Data Interpretation, Critique, and Personal Meaning: Constructionist Perspectives on Next Generation Science Standards and Activity Monitor Gaming

• In Event: 58.024 - Constructionism, Modeling, and Games: Synergies Through the Lens of Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core

Abstract

Objectives. This paper focuses on “Analyzing and Interpreting Data,” which is the fourth core practice across all grade levels within the “Science and Engineering Practices” dimension of the NGSS (National Academy of Sciences, 2013). For middle school students in Grades 6-8, students are asked to critically analyze and “consider limitations of data analysis (e.g., measurement error) and/or seek to improve precision or accuracy of data with better technological tools and methods,” (57). What happens, however, when students generate their own data but then must be critical of its validity and modes of collection? And how might constructionist ideas of ownership and personal meaning be relevant to this process?
Theoretical Framework. Connecting data with experience in the world can be challenging, and several studies suggest that some aspects of students’ analysis can be more sophisticated when they are analyzing first-hand data they have collected or generated themselves (Delen & Krajick, 2015; Hug & McNeill, 2008). These findings are consistent with a constructionist theoretical framework, which argues that active creation and personal meaning are critical for learning. Constructionist theory argues that learning consists of knowledge generation (creating novel ideas from playful, agentive experience), and knowledge reformulation (the transformation of inert, decontextualized information into personally relevant and actionable understandings) (Authors, 1998; Kafai, 1995;). Yet there are times when data and personal experience do not neatly align. Research demonstrates that youth can resist a device-data perspective on their everyday lives and substitute other forms of social and narrative sensemaking instead (Authors, in press). In this paper we examine that constructionist sensemaking as related to the NGSS standards.
Methods and Data. Middle school students in our project wore Fitbit activity monitors for four months and played a game that converted their steps into game actions. This paper examines discourse data from four focus groups and twelve individual interviews for instances of students reflecting on encounters with physical activity monitor data in multiple formats and representations.
Results. Our results focused first on what type of NGSS performance standard students were displaying: critiquing accuracy, critiquing tools, or critiquing appropriateness of the data collection model. Many students became critical of the data they were generating, its conversion and playability in the game, and the reliability of the data collection devices they wore, depending on their types of physical activity and the affordances of their built environment. We also found that, within the narratives and social meanings students described, these types of critique were related to the constructionist learning ideas of knowledge generation and knowledge reformation, although not necessarily in a way that privileged a data-centric perspective on the world.
Scholarly significance. The NGSS emphasize students collecting and analyzing data as a way of making sense of the world. At first glance, however, constructionist ideals of personal meaning-making may seem at odds with this objective, data-centric model of inquiry. This research helps to reconcile these seemingly disparate goals for education.

Author

• Cynthia Carter Ching, University of California - Davis