Designing Learning Opportunities and Resilience

• In Event: 35.020 - Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

The students who present the greatest need– those who are underrepresented in science and engineering and who come from low socioeconomic groups– are the least likely to receive authentic, intellectually engaging learning experiences. Instead, common instructional approaches are remediation and direct instruction, providing an impoverished and uninspiring vision of the work carried out by Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) professionals.
Diversity matters for the future -- it is a critical resource for the kinds of perspective-taking that results in innovative solutions to grand challenges. In order to diversify STEM professions, we need clear evidence of how to support underrepresented, underserved, struggling learners to see STEM as useful for their futures, to see themselves as capable in STEM, and to build their capacity in STEM fields. We know that teacher-guided problem-based learning is more effective than either traditional instruction or unguided problem-based learning, but it is unclear how teachers can guide students to not just solve problems, but also to find and frame problems.
The goals of this project are (1) to identify characteristics of teacher-guided strategies that allow underserved, underrepresented, struggling learners to engage in problem finding and problem framing, and (2) to document connections between such experiences and learning. These goals are investigated in the context of students designing.

Author

• Vanessa Svihla, University of New Mexico