PRISM :: Browsing by Author "Sengupta, Pratim"

Browsing by Author "Sengupta, Pratim"

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Open Access
A Descriptive and Explorative Case Study of a Scratch Programming Experience Involving the Creation of a Lunar Simulation/Model with Grade Six Learners
(2016-02-08) Martin, Stephen; Jacobsen, Michele; Sengupta, Pratim; Kremer, Rob
This mixed methods descriptive and exploratory case study examined the experiences of two classes in an elementary school (39 students) using the Scratch programming language to create a lunar simulation of the Earth/Moon System over six days. Using the Computational Thinking Framework developed by Brennan and Resnick (2012) the researcher examined the computational thinking (CT) concepts and practices students were exposed to. This study finds that all of the student groups experienced at least partial success in building their simulation. The researcher found that all of the groups explored the CT concepts of sequence, events, parallelism, conditionals and operators while building their simulation and more than 80% of the groups used data and loops. There is evidence that the students were involved in three of the computational practices: incremental and iterative, testing and debugging and, abstracting and modularizing. This study offers recommendations for practice and for future research.
Open Access
Aesthetic Experience in Teacher Education
(2022-09-23) Lee, Somi; Kim, Beaumie; Sengupta, Pratim; Lock, Jennifer; Clark, Douglas; Takeuchi, Miwa
This study is about how pre/in-service teachers can engage in aesthetic experience (Dewey, 1934) through conceptual artmaking in outdoor public spaces. The activity in the study is meant to develop expansive approaches to their disciplinary perspectives. My work arose from a pragmatic concern where teacher candidates in Ontario typically specialize in a particular subject area (e.g., mathematics, sciences, visual arts) during their B.Ed degrees, but then licensed to and are often required to teach in other subject areas in the public school system. To this extent, this study has a critical research question: how can conceptual art making in outdoor public places engage pre/in-service teachers in aesthetic experience through connecting and expanding their disciplinary perspectives? The sub-question is: how does collaborating with university students with different majors further affect this process? My argument includes that art as an embodied learning associated with creative action makings, can positively impact pre/in-service teachers on synthesizing their disciplinary understanding and comprehension through art. I introduce two methodologies, Art-Based Research and Design-Based Research. Both are used to design artistic approaches of educational research and generate theoretical claims for impactful learning practices for pre/in-service teachers. I also illustrate how I used constant comparison from grounded theory as a technique to analyze four types of data that are either discursive or non-discursive. The discursive data includes in-depth interviews after each workshop and field notes and the non-discursive data includes video recordings from the workshops and visual sketches in the field notes. The analysis of the data led to the development of four empirically supported theories: (1) place-based learning and meaningful transformation (Powell, 2020; Springgay & Truman, 2022), (2) expanded approaches to disciplinary perspectives, (Abrahamson & Lindgren, 2022; Ma & Hall, 2018), (3) mode of inquiry: art-based approach to teaching and learning, and (4) connecting everyday experience with schooling (Allen, 2016). This study took place during the global pandemic, in which the COVID-19 has affected people's lives immensely by limiting almost all parts of living situations, predominantly mobility, due to health concerns. The participants used the limitations and a varying degree of governance in the public spaces in Toronto as sources of learning and teaching to increase resilience in education. In this sense, I suggest that an emphasis on place-based and embodied learning (Ma & Hall, 2018) and aesthetic experience (Dewey, 1934; Greene, 2001; Grierson, 2017; Schmidt, 2010; Uhrmacher, 2009) can be helpful in designing pedagogical approaches for addressing the gaps in teacher education. Thus, my work can contribute to the growing areas of art-based learning in learning sciences (Sawyer, 2022) as well as the scholarship on expansive pedagogies in art education (Gradle, 2007; Inwood & Kennedy, 2020; Pérez & Libersat, 2016; Powell & Lajevic, 2011).
