Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning, 2015
In this chapter we review two lines of work that trace the ways interest in science is triggered ... more In this chapter we review two lines of work that trace the ways interest in science is triggered in everyday activity and then, once triggered, is extended and deepened. We take an ecological view of interest development, exploring social, cognitive, cultural, and material resources that contribute to a pathway from interest to disciplinary expertise and engagement. The chapter brings together two complementary lines of empirical work. In the first line of work, Crowley, Knutson, and colleagues conducted 2-hour retrospective life-history interviews with adult scientists and engineers asking about their early disciplinary interests and the ways those interests developed and were supported throughout life. In the second line of work, Barron, Martin, and colleagues prospectively followed youth engaged in science and technology to identify ways their interests were supported and extended across everyday, informal, and formal boundaries. We first present examples from each of these two lines of work, and then a cross-study synthesis that points to new questions about interest development. Our findings suggest that individual interests in science often emerge before high school, and as learners become passionate about a particular interest, they increasingly seek out and create opportunities to learn by engaging parents and peers, taking on new projects, enrolling in programs or visiting informal learning settings,
Latino families in the U.S. are an under-served population, and are adopting digital technologies... more Latino families in the U.S. are an under-served population, and are adopting digital technologies rapidly. This article shares case studies from in-depth research with Latino immigrant families and their use of technology, focusing on family technology practices that were interest-driven, cross-setting, and in some cases also collaborative among family members. Three cases illustrate ways that families, all of whom had elementary school-age children, were innovative in their use of technology to learn, as well as how digital content and devices served to help children and parents explore content across settings. In addition to documenting families’ existing practices, the study examined what happened when each family received a tablet device with curated language- and literacy-related content. The analysis highlights how introducing these tools made new practices possible among families, while building on parents’ and children’s existing expertise. We focus on three types of connect...
This article draws out the implications for school and classroom practices of an emerging consens... more This article draws out the implications for school and classroom practices of an emerging consensus about the science of learning and development, outlined in a recent synthesis of the research. Situating the review in a developmental systems framework, we synthesize evidence from the learning sciences and several branches of educational research regarding well-vetted strategies that support the kinds of relationships and learning opportunities needed to promote children's well-being, healthy development, and transferable learning. In addition, we review research regarding practices that can help educators respond to individual variability, address adversity, and support resilience, such that schools can enable all children to find positive pathways to adulthood. This work is situated in a relational developmental systems framework that looks at the "mutually influential relations between individuals and contexts" (Lerner & Callina, 2013, p. 373). This framework makes it clear how children's development and learning are shaped by interactions among the environmental factors, relationships, and learning opportunities they experience, both in and out of school, along with physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and emotional processes that influence one another-both biologically and functionally-as they enable or undermine learning (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Rose, Rouhani, and Fischer, 2013). Although our society and our schools often compartmentalize these developmental processes and treat them as distinct from one another-and treat the child as distinct from the many contexts she experiences-the sciences of learning and development demonstate how tightly interrelated they are and how they jointly produce the outcomes for which educators are responsible. Key insights from the science of learning and development are that the brain and the development of intelligences and capacities are malleable, and the "development of the brain is an experience-dependent process" (Cantor et al., 2018, p. 5), which activates neural pathways that permit new kinds of thinking and
Beginning in 1998, faculty from Stanford University's Computer Science Department and the School ... more Beginning in 1998, faculty from Stanford University's Computer Science Department and the School of Education have participated in a collaborative effort to design, implement, and assess a new computer science curriculum in the Bermuda public schools. Since 2003, a complete curriculum consisting of three computer science courses supplemented by additional courses covering more applied topics such as multimedia design has been in place at Bermuda's public high schools. That curriculum has been well received by students, teachers, and the broader community and is beginning to provide a model for other school systems in the Caribbean. Our curriculum effort has four essential components-pedagogical design, curriculum content definition, professional development, and assessment-each of which is outlined in this paper. From the beginning, an explicit goal of this curriculum effort has been expanding the audience for computer science beyond its traditional constituency so as to empower both male and female students from Bermuda's majority black population. In this paper we share survey and interview data from a sample of 98 senior year students who opted to take different numbers of courses during their senior school career. Our analysis of the results indicate that the new curriculum has enabled students to imagine new futures for themselves as they learn more about the opportunities available in computing and begin to see themselves as part of that technologically empowered world. In this paper, we assess how taking these courses affects student interest, confidence, and the value assigned to technological knowledge. Our findings suggest strong relationships between course taking and confidence, interest, valuing of technical knowledge, and projected career choices for both male and female students. 1.
