"Time for Some Quick Maths": Teaching-Learning Moments on a Robotics Team

• In Event: 15.041 - Endogenously Organized Teaching and Learning Events in Informal Learning Environments

Abstract

This paper draws on a project that explores youth learning in an urban high school robotics team. Engineering Robotics (all names are pseudonyms) participates in yearly competitions. The purpose of this paper is to examine how youth endogenously develop two teaching-learning interactions and their relationship to the types of tasks at hand. The data we selected come from 15-minutes of videotaped interactions between three youth on Engineering Robotics, as they build a wooden prototype to test their robot design. As the interactions unfold, two distinct teaching-learning moments emerge: 1) Jav, the team captain, asks a newcomer, Ivan, to perform a calculation that determines the placement of two boards on a prototype chassis (see Figure 1); Spock, an oldtimer, joins Ivan to check the calculation, as Jav steps away. Then, 2) Jav and Ivan measure, place, and screw the cross-boards into place.
From a sociocultural perspective, we theorize learning as a progression of participation (Rogoff, 2003; Lave & Wenger 1991) mediated by material, social, and cultural contexts as members become more able to take action in different team activities. From the perspective of participants, learning interactions are ongoing orientations of roles, or participation frameworks that shape the position of the learner(s) and the teachers. Using Interaction Analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995), we analyze these two teaching-learning moments focused on how participants collectively orient around the work, materials, and social context, examining how the roles of teacher and learner are collaborative crafted.
We glean from analysis of the first interaction that Jav and Spock do work to orient themselves as teachers by de-contextualizing the problem, turning a spatial reasoning task into an arithmetic problem. Jav manipulates the context of the problem while soliciting Ivan’s help, positioning him as a learner who needs to perform the calculation to learn. Through gesture, inscription, and talk, Jav and Spock signal the importance of Ivan doing the calculation over engaging in the spatial reasoning it comes from. The relevant physical objects lose their meaning in creating this teaching-learning event.
In the second interaction, Jav and Ivan attach the boards onto the wooden chassis. Here, the teaching-learning of this moment is oriented differently: Jav does not deconstruct the activity by making Ivan practice drilling on another piece of wood, but instead guides him in measuring and drilling situated in the process of constructing the test chassis.
The results of comparing these two interactions shows that oldtimers in this case value decontextualizing activities for newcomers in particular moments. Here, they decontextualize the teaching-learning moment where the task at hand produced a mathematical calculation. Further, when the task at hand was constructing, and not math related, Jav guided the learner, teaching him in the context of the task. The paper has significance for analyzing youth learning in collaborative environments like Engineering Robotics. With the proliferation of learning spaces centered on making, this analysis implores us to further examine the ways youth utilize the contexts of the making process in endogenous teaching-learning interactions and where they do not.

Authors

• Colin Hennessy Elliott, New York University

• Daniela Della Volpe, New York University