Engaging Emerging Bilinguals in Language and Scientific Practices Through Disciplinarily Integrated Games From Cooperative Action Lens

• In Event: 31.031 - Multimodal STEM Learning With Emerging Bilingual Students

Abstract

Objectives. The goal of this chapter is to explore collaborative DIGs as a rich context in which emerging bilinguals can leverage and transform a broad range of multimodal substrates from the perspective of Charles Goodwin’s Co-Operative Action framework (Goodwin, 2017).

Theoretical Framing. Contemporary research promotes engaging emerging bilingual students in language-intensive science practices to simultaneously promote language learning and science learning (O. Lee, Quinn & Valdés, 2013; Suarez & Otero, 2014). We developed disciplinary-integrated games (DIGs) as an approach for engaging students in disciplinary practices of science with an emphasis on models and modeling (Authors, 2015; Authors, 2016a; Authors, 2016b). More specifically, disciplinary integration can be thought of in terms of “model types” and “modeling strategies” (Collins, 2017), which Collins and colleagues have termed “epistemic forms” and “epistemic games” in earlier work. Designing a collaborative game with this structure potentially provides emerging bilingual students with a rich multimodal context in which to “co-operatively” draw upon and transform the substrates introduced by other participants as well as the historical substrates provided by the game’s authors (Goodwin, 2017).

Methods/Data. This poster presents pilot analyses of five pairs of 5th grade emerging bilingual students playing for four 1-hour sessions. In the ecosystem game prototype used in this study, players attempt to get as many animals living on the two players’ farms as possible (see Figure 1). The animals roam between the two farms, pause to eat grass, and get varying levels of energy from each type of grass. Players program where, when, and how much grass of each type to plant at their farms using a block-based interface. Players have graphs of the seasonal changes in sunlight and rainfall along with other data about the animal and grass types. Each type of grass does better in different climate conditions. In addition, the game communicates challenges and goals to the players through agent-based model block pages with model functions that are visible but not editable by the players that provide the parameters, breeds, and functions driving the challenge. Players create their own breeds and code to interact with the code on these block pages in order to explore and potentially overcome the central challenges that define that particular game.

Results and Scholarly Significance. Analyses will explore how players create, trade, and elaborate on one another’s code as part of gameplay as well as how players students build upon and transform not only the substrates provided by the game environment but also upon the resources that they and other students have previously transformed with a focus on shifts in modality and register. This pilot study explores how co-operative action might be productively facilitated in the proposed collaborative DIG in comparison to traditional classroom structures in terms of emerging bilingual students’ opportunities to transform multi-modal substrates including language resources, engage in the practices of the scientific discipline, and engage in discourse around those practices.

Authors

• Doug Clark, University of Calgary

• Ashlyn Pierson, Vanderbilt University