The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating digital media citizenship in urban communities
The popular image of the "digital native" -- usually depicted as a technically savvy an... more The popular image of the "digital native" -- usually depicted as a technically savvy and digitally empowered teen -- is based on the assumption that all young people are equally equipped to become innovators and entrepreneurs. Yet young people in low-income communities often lack access to the learning opportunities, tools, and collaborators (at school and elsewhere) that help digital natives develop the necessary expertise. This book describes one approach to address this disparity: the Digital Youth Network (DYN), an ambitious project to help economically disadvantaged middle-school students in Chicago develop technical, creative, and analytical skills across a learning ecology that spans school, community, home, and online. The book reports findings from a pioneering mixed-method three-year study of DYN and how it nurtured imaginative production, expertise with digital media tools, and the propensity to share these creative capacities with others. Through DYN, students, despite differing interests and identities -- the gamer, the poet, the activist -- were able to find some aspect of DYN that engaged them individually and connected them to one another. Finally, the authors offer generative suggestions for designers of similar informal learning spaces.
The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating new media citizenship in urban communities
In recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in our everyday lives and are pa... more In recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in our everyday lives and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage in knowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Unlike the early years in the development of computers and computer-based media, digital media are now common place and pervasive, having been taken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life. Digital media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice and of the academic, governmental, and industry homes that initially fostered their development. Now they have been taken up by diverse populations...
The mission of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is to foster innovation in children's learning through... more The mission of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is to foster innovation in children's learning through digital media. The Cooney Center is an independent research and innovation lab that catalyzes and supports research, development, and investment in digital media technologies to advance children's learning. The Cooney Center has a deep commitment toward dissemination of useful and timely research.
Social is a word that can mean many things; one of the things it clearly meansto borrow phrasing... more Social is a word that can mean many things; one of the things it clearly meansto borrow phrasing from sociologist Howard Beckeris doing things together(1986). When people comment on Facebook posts, mount a collective quest in Azeroth, or report a tweet, they ...
… of the fifth international conference of …, 2002
Abstract: In this paper we report assessment results from an ongoing design experiment intended t... more Abstract: In this paper we report assessment results from an ongoing design experiment intended to provide a single school system with a sequence of high school level computer science courses. We share data on students' learning as a function of the first course and of their ...
Video research in the learning sciences. Mahwah, NJ: …, 2007
Video records have several properties that fundamentally change the way that inquiry takes place ... more Video records have several properties that fundamentally change the way that inquiry takes place and video is now the standard data collection tool for studies of human interaction. This section of the book focuses on the contribution of video-based research to our understanding of learning and development in peer, family, and informal learning contexts. The authors who made contributions to this section are taking up fundamental questions about the processes and outcomes of learning as they emerge in the context of interactions between people, and between people and their physical and cultural environments. We are fortunate that these researchers were willing to share both their struggles in collecting and analyzing video records and the strategies, insights, and techniques they have developed after years of working with video as a data source. In this prefatory chapter, I begin with a discussion of how video has been an important data source for research investigating learning. I provide a summary of some of the theoretical insights that have emerged from studies that relied on film or video, drawing on the published literature including early efforts to use video as an analytic and rhetorical tool by anthropologists, developmental and social psychologists, and sociologists. In the second section, I summarize some of the challenges that video data presents, again drawing on the chapters and the broader literature. In the third section, I share four main methodological and analytical suggestions that emerged across the seven chapters and connect 162 Barron 1 The National Anthropological Archives recently acquired several hundred original captioned illustrations created by Stuyvesant Van Veen, the artist who collaborated with David Efron. 2 The entire collection of their film is archived by the Library of Congress as part of the Margaret Mead Collection along with maps, photographs, field notes, and art.
An introduction to geometry through anchored instruction
… of geometry and …, 1998
In this chapter we describe preliminary research on three geometry adventures that are part of th... more In this chapter we describe preliminary research on three geometry adventures that are part of the The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury problem-solving series (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University [CGTV], 1990).https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/ed-facbooks/1027/thumbnail.jp
Clubs, homes, and online communities as contexts for engaging youth in technology fluency building activities
Abstract: The goal of this session is to advance our understanding of the relationships between a... more Abstract: The goal of this session is to advance our understanding of the relationships between access to computing tools, learning opportunities, and the development of technological fluency. Understanding variability in the kinds of material and social resources that ...
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