Educational Design for Nurturant STEM Learning: A Framework in the Making

• In Event: New Approaches to the Study of Learning Environments

Abstract

We share our development of the Nurturant Educational Design Framework for STEM learning experiences that are nurturant by design. The framework guides our design of a pediatric learning environment that offers learning experiences to supports young patients’ developing sense of identity and agency; exploration and play with expansive STEM ideas and engagements; and growing curiosity about STEM phenomena. Guided by onto-epistemic heterogeneity (OEH) (Warren et al., 2020), the Nurturant Framework holds that knowing and being are inextricably connected and liberatory education is “deeply rooted in the pasts, presents, and futures that sustain and imagine multiple values, purposes, and arcs of human learning” (p. 278). The framework realizes critical sociocultural learning theory through cultural affirmation, simultaneous materials sensing, and multimodal learning.

Authors

• Maria C. Olivares, Boston University

• Ali R. Blake, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

• Yuxuan Wu, Boston University