aera 2013 symposium

7/30/2019 AERA 2013 Symposium

1/6

Conditions for Establishing and Promoting Collaborative Research in STEM Learning Ecologies

Rationale, Theoretical Framework, and Objectives

Recent publications by the National Research Council (NRC 2000, 2005, 2007, 2008) havefocused on cognitive and communication skills learners need to function effectively in 21st century STEM

contexts. While these skills are articulated differently in different reports, current systemic reform of

STEM education seeks the integrated understanding of science (Kali, Linn, & Roseman, 2008) and

improvement of learning through student-centered, inquiry-based approaches (NRC, 2007). NRC (2007)

identifies four strands of proficiencies for students and, by extension, teachers: understand, use, and

interpret scientific explanations of the natural world; generate and evaluate scientific evidence and

explanations; understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge; and participate

productively in scientific practices and discourse (p. 334). Achievement of proficiencies can be

facilitated through participation of diverse disciplinary experts in learning ecologies that helps teachers

coordinate a set of programs to link authentic questions of interest (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002; Schielack

& Knight, 2012) and through the use of information technology as a vehicle for inquiry (Pellegrino,2000).

Although some evidence exists for the effectiveness of interdisciplinary learning ecologies for

21st century STEM education goals (NRC ), we have less understanding of conditions needed to promote

the kind of collaborative research that enables participants to cross traditional boundaries of research

and practice. Therefore, the purpose of this symposium is to advance our understanding of aspects of

learning ecologies that facilitate or impede interdisciplinary collaboration. More specifically, objectives

include to: (1) characterize the processes and outcomes of five National Science Foundation (NSF)

projects from three universities emphasizing collaborative research and incorporating information

technology; (2) identify conditions within and across projects that impact interdisciplinary STEM

learning ecologies; and (3) examine the extent to which these conditions can be utilized to develop

transportable models of successful interdisciplinary collaboration.

Format

The proposed symposium is divided into three parts. The first part (50 minutes) features brief

presentations of five papers. Four of the five papers describe NSF-funded STEM education projects and

lessons learned about conditions for developing and sustaining interdisciplinary STEM learning

communities. The fifth paper outlines lessons learned from projects they have been involved with as

external evaluators. Next, Richard Duschl, who has been active in work associated with NRC reports,

will provide integrative comments to synthesize and advance our thinking (15 minutes). The discussant

will pose questions for the audience to consider in relation to papers presented and their own work.

Finally, the Chair, Presenters, and Discussant will engage the audience in dialogue about the extent towhich these conditions can be used to develop transportable models for interdisciplinary collaboration

and contextual features that may constrain the models.

Educational Significance

Findings from this symposium can inform strategies for the 2013 AERA theme that addresses

education and poverty. STEM degree attainment and career goals are related to factors associated with


2/6

parents SES (Chen, 2009). Involving K-16 students and teachers in interdisciplinary learning ecologies

has the potential to alter learning conditions that embrace the four strands and increase 21st

century

STEM proficiencies and interest in science - possibly increasing the number of low-income students with

STEM degrees.

Paper #1: Sustaining the Creative Tension to Support a STEM Learning Ecology. Stephanie L. Knight,

Penn State University; Jane F. Schielack, Texas A&M University

This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of an NSF-funded STEM

leadership program that promotes collaboration among scientists and science educators, provides

authentic research experiences for educators, and facilitates adaptation and evaluation of these

experiences for students in secondary and postsecondary classrooms. Beginning in 2000, a group of

people from a variety of disciplinary perspectives came together to brainstorm ideas for addressing the

need for a new generation of science education leaders. The expectation was that university scientists

and education researchers, graduate students, and grade 716 practitioners would embrace a common

goal ofdoing research and engaging students within Science Learning Communities, thus adding to the

pool of 21st-century science education leaders. This collection of researchers and graduate students in

the physical, life, and earth sciences; researchers and graduate students in science education and

educational psychology; and grade 716 science teachers created an environment of distributedexpertise resulting in a set of interactive experiences known as the Information Technology in Science

Center. ITS strives to transform the culture and relationships among scientists, education researchers,

and education practitioners by engaging them in the use of information technology to learn about how

science is done; how science is taught and learned; how science learning can be assessed; and how

scholarly networks can be developed. The information technology targeted visualization, simulation,

modeling, and analyses of complex data sets.

