Student and Novice Teacher Learning of Science Ideas and Engineering Practices Through Community-Based Engineering

• In Event: Community-Based Science Learning: Models to Make Classroom Learning Relevant to Students' Everyday Lives

Abstract

Objectives
Our study explores the affordances of the “community-based engineering”(CBE) model for both elementary student and teacher learning in urban settings. The model guides urban learners, many of whose cognitive and sociocultural resources for learning and achievement go unnoticed (Geier, et al., 2008), to find and solve engineering problems in their local communities. We also use this strategy to introduce new urban elementary teachers to practices of engineering towards incorporating them into their classrooms building upon sociocultural resources of their students. We hence seek to transform novice teachers’ perceptions of their students’ “funds of knowledge” for doing science and engineering (Hammond, 2001; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992), consequently altering the trajectory of their first years of teaching (Roehrig & Luft, 2004).

Theoretical perspectives
Our work draws upon situated learning theories (Lave & Wenger, 1991) that suggest cognition is embedded in and inseparable from context. This perspective supports the idea that engaging children in solving engineering problems within their communities can support children’s learning in academic disciplines and has been suggested as an area for synergy between the engineering and the learning sciences research communities (Johri & Olds, 2011).

Methods
Our guiding hypothesis is that CBE has affordances to support teachers in seeing urban students’ resources and developing their own engineering design competency and support students in bringing their resources to bear and learning in academic disciplines. Towards exploring these, we conducted a comparative case study across three related groups of learners: early and upper elementary urban students, and prospective urban teachers.
Each group scoped and solved a different CBE problem. The early elementary students designed and installed a 3-dimensional, interactive number line for their school’s outdoor classroom space. The upper elementary students solved a water access problem in their school garden by designing and constructing a water transport system. The prospective teachers designed and prototyped automatic plant watering systems for urban apartment balconies for summer months.
For each group, we used qualitative microethnographic analysis (Erickson, 1992) and methods from grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to explore learners’ trajectories through the CBE design challenges and look for evidence of disciplinary learning.

Data sources
Our data sources include student work artifacts, student journals, field notes and observations for the three groups and classroom video of small and large group interactions for the teacher group.

Results
Our analysis led us to identify three themes, characterizing student learning. Across the groups and CBE contexts, we see evidence of affordances for:
1. Conceptual understandings in science and math
2. Engineering design practices
3. Responsible community engagement

Significance
Education reforms call for science learning environments to include opportunities for students to explore and make sense of the world through authentic investigations. Engineering design can provide an authentic context for learning ideas and practices in the discipline (Wendell & Kolodner, 2014) and help educators face new challenges posed by the Next Generation Science Standards. Evidence from our study unpacks CBE’s capacity to create quality STEM learning experiences for urban students and opportunities for teachers to connect students to the community.

Authors

• Tejaswini Dalvi, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Kristen Wendell, Tufts University