Teachers Becoming Actors in Authentic Data Stories

• In Event: 47.073 - Weaving Stories Into STEM Learning

Abstract

Background
When a scientist interprets a model (e.g. graph), she inherently positions the information within a story that typically includes a relationship, time, place, actors, and meaning. Much of that information would be communicated, within the model and some would be filled in with her background knowledge. The models are valued because of the stories they tell or are a part of. For a novice, the stories are not apparent in the data nor in the syntax of the models, resulting in interactions between learners and data that are not meaningful (Mayes et al 2014). Approaching this problem from a situated perspective (Sawyer et al., 2009), the authors facilitated an ongoing teacher-scientist partnership (TSP, Shein & Tsai, 2015) to help teachers, and thereby their students, to learn how to view authentic data as situated within a story of natural and interdependent phenomena bound to a specific place. The teachers worked with the scientists on site at an experimental forest and at a ski resort to collect example data and then collectively unpack related datasets and models.

Methods
We used a qualitative case study approach (Yin, 2009) to analyze teacher experiences with the training and then implementation of the study approach in their classrooms. The case was built from teachers’ written reflections, interviews, and researcher summaries and was focused by the analytical question: To what degree did teachers find and use the elements of story to understand the phenomena embedded in authentic datasets? Our sample included 33 teacher participants ranging from 4th grade through high school math and science teachers.

Results, Conclusions, Significance
Three themes emerged, explaining the relationship between story and data. (1) Teachers connected phenomena to place to a greater degree with the experimental forest than with the ski resort. This may be due to their own experiences in each of these places or to the actual coupling of the data to the specific place. For example, some of the atmospheric data at the ski resort was collected there but reflected global phenomena. (2) Teachers connected the datasets to the scientists such that referring to the scientist became a referent in describing the phenomenon. (3) Teachers struggled with bringing the data stories back to their classrooms and often tried to generalize the phenomena away from the specific stories of place and people that allowed them to access the phenomena as a teacher group. This suggests that while the teachers had situated their own understanding of the data and phenomena within the stories of they had experienced, those stories were not explicitly exportable back to the classroom. The teachers had become part of the stories rather than keepers of them. We conclude that with this situated approach to TSPs, teachers will need more explicit guidance on how to use the structure of story to bring the ideas back to the classroom. This may include more explicitly framing the work as a story with a natural place for students to also become part of it, an idea that deserves further study.

Authors

• Michael Giamellaro, Oregon State University

• Kari O'Connell, Oregon Natural Resource Education Program

• Melinda Knapp, Oregon State University - Cascades