Practitioners participating in the scientists research enhanced their classroom practice through the

design, implementation, and investigation of authentic science lessons based on their experiences

working with scientists. IT-based instructional interventions incorporated the use of information

technology and scientific inquiry to enhance K-16 learners understanding of the natural world in the

same way that scientists use these tools to do their research. Participants adapted and used theinterventions in their own classroom research studies to examine the effects of their interventions on

students learning. The paper summarizes program outcomes, including analyses of resulting classroom

implementation and impacts on science and education faculty, graduate students, and secondary

science students and their teachers.

Building an environment incorporating creative tension was a key aspect of this project. Creative

tension was the driving characteristic of the ITS program as a learning ecology. Creative tension arises

from disequilibrium and noveltywhen tasks or goals require individuals to reconfigure themselves to

act in roles that are unfamiliar to them and to adaptively change course when necessary. Creative

tension provided the energy needed to solve the complex problems associated with the learning

communities as they worked toward their commitments to doing research and engaging students in

authentic research. Teaching and learning within the ITS environment led to the identification of

conditions necessary to support the creative tension needed to initiate and maintain the learning

ecology, including diversity, the ability to reform structures and roles, new understandings of identity

and community, and appropriate incentives.

Paper #2: Exploring the Effect of Virtual Ecologies on Student Learning Processes A Collaborative

Endeavor of Science and Education Scholars. X. Ben Wu, Texas A&M University; Stephanie L. Knight,

Penn State University; Jane F. Schielack, Texas A&M University; Aubree Webb, Penn State University


3/6

This paper describes an NSF-supported collaborative project between sciencists and education

researchers in developing a Virtual Ecological Inquiry (VEI) learning environment in Second Life (a 3-D

virtual world); implementation of the VEI in large, introductory ecology classes; and examination of the

behaviors and learning of students using the VEI. VEI is based on an earlier collaborative project

between members of the NSF-funded Information Technology in Science (ITS) Center for Teaching and

Learning at Texas A&M University and colleagues at the Computer Network Information Center (CNIC)

of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The VEI design was based on the landscape ecology of the Wolong Natural Reserve to enable inquiry-

based learning and assessment of student learning. In VEI, students can observe ecological patterns,

generate testable hypotheses, design and conduct virtual field investigations, analyze the data, and

make ecological interpretations. Main activities and spatial locations of individual students in VEI are

recorded for analysis of learning process and behavior. VEI was tested in Fall 2011 in an introductory

ecology course with over 400 students. Making appropriate graphical settings in various computers

turned out to be challenging for some students and caused considerable frustration. With appropriate

graphical settings, students improved their efficiency in navigation and performing sampling tasks

quickly. Despite the challenges, many students reflected in a student survey that they liked the virtual

world experiences, being able to interact with others in VEI, and learning about the ecology in the

museum and sampling in virtual plots of Wolong. They perceived learning through the VEI project withimproved ability to formulate a testable hypothesis and improved understanding of how ecologists

conduct research. Based on comparison to student reflections on another web-based inquiry project in

the course, more challenging experiences due to technical difficulties appear to have negatively

influenced student perceptions on their learning gain. An important lesson learned is that we must

balance the desire for realism in the virtual inquiry and the critical consideration of widely variable

computing capabilities and skills of individual students.

VEI represents a complex collaboration among groups with diverse expertise (technology,

ecology, educational research) as well as diverse cultures (China, U.S.). The presentation discusses the

processes, challenges, and benefits of interdisciplinary STEM collaboration within this context. In

addition, the paper highlights the importance of prior working relationships to the development of

successful complex collaborative projects.

Paper #3: The Bio-engineered Model System: Interlocking Physical and Mental Models on the Laboratory

Bench Top. Wendy Newstetter, Georgia Tech University

Over the last twelve years, we have investigated the cognitive and learning requirements for engaging in

interdisciplinary work in university laboratories. The research settings we studied were designed to

transcend the traditional model of collaboration among engineers, biologists, and medical doctors to a

new kind of integrative biomedical engineering that will shorten the span between laboratory research

and bedside application. In our research, we attempt a shift in analytical approach from regarding

cognitive and socio-cultural factors as independent variables to regarding cognitive and socio-cultural

processes as integral to one another. To make that shift towards integration, we construe cognitive

processes as comprising more than what takes place in the head of an individual scientist, and analyze

scientific thinking as occurring within complex cognitive-cultural systems comprising humans and

artifacts. We started with two questions: What is the nature of reasoning and problem solving in

interdisciplinary practice? How is learning accomplished in complex sites of interdisciplinary work? To

begin to address these questions, we undertook a two-year investigation of a neuro-engineering

laboratory, a hybrid engineering and science environment. This lab investigates learning or neural

plasticity to create aids for neurological disabilities or, more notably, to make humans smarter (Lab D

Director). We conducted an extended ethnography employing participant observation, informant


4/6

interviewing and artifact collection. This was complimented by cognitive-historical analysis, in which we

collected and analyzed data from traditional publications, grant proposals, laboratory notebooks, and

technological artifacts to capture the diachronic dimension of the research by tracing the intersecting

trajectories of the human and technological components of the laboratory, conceived as an evolving

cognitive-cultural system, from both historical records and ethnographic data. This human system

comprises neuroscientists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, biochemists and artists in the

United States and Australia.

