Negative Affect as a Representation of Critical STEAM Understanding

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

Abstract

This presentation aims to build on literature that positions affect as an essential part of disciplinary work (Jaber & Hammer, 2016). Findings reveal how affect, specifically negative affect, is not only intertwined with learning but evidence of a deeper and critical understanding of disciplinary concepts. Therefore, this study asks: How can negative affect be a meaningful and critical representation of STEAM learning?

Theoretical Framework
It is crucial to welcome opportunities for children to participate in affective STEAM learning experiences because science can be far from neutral and “emerge within particular political, social, economic, and cultural contexts” (Philip & Azevedo, 2017, p. 527). Play is one such activity that can transform classrooms into spaces where children can engage as authentic participants and experience disciplinary work in affective-driven ways (Authors, 2017). This is important because it not only affirms children’s dignity (Keifert et al., 2021) but it creates space for children to react critically and respond to what they are learning—for example, the right to feel frustrated with the rising numbers of plastic pollution (Boler, 1999; Espinoza, et al., 2020).

Methods & Data
The study took place in a progressive elementary school in a mixed-age classroom of 1st & 2nd-grade students (ages 6-8 years old). As a participatory design-based research study (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), we co-designed a play-based curriculum that explored and examined the dynamic and interdependent relationships of the kelp forest ecosystem. Children created costumes to pretend to be various sea creatures living in the kelp forest as they embodied the interdependent relationships between one another. For example, children role-played as sea urchins and pretended to hide in the kelp from children playing as sea otters. Using interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995), episodes of negative affect (e.g., despair, frustration) were identified from transcribed video data, then analyzed by examining how negative affect supported and represented learning of the interdependent ecosystem.

Results
Findings revealed that negative affect was deeply intertwined with communicating and displaying understanding of the interdependency of the kelp forest ecosystem. As children pretended to play as kelp forest sea creatures, they embodied the food web in ways that accurately illustrated the predator-prey relationships (Figure 1). This resulted in children role-playing as smaller creatures to display a sense of despair as larger predators “ate” them.

In addition to children’s despair of getting eaten by larger predators in the kelp forest, we also found negative affect to represent the critical understanding of how easily humans can negatively impact ocean life (Figure 2).

Therefore, the results of this study reveal how negative affect (1) represented children’s knowledge of the interdependent relationships in the kelp forest and (2) was a way for children to respond and display their stance on how humans negatively impact the kelp forest ecosystem.

Significance
Findings from this work speak to the need for designing dignity-affirming classrooms that welcomes and positions all affect as part of understanding, representing, and participating in critical STEAM work.

Author

• Christine Lee, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author