2021 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Virtual Annual Meeting
Conference Dates: April 8-12, 2021
Expanding Opportunities for Equity-Based Practice: A Collaborative Study of Implementation
Authors: Leema Berland, Alison Gould Boardman, Britte Haugan Cheng, Tiffany Lee Clark, Sarah Kavanagh, Rachel Kuck, Emily Miller, Ashley Potvin, Kristina Stamatis
Discussant: Caitlin Farrell
Division L: Educational Policies and Politics
Section 9: Policy Implementation and Going to Scale
SESSION DESCRIPTION
This collaboration comprises team members from three separate research endeavors, with a focus on understanding the implementation of educational innovations using a common strategy for equity-based instructional practices — rigorous project-based learning (PBL). Collaboratory participants have been gathering virtually over 1.5 years and using a shared framework to examine a critical challenge in design, implementation, and research around PBL. The first paper in this symposium frames the need for aggregating knowledge and describes strategies used in this particular collaboratory effort. This will be followed by three papers from each of the participating research projects. In this collaboratory, each project engaged in collective work to synthesize knowledge across the research projects and, importantly, to systematically compare and contrast findings as a means to develop meta-insights about the role of local context in PBL implementation. The three projects are varied in their focus: investigating individual teachers’ shifts in practices as they adopt a PBL science curriculum; understanding the conditions that enable teachers to sustain PBL in Language Arts; and examining how school leaders can best support PBL implementation. A discussant versed in methods and challenges of implementation research will provide comments on the value of the general approach, strategies used to facilitate knowledge building across teams, and the significance of the findings on implementation that have emerged from the teams’ efforts both individually and collectively.
Perspectives on the Role of Authenticity in Project-Based and Active Learning Humanities Classrooms
Authors: Alison Gould Boardman, Christopher Pupik Dean, Zachary Herrmann, Sarah Kavanash, David Kidd, Rachel Kuck, Chaebong Nam, Joseph Polman, Jesslyn Puolson, Kristina Stamatis, Gavin Tierney
Discussant: Jal Mehta
Division C: Learning and Instruction
Section 1b: Humanities, Social Sciences, Fine Arts
SESSION DESCRIPTION
This symposium brings together four papers from research teams studying project based learning (PBL) and active learning pedagogies in humanities classrooms. Each paper examines these pedagogies through the lens of authenticity, raising questions about the role and importance of this concept in curricular design and implementation. The first paper examines authenticity as a design principle for project-based learning curriculum. Two categories of PBL projects are explored: Simulation projects and real-world projects. The second paper presents findings from a study of the impact of a framework for instruction in civics classrooms. The findings indicate that a significant predictor of civic development were levels of authentic student agency cultivated through the framework. The third paper reports findings from a study focused on the implementation of a 9th grade English language arts curriculum that was explicitly based on a three-part framework for authenticity. The results show that teachers using the curriculum achieved higher levels of authentic engagement than a comparison group. Students of teachers using the curriculum felt they were given significantly more choice, found what they learned useful in real life, and felt that their work was connected to their personal interests. The final paper describes the operationalization of authenticity in the curricula and student work of humanities teachers participating in a year-long professional development program focused on project-based teaching. The results illustrate specific strategies these teachers used to make their projects more authentic, but also illustrate how this authenticity did not always translate to the work students produced.
Teacher change of practice across contexts: Case studies of large scale project-based science curriculum enactment
Authors: Emily Miller, Kayla Bartz lead, with posters by Emily Miller, Miranda Fitzgerald, Selin Akgun, Tingting Li, Katy Easley, Annemarie Palincsar, Cory Miller, Joe Krajcik
Division B: Curriculum Studies
Section 5: The Places and Praxis of Curriculum
SESSION DESCRIPTION
This session uses case studies to illustrate the day-to-day changes in classroom practices that created the positive results of a large scale efficacy study (Authors, in press). The research project spanned three universities, two states, and involved hundreds of elementary classrooms and demonstrated that students develop science knowledge and social emotional learning with the intervention of project-based learning curriculum and professional learning. However, large scale research obfuscates the teacher and classroom shifts that engender this result. The case studies provide insights from diverse districts to explore (a) challenges that schools face during enactment, (b) day-to-day shifts in classrooms and, (c) teachers’ journeys to adjust the curriculum to align with other initiatives.
Towards an Ecological View of Scientific Sensemaking: Teacher Moves that Disrupt Deficit Perspectives of MLLs
Authors: Emily Miller & Emily Reigh,
Division B: Curriculum Studies
Section 5: The Places and Praxis of Curriculum
SESSION DESCRIPTION
Multilingual learners (MLLs) are often positioned as lacking the linguistic resources needed to engage in rigorous forms of learning, such as sensemaking discussions in science. Although research has shown that the epistemic and linguistic resources of students from non-dominant backgrounds can be valuable resources for engagement in scientific practices, the field lacks practical resources for supporting these students. In this study, we use van Lier’s ecological model to conceptualize how teacher moves can identify and leverage language resources present in the classroom environment. Through analyzing a corpus of classroom observational data, we identify and illustrate teacher moves that supported the classroom community in positioning MLLs as competent sensemakers. Implications are drawn for classroom practice and teacher professional learning.
Enacting PBL Science Instruction the Context of Physical Distancing: Supporting Humanizing Relationships
Authors: Emily Miller, Leema Berland, Joe Krajcik
Division C: Learning and Instruction
Section 1d: Science.
SESSION DESCRIPTION
This case study follows two elementary science teachers in the same urban school district during the first four weeks of their shift to virtual learning during the safer at home policy. Each teacher leveraged principles of Project-based learning to support learning. Nine hours of recorded data and six hours of interviews were coded for themes related to teachers’ individual appropriation of PBL principles and their support for fostering humanizing relationships. Shifts underscore critical aspects of science learning that need to be cultivated in any environment: Equity through authentic connections to community, and teacher motivation to embrace principles that personally resonate.
