Math
Projects
Expanding Communities of Learners
from Schools into Homes: Collaborative Software Game Activities for
Mathematical Learning
Project Investigator(s): Yasmin B. Kafai
Funding agency: Spencer Foundation
Duration: 9/97 to 8/99
One of the pressing concerns in mathematics
education has been the creation of classroom environments that engage
children in mathematical practice Careful attention has been given to
the informal understanding that students bring into the classroom for
informing instructional guidance, the mathematical discourse between
students and teachers, students' mathematical thinking and development,
and the use of authentic learning activities. While this has succeeded
in creating better classroom communities for learning mathematics, their
cultures have not extended into students' home environment. With the
increasing dissemination of Internet access in schools and homes, there
is an opportunity not only to expand the classroom community of learners
to their homes but also to situate students' mathematical learning within
a personally relevant context, video games. Video games, more than any
other interactive technology, have become a significant part of children's
contemporary culture, yet they are rarely in discussion for their educational
benefits. While most research efforts have examined the use of educational
game playing activities, this study proposes to examine the benefits
of game making activities for learning fractions. A class of upper elementary
school students will collaborate in teams to create educational software
games to teach fractions to younger students. They will design and implement
their games on the World Wide Web (WWW) as part of their mathematics
class and continue to work on these games as part of their homework
assignments. The purpose of this case study is to examine how students
succeed to engage in mathematical practices and exchanges at home in
relation to classroom activities, what kind of support structures they
can build among themselves in using discussion forums, and how to integrate
those students who do not have open access to computers at their homes.
The data collected through interviews, observations and field visits
will investigate the opportunities and issues of expanding communities
of learners beyond classrooms into homes and intends to provide a first
model for teachers, students, and software developers for future productions
in the support of learning.
E-GAMES (Electronic Game Activities
for Mathematics Enhancement Support)
Project Investigator(s): Yasmin B. Kafai and Megan L. Franke
Funding agency: National Science Foundation
duration: 10/98 to 9/99
Successful reform in mathematics education
requires the integration of research and theory drawn from different
fields. From our perspective, changing schools requires working concurrently
with both teachers and students, with content and children's thinking,
and with technological tools and how they are used. In the past, researchers
engaged in understanding reform often studied either teachers or learners,
content or children's thinking, or technological tools or their use.
We draw upon this research to create a model, E-GAMES, for both teacher
and student development that addresses these areas concurrently: Teachers
will be asked to place themselves in both the role of the teacher and
the learner and design educational computer games that teach students
rational number concepts. Through the process of instructional design,
teachers address their preconceptions about mathematical practice; they
engage in practical inquiry. The teachers then engage in a parallel
process with their students in their classrooms; their students design
and implement computer games to teach fractions to younger children.
We have begun the development with a
current planning grant. In E-GAMES, we propose to extend this model
from teacher training into full-time professional practice. We plan
to document teachers' informal working models and their change over
time, students' mathematical learning, the integrative use of technological
tools, and the instructional effectiveness of the E-GAMES approach.
In the pilot phase of our research, we plan to follow our initial planning
grant cohort into the classroom and understand how designing educational
computer games, on and off the computer, can be implemented in different
classroom settings. In the experimental phase of our research, we will
then adapt the intervention and the measures and study a second cohort
of preservice teachers (randomly assigned into a focus and a comparison
group) and their students. We will follow these teachers in their resident
year as they apply and reflect on their classroom implementations in
urban Los Angeles. Our analyses will focus on how these groups differ
on their (a) knowledge organization related to the teaching and learning
of mathematics, (b) conceptions of teaching and learning mathematics,
(c) knowledge of the domain of rational number, (d) ability to design
instructional contexts that blend the development of children's thinking
with knowledge of the mathematical content and successful pedagogical
practices and (e) students' learning about rational number, technology
and design.