We found the hybrid nature of the laboratories under investigation most clearly instantiated in

the bio-engineered model-systems developed in the laboratories and in the characteristics of the

researcher-students who are part of a program aimed explicitly at producing interdisciplinary,

integrative thinkers in bio-engineering. The particular focus in this talk will be a bio-engineered model

system in Lab D, referred to as the living artistic robot or hybrot (hybrid robot for short). This system

comprises a brain-in-a-dish, a computer and specially developed software, and a body, which is

physically distributed and capable of drawing (primitive) pictures that goes by the name MEArt. The

Dish is the labs central model-system: the physically constructed embodiment of the Labs selective

model of the brain, an in vitro model of basic in vivo neurological processes. We maintain that MEArt is a

complex model-system involving several different physical and mental models, instruments, and

devices, which converge and interlock around the MEArt hybrot. A central claim of our research is thatinference is performed through interlocking mental and physical models and that the devices serve as

hubs for interlocking cognitive and cultural facets of laboratory research. The presenters will discuss

how these devices also serve as socio-cognitive-cultural anchors and accelerants for interdisciplinary

collaboration.

Paper #4: STEM Integration in a Research Based Engineering Curriculum Using Enacted and Prescribed

Frames. Anthony J. Petrosino, Katharine A. Gustafson, University of Texas

Recent calls from both educational leaders and researchers have emphasized that technical

education and academic subject areas be integrated so students can develop both academic and

occupational competency as well as be more motivating and interesting to students. In response tothis national call, engineering and K-12 pre-engineering curricula are being developed and

redesigned to invigorate the engineering pipeline and to provide an integrated program of STEM

education (Prevost et. al, 2009).

This paper explores the contrasting ways in which integration is articulated in the

prescribed curriculum and how integration is translated into the enacted curriculum as certain

organizations, individuals and artifacts become enrolled through networks of school and college.

The current study looks at a prescribed 12 week secondary engineering unit which was designed

with significant input from a university-based team including content experts, learning scientists,

master teachers, classroom teachers and school district administrators as part of an NSF grant

focused on the creation of a high school engineering course (UTeach Engineering MSP).

The unit was enacted in a rural/suburban school by a group of average students by a

teacher with high content knowledge in engineering (a former civil engineer) as well as 10 years ofexperience as a classroom teacher. The teacher was also part of the same NSF grant and was in the

process of obtaining a Master's degree in STEM education during the time period. Using grounded

theory, action research and ethnographic case study methodology this research explores the

contrasting ways in which a prescribed curriculum is translated into an enacted curriculum. The

current study looks at a 12 week secondary engineering unit (helmet design) which was designed

with significant input from a university-based team including content experts, learning scientists,

master teachers, classroom teachers and school district administrators as part of a grant focused on


5/6

the creation of a high school engineering course. Five thrusts were identified for analysis including

Assessment, Activities, Apparatus, Technology and Standards. Findings indicate much alignment

with Apparatus, Standards and Technology thrusts and disparity within the Assessment and

Activities thrusts.

Additionally, we found many areas in the unit where the intended and enacted curricula

were not aligned, so that topics emphasized in the course were not assessed, while concepts and

skills on some assessments were not especially supported by the course materials. While thesefindings seem at odds with claims by the curriculum developers, we attribute the different

interpretations to an example of the Expert Blind Spot (Author, 2003), the psychological

phenomenon that those highly knowledgeable in their own fields more readily see the deep

conceptual underpinnings than novices do. Finally, we use the results of these analyses to illustrate

how STEM concepts can be explicitly integrated with high school engineering activities, and

increase the possibilities that learning will be deep and foster transfer to new tasks and settings.

Paper #5: Evaluating Educational Collaborations. Ruth Anderson, Jim Minstrell, Facet Innovations

For at least two decades, efforts to improve science education have emphasized the support of formal

collaborations between K-20 practitioners and researchers. Underlying the support of these efforts isthe belief that interdependence among collaborators leads to greater intellectual exchange and the

creation of more innovative products, approaches and practices. Whats more, there has also been the

implicit expectation of cultural change for participants and their respective institutions, which in turn

would promote greater alignment of K-16 science education research and practice.

