Designing Educative Teacher Guides for Informal Learning

• In Event: Developing and Studying Educative Science and Mathematics Curriculum Materials

Abstract

Objective.
A goal of the Robot Algebra Project is to develop teacher guides for middle school-focused robotics lessons in informal settings (summer camps, after-school, clubs). Since the student materials focus on a core mathematical concept, proportional reasoning, the research objective for the teacher materials is: To develop educative teacher guides that informal educators, who vary significantly in teaching capacity and experience, can use to implement computer-based robotics lessons that foreground proportional reasoning.

Theoretical Background.
Current themes in curriculum research include conceptualizations of the teacher-curriculum-student relationship (Remillard, 2005; Brown, 2009); heuristics for designing educative guides (Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Ball & Cohen, 1996), mathematical knowledge required for effective implementation (Hill et al, 2007), evaluation of the educative nature of standards-based curricula (Stein & Kaufman, 2010; Stein & Kim, 2009), and the impact of curricula implementation on student learning (NRC, 2004; Stein, Remillard & Smith, 2007). Drawing upon these themes, we investigate a new setting in which educative materials might play a significant role: Computer-based instruction led by informal educators.

Methods and Data Sources.
To identify the factors integral to successful implementation that will ultimately guide the design of the teacher guides, this study utilized quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. The data sources consisted of structured observations of the professional development for informal educators, provided by the student materials’ developers, and the subsequent implementations by the informal educators. Also, we interviewed these informal educators and collected data on their knowledge of proportional reasoning and their perceptions of their roles, with thematic analytical techniques adopted to identify the relationships between our coding/thematic categories.

Results.
Preliminary findings show that teacher capacity, construed here as the capacity of an informal educator to utilize and mobilize available curriculum resources efficaciously (Stein & Kaufman, 2010; Remillard, 2005), as well as educator conceptions of the role and purpose of the student materials, and educators’ perceptions of their roles in implementing these materials, are major design factors. Another influence is educators’ perceptions of the needs and abilities of their student cohorts.

Significance.
We are aware of no studies that address the design of educative materials for informal learning environments. Further, designing teacher guides for a new representational medium, computer-based modules, has forced us to re-think the optimal role for teachers in situations in which designers have situated the bulk of the learning between the student and the curricular (computerized) resources (Stein & Kim, 2009). Finally, while the design of educative curricula has primarily occurred in the context of conceptually based student materials, this study takes as its starting point a set of extant, computer-based modules that primarily focus on procedural learning and attempts to guide teachers to implement the modules in more conceptually rich ways.

Hence a contribution of this study is its unique focus on the design of educative teacher guides for informal education that takes into consideration the student-curriculum learning constraint of the computer medium, while designing for implementation that aims to build student understanding of procedures and relevant concepts.

Authors

• Samuel O. King, University of Pittsburgh

• Mary Kay Stein, University of Pittsburgh

• Christian D. Schunn, University of Pittsburgh

• Melissa D. Boston, Duquesne University