Cognition and Instruction

Steier, Rolf; Kersting, Magdalena

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2019.1580711pmid: N/A

AbstractThough we live in a 4-dimensional universe, our minds and bodies are not particularly good at perceiving and depicting 4 dimensions. This study contributes to our understanding of collaboration with abstract concepts by examining particular activities where bodily and experiential understandings may conflict with the conceptual domain. Specifically, upper secondary physics classrooms studying Einstein’s general theory of relativity are taken as a setting to identify the representational practices and conceptual challenges that arise when learners attempt to make meaning with, and express conflicting notions of, space and time. To unpack these challenges, we draw on the concept of imagination and on theoretical perspectives that treat imagining as a social activity. We also present the concept of metaimagining to characterize layered processes in which learners attend to and manage shifts between their own imaginative activities. This concept is illustrated through a detailed analysis of an extended conversation between 2 upper secondary physics students working with general relativity and spacetime. The students perform a diverse set of imaginative activities that are strongly tied to communicative, cognitive, and bodily action. We also show how the unique domain of general relativity presents particular challenges to student meaning making of abstract concepts which in turn prompt metaimagining. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations to improve instructional practices in general relativity and argue for the consideration of imagining as a transdisciplinary competency in math and science education.

White, Tobin

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2019.1578775pmid: N/A

AbstractThis article analyzes an episode of classroom mathematics activity mediated by graphing technology from 3 different theoretical perspectives. An important line of research in the learning sciences focuses on graphs as inscriptions, foregrounding learners’ interactions with and around the material properties of graphical displays. Several recent studies in mathematics education have emphasized the utility of an instrumental genesis approach for conceptualizing mathematics learning and teaching with graphing calculators and other tools. A third perspective, influential in science and technology studies but less widely used in education research, calls for attention to material agency, considering the ways both learners and tools might be conceptualized as actors in a classroom activity system. This article explores the potential of this alternate approach for extending insights into technology-supported mathematics teaching and learning. It is argued that a material agency account can complement and enrich theoretical frameworks for analyzing technology-mediated classroom activity. Collectively, drawing these perspectives together to examine a classroom episode in which a digital device played a pivotal role provides a framework for considering the complexities and the tradeoffs involved in cultivating proficient tool use and conceptual understanding in contemporary mathematics classrooms.

Vieira, Camilo; Magana, Alejandra J.; Roy, Anindya; Falk, Michael L.

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2018.1539738pmid: N/A

AbstractCreating explanations is an important process for students, not only to make connections between novel information and background knowledge, but also to be able to communicate their understanding of any given topic. This article explores students’ explanations in the context of computational science and engineering, an important interdisciplinary field that enables scientists and engineers to solve complex problems. Specifically, this study explores: (a) students’ approaches to create written explanations of programing code and (b) the relationship between students’ explanations and their ability to do computer programing. Students wrote in-code comments for 3 MATLAB® worked-examples, which were qualitatively analyzed using a coding scheme. Different approaches to self-explain were identified using hierarchical cluster analysis, and differences in students’ ability to do computer programing were identified using analysis of variance. The resulting approaches to self-explain were: original solution, mechanistic, principle-based, limited, and goal-based. The findings suggest that experienced students wrote simple in-code comments to self-explain, but students with lower ability to do computer programing wrote more comprehensive explanations, as they may take this as a learning opportunity.

Peskin, Joan; Ellenbogen, Beverly

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2019.1570931pmid: N/A

AbstractTo identify expert poets’ cognitive processes as they compose poetry, we asked 10 expert poets and 10 novice writers of poetry to think aloud as they composed a poem. Compared to the novices, expert poets revealed an associative playfulness and surrendering of consciousness, similar to that shown in research on general creativity in domains such as art, music, and science. Experts also demonstrated significantly more evidence of deliberate procedures and active revision. Novices rarely revised their poems. With regard to meaning, experts made significantly more comments about how the text was meaningful, in particular how textual elements evoke and amplify meaning, than about what the text merely meant. The novices commented more on what the text meant than how the text was meaningful. In discussing the results, we propose a model of the cognitive processes involved in poetic composition, and explore implications for instruction in school and post-secondary educational settings.

David, Samuel S.; Pacheco, Mark B.; Jiménez, Robert T.

doi: 10.1080/07370008.2019.1580283pmid: N/A

AbstractThis study examined how middle-grades language arts teachers learned to integrate a small-group collaborative translation activity into their teaching practice. We discuss what we call pedagogical translation as an emergent social practice, in which translation routines that are familiar to multilingual students may be leveraged toward instructional goals in a mainstream language arts class. The data were drawn from a classroom teaching experiment iteration of a larger design-based research study, whose goal is to create a fully developed instructional protocol useful to all teachers in linguistically diverse language arts classrooms, but especially teachers with limited or emerging proficiencies in languages other than English. We position pedagogical translation as a paradigm case of translingual pedagogy—instructional approaches designed to leverage the full range of emerging bilinguals’ linguistic resources—and we focus our analysis on the agentive participation of teachers as they integrate new translingual routines into their instructional practice. Using a conjecture mapping procedure, we describe the evolution of an instructional theory for how pedagogical translation can be leveraged toward literacy learning objectives. We present qualitative narratives describing how participating teachers made locally situated design choices that meshed new routines with existing instructional practice, documenting trajectories of teacher participation as agentive designers of translingual pedagogy.