Collaboration or Cooperation in Engineering Design: Competing Discourses for Participating in Reflective Decision Making in an Urban Elementary Classroom

• In Event: Reconceptualizing the Learning Spaces Created by Elementary Classroom Engineering

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which elementary students within an urban classroom negotiate the Discourse demands (Moje, Collazo, Carrillo, & Marx, 2001) for participating in collaborative engineering design. Specifically, this study explored students’ participation in the engineering practice of reflective decision-making (Authors, 2015), which is conceptualized as the process of collectively making design decisions that are based on evidence that a design idea or solution will work. Investigating Discourse demands within this context explores the cultural and social demands of negotiating the different ways of knowing, doing, speaking, reading, and writing (Gee, 1991) locally constructed for collaboratively making design decisions, or “doing engineering.”

The study was conducted in a combined 4th and 5th grade classroom within an urban school in a southeastern city. The class of 13 students spent approximately 12 total hours over 2 weeks engaged in the Water, water everywhere: Designing water filters unit within the Engineering is Elementary catalog of engineering units. Of the 13 students, there were 7 African American females, 1 Caucasian female, 4 African American males, and 1 Caucasian male. Participants consisted of students who previously returned consent forms.

Using a grounded theory approach (Glauser & Strauss, 1967), semi-structured interviews and classroom observations served as primary data for this study. A total of 8 semi-structured interviews were conducted, including 4 African American males and 4 African American females. Interview questions were designed to elicit student definitions of collaboration, descriptions of the ways in which collaboration was enacted with their group contexts, and self-assessments of individual and group success. Interviews were analyzed using a constant comparative analysis method (Glaser & Strauss, 1965) for identifying initial patterns, or codes, across student responses. A selective coding process was then utilized to examine classroom video and transcripts to support the previously identified findings.

Our analysis suggests that during collaborative engineering design activities, students were negotiating between two different, and at times competing, Discourses: (a) one Discourse involving “doing” collaborative decision-making and (b) one Discourse consisting of “doing” school within an urban context. While the practice of reflective decision-making encouraged students to “argue for the explanations, defend their interpretations of the associated data, and advocate for the design they propose” (Bybee, 2011, p. 39), students were conflicted with the intersection of this practice with their constructed notions of being a “good” student within their classroom. Students emphasized practices of “cooperation” within the group that included accepting design ideas in order to “keep the peace” within group context or general classroom compliance for following directions during design tasks. Student responses regarding this complexity were supported and verified through the examination of video recordings and transcripts of group interactions. For instance, students would formulate a group design by including “one idea” from each person instead of vetting each idea against the design problem.

Implications for this work are important for considering broadening participation in engineering design and the ways in which Discourses are accessible, or not, to all students

Authors

• Christopher George Wright, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville

• Kristen Wendell, Tufts University

• Patricia C. Paugh, University of Massachusetts - Boston