With E-GAMES, then, we propose a reform
model based on three interrelated aspects: (1) the idea of concurrent
teacher and student development; (2) the use of a culturally relevant
context electronic games for learning and reflecting on mathematical
understanding; and (3) the integration of expressive technological tools
into classroom practice. E-GAMES will allow a cohesive examination of
technology integration for mathematical learning in preservice education
and classroom teaching. From the results we will be able to provide
a model and a set of professional development tools for technology integration
and its classroom transition for preservice teachers. Furthermore, we
will have developed a refined view of how educational games can be used
for mathematical teaching and learning beyond their motivational benefits.
The Probability Inquiry
Environment (PIE)
Project Investigator(s): Noel Enyedy
Funding agency: University of California Office of the President
Web site: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/enyedy/enyedy_pie.html
PIE is a computer-mediated
inquiry environment proven to help middle school students learn elementary
probability. PIE was implemented as a three week curriculum, which included
computer-simulation activities, hands-on activities and whole class
discussions. Each computer activity was designed to focus on a particular
aspect of probability and to promote specific interactions in the classroom
culture. In PIE, students actively investigate probability by trying
to figure out if particular games of chance are fair to all participants.
The students' collaborative activity is structured around articulating
their intuitions, systematically testing their ideas by gathering and
analyzing empirical data, and communicating their revised understanding
of the domain to their classmates. The computer-mediated activities
are then followed by hands-on activities in which students flip coins,
roll dice, etc. as they investigate aspects of probability without using
the computer simulations. Throughout the curriculum the students also
participate in whole-class discussions, in which each pair relates their
findings from the activities.
Science Projects
Beyond Final Form Science: Teaching
and Learning Scientific Inquiry
Project Investigator(s): William A. Sandoval
Funding Agency: Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
Duration: 6/01 - 6/02
Web site: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/sandoval/research/bffs/
High school science is failing most
students, judging by just about any assessment we care to use. On national
assessments, forty percent of 8th and 12th graders have less than even
a basic understanding of important scientific ideas and practices (NAEP).
For decades now, inquiry has been hailed as the approach to helping
our students learn science deeply, to not just learn the "final
form" ideas, but to learn how to do science. Yet, inquiry-oriented
teaching remains rare. On the other hand, over the last 15 years many
technology-supported science learning environments have been developed,
and have been shown effective in helping students learn science concepts
and scientific inquiry skills. With such tools, and what we've learned
about student learning by studying their use, we have an opportunity
to support teachers efforts to teach scientific inquiry.
BFFS is a research and professional
development collaboration between researchers, teachers, and teacher
educators to understand better how to support teachers' efforts to enact
inquiry-oriented science instruction in their classrooms, and to learn
how inquiry teaching practices develop. The project includes more than
a dozen teachers working at schools throughout urban Los Angeles. We
aim to develop a network of collaborating teachers who will work together
throughout the year to develop: a) our ideas about science and scientific
inquiry; b) strategies to elicit and build upon students' thinking,
especially to generate authentic inquiry opportunities for students;
c) ways of reflecting upon teaching strategies that can support students'
development as critical inquirers; and d) strategies for integrating
technological supports for inquiry into instruction As a research project,
we are interested in documenting our efforts in a way that can help
us to build systematic knowledge about the kinds of knowledge and practices
that skilled inquiry teachers use when they teach, and how such knowledge
and practices develop in new teachers.
Biology Guided Inquiry Learning Environments
(BGuILE)
Project Investigator(s): Brian J. Reiser, James P. Spillane, Northwestern
University
Funding agency: James S. McDonnell Foundation
Duration: 8/95 - ongoing
Web site: http://www.letus.org/bguile/
BGuILE learning environments bring scientific inquiry into middle school
science and high school biology classrooms. The environments consist
of computer-based scenarios and associated classroom activities in which
students conduct authentic scientific investigations. BGuILE started
in 1995, with the idea that high school students should learn biology
by trying to explain the same phenomena that professional biologists
try to explain. Having students work on the same problems that scientists
work on provides students with an opportunity to develop some of the
skills that expert scientists have, and to gain a better understanding
of the nature of science and scientific work. Students working with
BGuILE learn to plan and perform an investigation, construct, evaluate,
and improve upon their own explanations, critique other's explanations,
and understand science as a process of building and refining explanations.
Since high school students aren't professional biologists, they need
support for investigating and explaining natural phenomena. Our general
approach is to combine general strategic support for scientific reasoning
with domain-specific support for investigative strategies relevant to
biological inquiry. The learning environment supports students' progression
through a cycle of investigation in which students identify questions
and investigate them, construct explanations, and evaluate and revise
those explanations, including responses to critiques from classmates.
BGuILE encourages students to consider alternative hypotheses, debate
investigation strategies, and challenge data interpretations. The activities
are designed to focus students' thinking on model building and argumentation.
Designing Knowledge Representations
And Epistemic Practices For Science Learning
Project Investigator(s): William A. Sandoval
Funding Agency: Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) through
Natl. Science Foundation
Duration: 8/99 - 12/00
Web site: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/sandoval/research/epistrep/
Off and on for decades inquiry has been
promoted as a means for engaging science students in scientific activity
that promotes deep conceptual learning and develops students' scientific
literacy. Most recently, national standards call for students to engage
in inquiry as a means of learning what the scientific enterprise is
all about . For the most part, although there has been a fair amount
of research to document students' beliefs about the nature of science,
relatively little attention has been paid to how we can support changes
in students' scientific epistemologies. This project explores the relationships
between several individual efforts to understand the issues of developing
software tools that support students' scientific inquiry and highlight
important epistemic aspects of that inquiry. The goal is to articulate
a set of epistemic practices that we value in science learning, and
a set of design principles for supporting such practices, as they have
emerged in our individual works.
Digital Portfolio Archives in Learning:
Modeling Primary Content Transformation for Science Education
Project Investigator(s): Yasmin B. Kafai, Anne Gilliland-Swetland, &
Anthony Maddox
Funding agency: National Science Foundation
Duration: 10/96 to 9/97
The growing global information infrastructure
places increasing demands for materials to be available in digital format
for research, business, and learning. While much information today is
digitally produced, there still remains a considerable amount of potential
digital library content in the form of primary or historical source
materials, that needs to be transferred into digital formats, integrated
into contextualized digital structures, and further transformed or enhanced
to be used effectively, especially in educational settings. Science
educators have stressed repeatedly the crucial role that knowledge of
scientific history and the changing nature of the boundaries between
scientific disciplines plays in building a foundation for scientific
literacy. Students need to understand the cultural and social contexts
within which advances in science were achieved. While primary source
materials in digital format present opportunities to enrich classroom
activities, many teachers and students are unfamiliar with how to assess
critically the quality and origination of content of varying origins
and formats that they access through digital means such as the World
Wide Web. Content holders, such as archives and museums, need to understand
better how to prioritize their collections for digitization, and the
most effective means for describing and visually representing digital
versions of primary content for use by nontraditional users such as
teachers and students. Digital library developers need to understand
better the design and process issues associated with digitizing, storing,
and retrieving contextualized and authenticated primary content.
This project will develop a process
model that (1) transforms primary sources into digital library content;
(2) allows teachers to build personalized information systems or "Digital
Portfolio Archives" (DPAs) that contain content and associated
descriptions derived from the digital library, together with other relevant
materials that teachers wish to incorporate; (3) enables students to
incorporate components of teachers' DPAs, the original digital library,
and additional project-related materials into their own DPAs; and (4)
facilitates the optional incorporation of these DPAs back into the digital
library, but as a distinct layer of user-created content distinguished
by provenance. Content for the base digital library will be drawn from
the seven archival, manuscript, and museum repositories at UCLA. This
content will be digitized, described using both the emerging SGML standard
for Encoded Archival Description and teacher annotations, and incorporated
into a prototype digital library structure. The process model will be
applied in case studies in health and natural sciences education at
the UCLA's laboratory elementary school.
The development and testing of the DPA
process model builds on the work of, and feeds into several educational
and technological initiatives underway at UCLA, including innovative,
cross-disciplinary collaborations with the Smithsonian Institutions,
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Special Collections at the
UCLA University Research Library. This exploratory CRLT grant would
strengthen the foundation for these and other larger research projects
by generating: (1) generalizable processes for structuring digital libraries
and enriching content descriptions that meet the needs of primary content
creators, providers, and nontraditional users such as elementary school
teachers and students; (2) knowledge of how teachers might select primary
content and integrate it into classroom activities if it were digitally
accessible; and (3) knowledge of how digitized primary sources might
contribute to the enhancement of students' understanding of, and engagement
in, the health and natural sciences. Results of this research will be
disseminated through professional papers and publications in education;
library, information, and archival science; and computer science and
engineering forums; as well as through the World Wide Web and other
appropriate channels.
GLOBE in the City
Project Investigator(s): Noel Enyedy
Funding agency: National Science Foundation
Web site: http://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/globe/
In collaboration with UCLA's
Institute of the Environment and School Management Project I studied
teachers teaching environmental science to urban students using the
computer-mediated Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment
(GLOBE) curriculum. The object of this study was both the students and
the teachers. For the students, we documented their activity as they
transformed the world of nature (literally dirt, water, and air) into
the world of culture (numbers, categories, and environmental policy).
GLOBE is an international project that promotes learning environmental
science by having students engage in authentic science. Students collect
meaningful environmental data in their local neighborhood and transmit
their data via the Internet to an international database. Students then
have access to data displays that are based on the combination of their
data and the data collected by other schools around the world. For the
teachers, we examined the interaction between their beliefs, their pedagogical
practices, and new technologies.
Learning Science by Design: Developing
Information-Rich Learning Environments in Science for Young Software
Designers
Project Investigator(s): Yasmin B. Kafai
Funding agency: National Science Foundation
Duration: 10/96 to present
Future workplaces require that schools
prepare students to become technologically fluent and informationally
and scientifically literate. The new National Science Standards (1995)
demand that students know not only the facts but also how to reason
scientifically. The growing infusion of information technologies into
the home and work place demands that students know not only how to access
and retrieve information on the Internet, but also how to use it discriminantly
in their learning. Technologically competent students know not only
the facts but also how to express their knowledge and ideas with these
tools. These are challenging tasks for schools and teachers which need
to be addressed beginning at an early age when students attitudes about
science and technology are still open and project-based activities are
easier to integrate into the curriculum.
The proposed research addresses these
challenges by developing an integrative year-long curriculum consisting
of a rich fabric of instructional techniques, materials, and technology
use in elementary school science. Learning Science by Design builds
on young students' informal science knowledge and asks them to program,
i.e., design, interactive multimedia resources to teach science concepts
in either physics (magnetism/electricity) or life sciences (ocean habitats)
to younger students. Students' programming process provides the driving
force for their science investigations, Internet information searching,
and design of instructional interventions. This approach uses programming
as a tool for students' knowledge reformulation and personal expression
by engaging them in key scientific practices: fostering information
inquiry, constructing representations and visualizations of scientific
processes, explaining and defending ideas, and managing of their projects.
Two questions will be addressed in the
proposed research: (1) What is the efficacy of such a comprehensive
learning environment for young students? (2) What kind of skill and
knowledge transfer can we observe? Research will be conducted in several
public elementary classrooms in implementing the year-long curriculum
that comprises two distinct design experiences, thus facilitating the
assessment of transfer of programming, project and information management
skills, and science knowledge. The evaluation is divided into three
phases: Phase I builds the model case and assessment tools, Phase II
conducts the experimental and comparative assessment, and Phase III
examines the applicability of the model to different school sites and
classrooms.
Talking About Genetics: Using Representations
And Language To Understand Complex Science
Project Investigator(s): Marie Bienkowski, Karen Hurst, & Robert
Kozma SRI, Intl.
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Duration: 10/00 - 10/02
This project investigates the roles
of representations and language in learning complex science through
technology-based curricula. Through classroom studies, we are studying
how students use representations and language to support their learning
of scientific inquiry and complex genetics. The project studies how
technology can support learning in three ways: (1) providing students
with simulations in which they can conduct investigations of scientific
phenomena; (2) showing multiple representation which students can use
to understand the underlying entities and mechanisms that account for
these phenomena, and (3) providing structures that scaffold their explanation
of these underlying entities and mechanisms.
