The Knowledge Community and Inquiry Model for Supporting Emergent Curriculum Designs

• In Event: 15.015 - The Knowledge Community and Inquiry Model: Synthesizing a Decade's Research for a Widening Audience

Abstract

Objectives
A challenge for designers of technology-rich learning environments is to create opportunities for activities to emerge organically, in response to unfolding classroom events and dynamics. The goals of this study are to (1) identify the kinds of activities that emerged throughout a carefully scripted Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) curriculum and (2) to understand the kinds of interactions that they supported.

Perspectives
The KCI model (Slotta & Najafi, 2012) was used to inform the curriculum design and activity sequences for this study, with an emphasis on designing activities that mapped to learning goals (Tissenbaum & Slotta, 2015). Previous KCI studies have evaluated technology and curriculum designs that were created in advance of a unit and studied the fidelity of their enactment in a live classroom setting (e.g., Tissenbaum, 2014; Lui, 2014).

Methods & Data Sources
We used a simulation environment called WallCology, which is designed to support collective inquiry around ecological curriculum topics (Moher, 2006). We used a co-design approach (Penuel et al., 2007) to develop an eight-week curriculum, working closely with two classroom teachers. Co-designed curriculum materials included the digital simulation, curriculum narrative, activity designs, and a suite of technology applications to support collaborative knowledge construction. Two classes of Grade 6 students participated (n=47). Data included field notes, photographs, videos, and software data logs. We used a visual timeline methodology (Authors, 2017) to capture and analyze materials and events that were relevant to our construct of interest.

Results and Discussion
An overview of ten emergent activities is provided in Table 4. Emergent activities comprised a significant portion of the enacted curriculum, indicating that they provided an important complement for pre-planned work. Review of a timeline where these activities occurred (Figure 8) reveals that emergent activities were introduced just prior the three phases of the WallCology narrative. This suggests that teachers used them to summarize new knowledge, resolve disagreements or uncertainties, and to ensure that students were prepared for new experiences.

Findings show that emergent activities involved four participant structures: individual, small group, whole-class discussion, and teacher-guided. Teacher-guided interactions occurred most frequently; these typically resulted in an artifact (such as a chalkboard drawing) that was created through whole-class discussion. Another common interaction pattern was the use of small group emergent activities (e.g., creation of the WallCology ecosystem summary chart) followed by whole-class discussion. For instance, small groups created diagrams and representations that summarized knowledge about one part of the WallCology environment, and then shared this specialized knowledge through whole-class discussion.

Scholarly Significance
Emergent activities are important to study within KCI curricula for two reasons: (1) they can provide insight into areas where our designs could be strengthened for future iterations (i.e. they may reveal areas where students require additional preparation at critical junctures of a curriculum), and (2) they can allow insights into the kinds of materials (e.g., paper, markers) and infrastructures that designers can put in place before a unit begins, since it is not possible to pre-specify all aspects of a curriculum.

Author

• Rebecca M. Quintana, University of Michigan