elaboration of ideas mostly when specifically prompted. Specific prompts also tended to produce more accurate representations of the ecosystem processes our curriculum covered. Our findings have allowed us to refine our intervention to better translate these critical concepts, and how they are interrelated, to young learners. As such, these findings have important implications for encouraging broader ecosystem thinking in K-12 classrooms.

The influence of the high school classroom environment on learning as mediated by student engagement

Classroom learning environments are frequently assumed to exert their influence on learning indirectly, via student engagement. The present study examined the influence of environmental challenge and support on learning in high school classrooms, and the potential for student engagement to act as a mediator in this relationship. Data were collected in seven classrooms in six different subjects in several US high schools. The 104 students in these classes participated in the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and reported records (N = 254) of engagement, learning, and related experiential variables. Measures of the learning environment were also rated from video footage. Variations in the learning environment observed and rated from video were linked to students’ real-time reactions to instruction synchronously. Results indicated that environmental support, but not environmental challenge, was significantly related with perceived learning. Multi-level path analyses revealed that the association between environmental supports and learning was mediated by student engagement. This mediating relationship held specifically for two components of environmental support: Motivational supports and supportive relationships. Implications are discussed for the benefit of practicing school psychologists, including strategies for facilitating motivational and relational support to enhance student engagement.

Modeling with a Conceptual Representation: Is It Necessary? Does It Work?

In response to recent educational imperatives in the United States, modeling and systems thinking have been identified as being critical for science learning. In this paper, we investigate models in the classroom from two important perspectives: (1) from the teacher perspective to understand how teachers perceive models and use models in the classroom and (2) from the student perspective to understand how student use model-based reasoning to represent their understanding in a classroom setting. Qualitative data collected from 19 teachers who attended a professional development workshop in the northeastern United States indicate that while teachers see the value in teaching to think with models (i.e., during inquiry practices), they tend to use models mostly as communication tools in the classroom. Quantitative data collected about the modeling practices of 42 middle school students who worked collaboratively in small groups (4-5 students) using a computer modeling program indicated that students tended to engage in more mechanistic and function-related thinking with time as they reasoned about a complex system. Further, students had a typified trajectory of first adding and then next paring down ideas in their models. Implications for science education are discussed.

Assessing teacher education and professional development needs for the implementation of integrated approaches to STEM education

BackgroundGiven the growing interest in, and relevance of, integrated approaches to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, there is an urgent desire to understand the challenges and obstacles to developing and implementing integrated STEM curricula and instruction. In this article, we present phase 1 of a two-phase needs assessment study to identify challenges and needs of promoting integrated approaches in STEM education. Utilizing a key informant approach, 22 K-12 teachers and four administrators selected as potential leaders in STEM education in an unidentified state on the East Coast of the USA were interviewed. Participants were asked to identify challenges and perceived supports to conduct integrated STEM education. Questions were open-ended in order to inform a larger, state-wide questionnaire study in phase 2 to be reported subsequently and were qualitatively coded.ResultsSeveral distinctive themes were identified as described by teacher participants when discussing challenges and obstacles of implementing integrated STEM education, as well as supports that would be most helpful in overcoming them. Participants also provided specific suggestions for teacher education needed to support integrated STEM education.ConclusionsPreliminary findings suggest that many teachers are interested in integrated approaches to STEM, but do not believe they are well prepared to implement them. Teachers and administrators also suggest that adequate preparation in integrated STEM would entail a considerable rethinking and redesigning of pre-service courses and in-service workshops. Findings provide a starting point for better understanding teacher needs in integrated STEM and a springboard for further study.

Learning Functional Models of Aquaria: The ACT Project on Ecosystem Learning in Middle School Science

The ACT project is an ongoing collaboration among learning, cognitive, computing and biological scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, focusing on learning functional models of ecosystems in middle school science. In particular, ACT (for Aquarium Construction Toolkit) is an interactive learning environment for stimulating and scaffolding construction of Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) models to reason about classroom aquaria. Initial results from deployment of ACT in several classrooms with a few hundred middle school children indicate statistically significant improvement in identification of the structure, behaviors and functions of classroom aquaria as well as appropriation of SBF modeling by some middle school teachers for modeling other natural systems. In this article, we summarize and review the main results from ACT on learning about SBF models of ecosystems in middle school science and describe self-regulated learning in ACT, while also looking ahead and outlining the design of a metacognitive ACT toolkit.

Teacher Perceptions of Their Curricular and Pedagogical Shifts: Outcomes of a Project-Based Model of Teacher Professional Development in the Next Generation Science Standards

In this study, we conducted a model of teacher professional development (PD) on the alignment of middle and high school curricula and instruction to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSSs), and evaluated the impact of the PD on teacher participants’ development. The PD model included a 4-day summer academy emphasizing project-based learning (PBL) in the designing of NGSS-aligned curricula and instruction, as well as monthly follow-up Professional Learning Community meetings throughout the year providing numerous opportunities for teachers to develop and implement lesson plans, share results of lesson writing and implementation (successes and challenges), provide mutual feedback, and refine curricula and assessments. Following the summer academy, six female teachers were interviewed about their current conceptualizations of NGSS, the extent of curricular shifts made that are required by NGSS, their self-perceptions regarding their level of accomplishment in curriculum writing, and the benefits of the PD in reaching their goals related to NGSS. Interviews were supplemented with an analysis of lesson plans written while participating in the PD program. The interviewed teachers suggested that they had made important conceptual and pedagogical shifts required by NGSS as they participated in the PD, and also noted a variety of challenges as they made this shift. While all teachers were relative novices at NGSS curriculum writing before the PD, most of the teachers interviewed felt that they had achieved the status of an “accomplished novice” following the summer academy. An analysis of their written lessons suggested a great range in the extent to which teachers effectively applied their understanding of NGSS to write lessons aligned to NGSS. Interviewed teachers believed that the PD model was helpful to their development as science teachers, and all reported that there were no aspects of the PD that were not helpful. Even though most teachers obtained a basic understanding and conceptualization of NGSS and PBL, their application of this understanding in their curriculum writing varied. The present study may help to inform future efforts to support teachers to align curricula and instruction to NGSS through teacher PD.

Impact of technological affordances on cognitive engagement in computer supported collaborative learning environments

Comprehending complex systems is difficult as some interactions between parts are invisible and as result, that makes them difficult to perceive (Feltovich et al., 2001). In order to strengthen their conceptual understanding of such complex phenomena, students need to have a great amount of interest, and an enhanced psychological investment in learning i.e. persistence in the face of failure or challenge, all of which are indicators of cognitive engagement. By providing ease of use, aesthetic appeal, choice, feedback, challenge, variety and interactivity, technology has great potential to engage learners. This also provides students with opportunities where they can think critically, make judgments and solve complex open ended problems. This study uses three different kinds of technologies to engage students as they study about one such complex system -the aquatic ecosystem. The purpose of this dissertation is to observe how affordances of these technologies encourage the students to remain cognitively engaged.