Whether they are inter-institutional or inter-departmental, educational partnerships are

complex multicultural endeavors involving several professional communities and requiring participants

to negotiate cultural boundaries, learn to communicate and to share resources and rewards. Successful

interdisciplinary collaborations are obviously challenging to build but perhaps even more challenging to

evaluate in terms of quality and viability as they grow and evolve. After all, evaluation is interested not

only in the partnerships destination (specific short term products or outcomes) but also the journey

to success (or failure) so that successful examples might be efficiently replicated in future contexts or

that fatal mistakes might be avoided.In this paper, we will look at key components in the development of interdisciplinary

educational partnerships as participants evolve from a loose confederation of diverse individuals

engaged in parallel play, to a collaborative and productive interdisciplinary network. To do so, we will

rely on evaluation data and findings from four STEM interdisciplinary partnerships, funded by NSF in the

last decade, for which we served as external evaluators. We will examine the data through two

frameworks. The first is based on concepts within the field of organization development (OD), which has

commonly been drawn upon to describe school-university partnerships and to organize important

lessons learned. However, while the principles of organizational theory help to tell the particular hows

and whysof the successful development of a specific collaboration, they dont easily present a blueprint

from which to engineer future groups within a new and unique context.

The second framework, which draws on principles of complexity science, is more conducive topredicting and documenting the viability and development of a complex learning system over time. This

working framework is informed by Davis and Simmts (2003) research on complex learning systems in

formal and informal mathematics learning environments. We will explore the principles of internal

diversity, redundancy, decentralized control, organized randomness and neighbor interactions in light of

the educational partnership data and explore some ways in which they might be used in conjunction

with methods such as social network analysis (SNA) to both predict and explain the viability,

development and ongoing health of these collaborations.


6/6

The two frameworks are complementary and potentially useful in documenting the

development and outcomes of interdisciplinary educational collaborations. The first is most useful

retrospectively in presenting a specific projects story and the particulars of its relative success or

failure. Meanwhile, the second framework potentially provides a generalizable approach to measuring

the evolution of emergent complex systems that are educational partnerships.

References

Chen, X. (2009). Students Who Study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in

Postsecondary Education. Stats in Brief. NCES 2009-161. Retrieved from:

http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED506035.pdf

Chinn, C. A., & Malhotra, B. A. (2002). Epistemologically authentic reasoning in schools: A theoretical

framework for evaluating inquiry tasks. Science Education, 86, 175218.

Davis, B., & Simmt, E. (2003). Understanding learning systems: Mathematics education and complexity

science.Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 34, 137167.

Kali, Y., Linn, M. C., & Roseman, J. E. (Eds.). (2008). Designing coherent science education: Implicationsfor curriculum, instruction, and policy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Nathan, M. J. & Petrosino, A. J. (2003). Expert Blind Spot Among Preservice Teachers. American

Educational Research Journal. 40(4), 905-928.National Research Council. (2008). Research on Future Skill Demands: A Workshop Summary.

Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and

school(Expanded version; J. D. Bransford, A. L. Brown, & R. R. Cocking, Eds.).

Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council (2005).Americas Lab Report: Investigations in High School

Science. Committee on High School Laboratories: Role and Vision. Susan R. Singer,

Amanda L. Hilton, and Heidi A. Schweingruber, Eds. Board on Science Education.

Center for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

National Research Council (2007). Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching

Science in Grades K-8. Committee on Science Learning, Kindergarten Through Eighth

Grade. R. A. Duschl, H. A. Schweingruber, and A. W. Shouse (Eds.). Board on Science

Education, Center for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and

Education. Washington,DC: The National Academies Press.

Pellegrino, J. W. (2000). Leveraging the power of learning theory through information technology. In

American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (Ed.), Log on or lose out: Technology in the

21st century(pp. 4854). Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.

Prevost, A., Nathan, M. J., Stein, B., Tran, N., & Phelps, L. A. (2009). Integration of mathematics in pre-

college engineering: The search for explicit connections. Proceedings of the American Society ofEngineering Education (ASEE) 2009. Austin, TX: ASEE Publications.

Schielack, J., & Knight, S. (2012). The new science education leadership: An IT-based learning

ecology model. New York: Teachers College Press.
http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED506035.pdfhttp://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED506035.pdfhttp://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED506035.pdf

aera 2013 symposium

Documents