Social Variations of Diverse Learning Arrangements in FUSE Classrooms

• In Event: FUSE Studios: An Alternative Infrastructure for Learning in Schools

Abstract

In this paper we continue and expand the work done to design new and engaging learning environments (Collins, 1995; Collins, Brown, Newman, 1989; Cobb, Confrey, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003) by examining emergent student-driven learning arrangements in a designed classroom environment. FUSE was designed to engage young people in authentic STEM problem solving, while allowing them freedom to choose how to engage with assorted challenges. This paper focuses on diverse learning arrangements (Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2008) that emerged naturally during FUSE. The vignettes presented in this paper show the sophisticated ways students created learning arrangements that catered to their personal social preferences as they solved challenges.

This data comes from one year of ethnographic observations and video recordings of fifth and sixth grade students who participated in FUSE for 90 minutes each week throughout the 2013-14 school year. We video recorded the entire classroom, took field notes, engaged in informal conversations as participant observers, and selected focal students to wear visors that recorded point-of-view video as they worked. Through interaction analysis (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990), we identified different ways students organized individual learning arrangements in the classroom.

The first vignette shows how Sanika preferred to work entirely alone, moving through the challenge sequence using resources provided by the FUSE website. Though others around her were also working on this challenge level, when Sanika needed help, she turned to website instructions, watched the video tutorials, or occasionally sought help from an adult. The second vignette shows Sanika including a peer in her work as a just-in-time resource, creating a learning arrangement that involved a peer for a brief consultation that was limited to this single interaction. The third vignette shows how Austin relied heavily on his peers for support, looking to them continually rather than seeking resources from the FUSE website. As peers provided guidance, they replaced Austin’s need for information presented on the website. The final vignette shows collaboration between five boys who began working together because of scarce materials. As they worked through multiple iterations of their design, they created and managed individual roles, developing a unique division of labor (Stevens, 2000).

Traditional school practices employ some of the learning arrangements mentioned above; however, students are not typically the ones determining those arrangements. During these and other implementations of FUSE, students are the ones choosing how to arrange the social, temporal, spatial, and material resources to suit their own preferences. We documented that when students were permitted to organize their own learning, they would do so in sophisticated ways: they merged informal (conversations and experimentation) with formal (demonstration and reference seeking) practices, and recognized and valued their peers’ knowledge and the relative expertise those peers brought to bear. Giving students the freedom to dynamically form their own learning arrangements provides them opportunities to collaborate with and value their peers in ways that resemble adult practices and eliminates the artificial competition engendered by typical schooling.

Authors

• Lauren Penney, Northwestern University

• Dionne N. Champion, Northwestern University