Pathways to Scientific Modeling at Scale in Middle School

• In Event: A New Generation of Goals for Scientific Modeling: Strategies and Lessons Learned for Reach and Impact

Abstract

Purpose/Significance. Computer modeling and simulation are modern scientific practices that have become integral to the work of scientists and engineers. Computational thinking and computer modeling were included as scientific practices in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2013) responding to the change. Project GUTS - Growing Up Thinking Scientifically - offers a CS in Science curriculum that engages middle school students in computational thinking (CT) through computer modeling and simulation of complex systems. The program's aim is to increase students’ exposure to modern scientific practices, and interest in and preparation for future endeavors in computing and science.

Theoretical Framework. Project GUTS achieved “scale” (Coburn, 2003; Dede & Honan, 2005) in both its afterschool club program for youth, and in its teacher professional development. Between 2014 and 2016, through a partnership with Code.org, over 2000 middle school teachers participated in regionally offered CS in Science PD workshops to prepare teachers to implement the curriculum within regular school day science classrooms. Within this scaling effort we found a persistent problem of practice - though teachers found the workshops engaging and left the workshop feeling that they themselves had learned to use, modify and create simple models, their implementation of the curriculum in regular day science classrooms was uneven. Teachers with GUTS, an NSF DRK12 funded program, studied the supports (resources, models, and tools) necessary to develop teachers as computational thinkers and to implement the CS in Science curriculum. In this paper we explore the following question: What are the various ways that middle school science teachers implement Project GUTS that provide high quality student CT learning experience?

Methods. To answer this question we focused on six middle school science teachers who taught more than the introductory module of Project GUTS to their students over the academic year 2018-2109. We coded teacher observations to understand the various ways that teacher approached teaching key aspects of Project GUTS CS in Science curriculum. For example, we coded how these teachers taught the scientific practice of modeling and how they taught the computational thinking practice of abstraction.

Findings/Conclusions. In this paper we present three strategies that illustrate distinct productive pathways to implementing the CS in Science curriculum in middle school science classrooms. Maintaining quality while scaling up has been a central concern. Scaling up quality in our context is not a matter of rigid adherence to the curriculum but rather the engagement of all students in CT-rich modeling and simulation activities with a focus on experiences in which students create and/or decode mechanisms then run simulation experiments to understand the generation of patterns in the modeled phenomenon. Three case studies highlight three different approaches to achieving this goal. We discuss the features of the CS in Science curriculum and of the modeling tool, StarLogo Nova, that enable teachers to engage students in mechanistic reasoning while allowing flexibility to adapt to different contexts. We summarize how the various enactments of the lessons reflected teachers’ epistemic goals, and were adapted to meet the specific instructional objectives.

Authors

• Irene A. Lee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Emma Anderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Ling Hsiao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology