Emotional Configurations in STEM Classrooms: Braiding Feeling, Sense-Making, and Practice

• In Event: Affect and Emotions as Productive Sense-Making Resources in STEM Education

Abstract

Objectives & Significance. Attending to emotion in science classrooms can be a means to critique and expand typical images of science, which position science as culturally-neutral, objective, and value-free (Bang et al., 2012). Attending to emotion in this way takes students’ feelings and their role in investigations seriously. Yet, the role of emotion in learning is undertheorized (Boler, 1999; Jaber & Hammer, 2016). In response, we explore the dynamic interplay of feeling, sensemaking, and practice in 6th grade STEM investigations. Whereas previous research has explored emotional configurations within student dyads (Lanouette, 2022), we trace emotional configurations across student groups to illustrate how feeling, sensemaking, and practice interact to shape multiple groups’ investigations. Moreover, this study explores emotional configurations in the context of several iterations of a curricular design. Focal investigations vary across these iterations due to the student-driven curriculum and the dynamic and emergent nature of the object of study (ecosystem models), underscoring the central role of feeling, sensemaking, and practice despite this variability.

Theoretical Framework. To understand the nature of emotion in learning, we draw on Vea’s (2020) emotional configurations: situated and reciprocal interrelationships between feeling, sensemaking, and practice (p. 315). We apply emotional configurations to classroom science learning by attending to feeling (expressing emotion; Boler, 1999; Vea, 2020), sensemaking (recognizing and resolving inconsistencies or gaps in knowledge; Odden & Russ, 2018), and practice (developing procedures and measures to build knowledge; Lehrer & Schuable, 2015). In addition, we look to critiques of western science to identify additional emotional resources that may often be overlooked in science classrooms. From feminist and indigenous critiques, we focus on a feeling of connectedness (e.g., Fox Keller, 1985; Kimmerer, 2013), as “braided” with sensemaking and with observation practices (e.g., Marin & Bang, 2018).

Data Sources & Methods. We analyzed data collected during a design study (Cobb et al., 2003) that iteratively refined a curriculum intended to support sensemaking about the flow of energy and matter in guppies’ ecosystems. Data were collected during six successive implementations of the 9-week unit. We analyzed videos of small group and whole class discussions to illustrate emotional configurations and their impact on students’ investigations. In our analysis, we focused on identifying feeling (expressed emotion), sensemaking (reasoning about phenomena), and practice (development of professional vision, or specific “ways of seeing” phenomena). We used Discourse Analysis (Gee, 2014; Norris &. Jones, 2005) to closely analyze the multimodal expression and interplay of feeling, sensemaking, and practice in these episodes (see Table 1).

Results. Our results first describe how the teacher, Ms. S, built upon a strong foundation in her classroom culture, where respect for each other’s feelings was highly valued, to dynamically respond to feelings expressed by students in her classroom. In the context of this learning environment, we then illustrate how emotional configurations of feeling, sensemaking, and practice drove students’ investigations in two different iterations of the unit in response to two different emotional events: the death of a guppy (Figure 1) and the birth of baby guppies (Figure 2).

Authors

• Ashlyn Pierson, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Corey Brady, Southern Methodist University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Jaewon Lee, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author