Supporting Multiple Epistemologies Through an Engineering for Sustainable Community Framework in Middle School Science

• In Event: 45.046 - Teacher Learning to Position Students as Capable in Class Discussions: Looking Across Subject Matter Domains

Abstract

Purpose. The emphasis on engineering practices in the NGSS holds potential to shift science education toward more equitable and engaged learning. However, to teach engineering well, teachers need to support students in navigating different and sometimes divergent epistemologies, as they engage in engineering design (Hollander, 2010). We are interested in teaching practices which support the navigation of multiple epistemologies towards a) positioning students with epistemic authority and agency, b) legitimizing students for who they are and the assets they bring to STEM, and c) recognizing hopes/desires youth have for doing STEM. In this paper, we investigate how teachers learn to engage in such practices.

Grounding Framework. We draw from Mobilities of Learning principles (Engeström & Sannino, 2010; Gutiérrez, 2012) that emphasize an expansive view of learning involving the horizontal and vertical movement of ideas, tools and resources. This view of learning complements a second theoretical underpinning of this study, that of navigating multiple epistemologies (Bang & Medin, 2010) towards a science education that supports cultural processes.

Methods. We engaged in critical ethnography with participatory research and design approaches to understand how teachers taught engineering in three 6th grade classrooms engaged in Engineering for Sustainable Communities. Student engineered prototypes included a bathroom-stall extender for increased privacy and a light-up world map to reflect the global communities represented in the student body. Data sources include: video recordings of class sessions, teacher conversation groups, field notes, student artifact interviews, and student work. Data were analyzed in the grounded theory tradition, using a constant comparative approach.

Findings. Teachers, in whole-class and small-group discussions, leveraged real-world community perspectives and technical ideas to support student learning of engineering design. Throughout the design process, teachers sought to have students define engineering problem spaces through collecting/analyzing community data on issues pertinent to communities, and community feedback on sketch-up of technical/social elements of design which may solve those problems. As students engaged in the iterative engineering design-build-test-feedback process of creating a workable prototype, community members were further invited to offer input. Teachers supported students in leveraging these multiple forms of input toward determining final design criteria, balancing competing factors, and arriving at design trade-offs that enabled workable solutions, technically and socially.

We report on three key insights (and emergent tensions) teachers experiences as they engaged in these forms of community integration. We describe how teachers expanded their views of what counts of meaningful engineering problems and engineering expertise through how they made sense of how ideas moved from community to classroom discourse in discussions of engineering design. We also describe the emergent tensions as teachers sought to cede authority to students and community for making engineering decisions from teacher- and discipline-only to student and community.

Significance. Engineering as a K12 core discipline is relatively unexplored. We unpack not only new equity-oriented classroom practices but also processes of teacher learning in support of engineering education.

Authors

• Edna Tan, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Angela Calabrese Barton, University of Michigan

• Aerin W Benavides, University of North Carolina - Greensboro