Embodied Resources for Connective and Productive Disciplinary Engagement (Poster 6)

• In Event: Connective and Productive Disciplinary Engagement: Key Concepts, Applications, Developments, and New Directions

Abstract

The productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) framework (Engle & Conant, 2002; Engle, 2012) is often combined with other mutually beneficial frameworks to assess student engagement (Agarwal & Sengupta-Irving, 2019; Lee, 2021; Scott et al., 2006; Thompson, 2014). For example, the connective and productive disciplinary engagement (CPDE) framework builds on PDE by incorporating epistemic diversity and broadening perspectives on disciplinary learning (Agarwal & Sengupta-Irving, 2019). Also, coupling educational technologies with PDE or other asset-based frameworks (Alim & Paris, 2017; Danish et al., 2020; Lindgren & Johnson-Glenberg, 2013) holds promise in enhancing student engagement levels and performance in science (Keifert et al., 2020). However, researchers often apply CPDE frameworks after data collection, potentially missing an opportunity to identify and incorporate students' cultural and linguistic assets into research designs.

This study examines how CPDE, mixed-reality environments, and embodied learning serve as asset-based approaches to support science learning within the larger project entitled PROJECT TITLE. Modeling is an essential disciplinary practice in science, and this project’s mixed-reality and motion-tracking technologies leverage embodied learning and play as a form of modeling (Danish et al., 2022). Two research questions guide this study: (1) How does technology-mediated embodied learning promote connective and productive disciplinary engagement? (2) What are the tensions and opportunities in enhancing future research designs within a CPDE framework? The insights from exploring CPDE and embodied science learning in concert can inform ways to incorporate students’ cultural and linguistic assets in future PROJECT TITLE implementations.

The overall goals for the larger PROJECT TITLE project include examining learning processes facilitated with various types of models, e.g., text-based, embodied, and mixed-reality simulations. To achieve these goals, researchers collaborated with two science teachers to co-design and co-facilitate a 14-day curriculum about food webs and photosynthesis with four fourth-grade classes. The curriculum utilized PROJECT TITLE models to project students' movements onto a shared simulation screen, allowing them to embody different phenomena, such as a gopher avoiding a hawk, a robin eating and gaining energy from a beetle, and carbon dioxide and water molecules meeting at a chloroplast. To analyze classroom interactions and post-interview data, researchers adapted a priori codes based on the four principles of the CPDE framework: problematizing (survival in the food web), authority (students as stakeholders), accountability (students taking responsibility for peer learning), and resources (drawing on mixed-reality models, play, and prior knowledge for sense-making).

Applying a CPDE approach to data analysis affirmed benefits and challenges of our technology-mediated embodied learning. The PROJECT TITLE curriculum prioritized collaborative play and movement, creating potentially more accessible pathways to our science curricula while reducing dependence on monolingual discussions and text-based instruction. Initial findings also uncovered insights into students’ cultural assets and perspectives regarding collaboration and play. However, while most students could describe using a model, they struggled to define it. Analysis of additional data might indicate why this was the case. Also, by eliciting cultural and intellectual assets during the study design phase, future implementations may improve students' understanding of scientific models and reveal more opportunities for CPDE.

Authors

• Alicia Lane, Vanderbilt University

• Sarah Jaewon Lee, University of Washington

• Noel D. Enyedy, Vanderbilt University