Learners Crafting Understandings of What It Means to Persuade

• In Event: 34.028 - From Making to Agentic Participation: Perspectives on and Approaches to Fostering Epistemic Engagement in Making

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework:
The Next Generation Science Standards’ (NGSS, 2013) focus on the incorporation of technology as a part of teaching science has led to the inclusion of making within many K-12 classrooms. Often, this making involves the design and construction of both physical and digital artifacts that support students’ creation of knowledge and representations of it, thus this study draws on constructionism for the theoretical framework (Papert & Harel, 1991). Through examining the use of student-created digital multimedia artifacts, Zahn et al. (2007) found students designing an artifact for an audience engaged more deeply in the content. In addition, they developed technical, design, and social skills, as well as critical thinking skills (Yang & Wu, 2012). Building upon this work, this study explores the epistemic agency in student interactions as they designed and produced multimedia artifacts in a high school science classroom.

Methods and Data:
The setting for this study is a rural, high-poverty school in Western Pennsylvania with a one-to-one computer initiative. In small, student-selected groups, students (n=34) researched alternative energies and created a video intended to sway the town council towards their viewpoint over 7 class periods (as a part of a larger project). Data collected included video transcripts of classwork and small group interviews, written reflections, and the student-created, multimedia artifacts from the classes. Content logs (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) were developed for the video and critical events identified. These were transcribed and coded using an interpretive analytical approach. Through theory-driven, thematic analyses of the data, I seek to understand how students exercised epistemic agency as they negotiated what counted as persuasion and argumentation when creating their artifacts.

Findings and Conclusions:
This poster will present comparative cases of 3 groups of students as they negotiate their definitions of persuasion during the design and construction of their multimedia artifact. Through varied considerations of the needs of the audience during artifact design (Zahn et al., 2007), these groups of students each took up a different understanding of what it meant to construct a persuasive artifact. Group one students focused on including the necessary components drawn from scientific argumentation structures in their multimedia artifact. Students in group two utilized humor as a persuasive strategy to engage the audience. The two members of group three, however, felt that persuasion required them to “grip at the heart, man” and combined argumentation and everyday understandings of what it meant to persuade through the use of photographs that they felt caused fear for their audience. The students in each group positioned themselves as epistemic agents as they crafted collaborative understandings of what it means to persuade in a multimedia artifact. They also determined jointly which supporting strategies should be used when creating their artifacts to best convince the audience.

Significance:
This study outlines the importance of leaving space for students to utilize both everyday and disciplinary ways of knowing. In addition, it holds implications for the design of making experiences that foster epistemic agency and engagement within classroom settings.

Author

• Jennifer Lynn Weible, Central Michigan University