Open Access
Becoming Makers: A Designed-Based Research Study Investigating Curriculum Implementation Through Making
(2019-07-04) Becker, Sandra Lynn; Jacobsen, D. Michelle; Lock, Jennifer V.; Sengupta, Pratim
Educational researchers suggest there is great potential in the implementation of makerspaces as learning environments in formal school settings (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014; Hira & Hines, 2018; Martin, 2015; Wardrip & Brahms, 2016) My manuscript-based dissertation explores if and how making for learning might be enacted for a teacher and her class within the context of three separate curriculum topics. Each manuscript explores the research data from a different perspective, both pragmatically and theoretically: 1) comparing the figured worlds of makerspace and classroom as learning environment; 2) participants developing ontologically through the exploration of making in the context of STEM curriculum; and 3) participants growing as designers through making. Critical to this work was the selection of participatory design-based research as methodology, underpinned by the theories of constructionism and communities of practice. Through three cycles of making, I sought to answer the following research questions: How can teachers be supported in the development of teacher knowledge, pedagogy, and practice within an elementary school makerspace environment? and How can teachers support the development of students’ conceptual understanding of disciplinary topics in an elementary school makerspace? My goal was to explore how teachers working within classrooms as complex systems and the constraints and opportunities of curriculum topics might adopt making practices to further learning possibilities for their students. Three design principles emerged from the work, those being, 1) teachers, when designing for student learning in makerspaces, must consider that inherent in design iterations are opportunities for sensemaking as well as consequential displays of knowledge; 2) teachers must experience and share with students their own experiences of learning through failure; and 3) students must be provided opportunities from start to finish to do the work of professionals. This study focused on one teacher and her class over a year. It is recommended that future research might explore how elementary teachers in multiple school settings and from multiple backgrounds take up making as a way for their students and themselves to learn.
Open Access
Complexity in Facilitation of Public Computing
(2021-08-20) Hladik, Stephanie Kay; Sengupta, Pratim; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Kim, Beaumie
Museums and other informal learning spaces have been found to be sites of playful and transformative engagement with computing, especially for learners who have been historically marginalized in the discipline. However, as educational researchers and designers create new programs and exhibits for computing in museum spaces, the roles, experiences, and labour of museum educators – those who facilitate the exhibit, answer questions, and scaffold learning – have often been ignored, with the focus instead falling mainly on the hardware and software used within the learning environment. In this manuscript-based dissertation, I bring to light the complexity of museum educators’ experiences and practices in the context of a computational science exhibit in a Canadian science centre. Firstly, I review the literature on museum educators in science museums, pointing out their high importance yet low status in their institutions, comparisons of their practice with school science teaching, a growing call for professionalization in the field, and their positioning and participation in educational research projects – often as sources of data rather than co-designers of educational innovations they are expected to enliven on a daily basis. Next, I investigate the infrastructuring done by museum facilitators as they work to support the success and sustainability of a computational science exhibit, highlighting the ways in which this hidden labour is intertwined with their personal, professional, and community practices. Finally, I zoom out to reflect on the chronological shifts in the research project as a whole, from one that is device-centered to a more praxis-centred approach through four phases: an early device-centered framing of “redesign,” recognizing infrastructuring and developing relationships with facilitators, understanding improvisational infrastructuring as hidden design work, and, finally, making space for facilitators as co-designers. Across these papers, this dissertation highlights the ways in which methodology, epistemology, and axiology are intertwined in design-based research in informal settings. Shifting away from a device- centered approach led to listening carefully to museum facilitators, acknowledging and valuing their labour, and attending to power dynamics, which is essential for centering praxis in design- based research. I conclude with implications for future design-based research in computing education that are vital to equitable imagined futures.
Open Access
Design for Learning Through a Complexity Perspective: A Board Game Redesign Approach to Enabling Learning Possibilities
(2022-03) Bastani, Reyhaneh; Kim, Beaumie; Davis, Andrew Brent; Sengupta, Pratim
This doctoral study followed a conception of learning as a complex phenomenon and aimed to examine possible ways of supporting it. Drawing on insights from complexity research, particularly the notion of enabling constraints (Davis & Simmt, 2003), I explored the settings for supporting learners’ agency in pursuing their ideas and interests, while stimulating new possibilities of collective understanding and action. A design-based research was used to evaluate the potential of board game redesign in providing the settings for complexity-informed design conditions. The following questions guided this research: How would board game redesign provide the settings for enabling constraints? How would learners’ co-design practices evolve through the game redesign process? and How would learners’ decisions, ideas and interests frame their designs and open the space for using math and science in creating game systems? Using the framework of enabling constraints, the first phase analyzed the commonalities and variations in students’ collaborative practices in redesigning the board game Inversé for mathematics learning, in an elementary classroom. This analysis highlighted the importance of structured constraints at the starting point in supporting a common language. It also indicated the interconnection of the constraining and enabling aspects of the developed commonalities throughout the process. Learners’ emerging ideas and reaching higher conceptual possibilities were enabled as they developed shared goals and understandings through the project structure and cycles of unfolding co-design. The learning design in the second phase explicitly used complexity-informed conditions. It involved engaging middle school students with math and science through redesigning the cooperative board game Pandemic. Drawing on the notions of divergence and convergence of ideas and self-imposed constraints from design and creativity research (Biskjaer & Halskov, 2014; Stokes, 2009), the analytic frame in this phase focused on the processes of the evolution of learners’ practices and understanding. The findings elaborated on how the board game redesign approach not only set some structures but also enabled students to negotiate their interests and choices and collectively make decisions. Learners’ interests and decisions acted as self-imposed constraints that framed their work and could simultaneously expand their design space and engagement with math and science topics.
Open Access
Development and Evaluation of a Framework for Mentor-Based Engineering Outreach
(2022-07-25) Dornian, Katherine; Behjat, Laleh; Moshirpour, Mohammad; Sengupta, Pratim; Jazayeri, Pouyan
Diversity in engineering teams and organizations is needed to solve the complex challenges the world is facing. However, the number of people from historically underrepresented groups—such as women, Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic engineers—falls short of parity with the population [1-4].Mentoring programs successfully improve interest in engineering and perceptions of the field for people in the groups mentioned above [5-8]. Mentor-based outreach is a growing practice that attracts these historically excluded people to study engineering. While frameworks exist for implementing outreach and mentoring programs, there is not yet a framework that informs mentor-based engineering outreach. A solid framework is needed to improve practices and outcomes. In this thesis, I use in-depth analysis of a local mentor-based engineering outreach initiative and review twenty-four external programs to develop a framework for mentor-based engineering outreach. The final framework includes six critical dimensions and eight components to inform design, implementation, and evaluation of programs. This research also shows how structuring mentor-based outreach around technical skill development and relationships encourages positive social and personal development outcomes, such as increasing student interest in engineering. Ultimately, this work provides practitioners and organizations with direction for improving diversity within outreach programs.
Open Access
Features of Highly Adaptable Senior Leadership Teams
(2022-03) Fossey, Richard; Kowch, Eugene; Eaton, Sarah; Sengupta, Pratim; Kawalilak, Colleen; Veletsianos, George
When this research was proposed, approved by the Supervisory Committee, and then vetted in the Candidacy Examination, there was no COVID-19 pandemic. After CFREB ethics clearance, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. So, a study of executive level senior leadership teams of a provincewide healthcare system was not only important and unique, but it also meant researching a system that was in various states of hope, concern, complexity, and chaos—in real time. As exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, in today’s dynamic environments, leaders need to be nimble, comfortable with uncertainty, and ready to change (Kowch, 2013b; Pulakos et al., 2000). Indeed, the call for leaders to enable organizations, and people, for adaptability—the “ability to move quickly toward new opportunities” (Birkinshaw & Gibson, 2004, p. 47), to help manage complex competing tensions, and avoid complacency, has hardly been more pressing. Using complexity leadership theory as a framework (Lichtenstein et al., 2006; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007), this qualitative descriptive multi-case research examined multiple complex features that shaped the adaptive capacity of executive level senior leadership teams within a provincewide healthcare organization. This research used a pilot and successfully tested the research design. Using in-depth, one-on-one, semi-structured interviews of twelve executive level senior leaders, thorough document review, and the close monitoring of current events and news stories relevant to healthcare issues, this research investigated how the senior leadership teams enabled or constrained their adaptive capacity (Kowch, 2013a). Findings provide evidence that in context, the senior leadership teams took a path constraining their adaptive capacity (Philip & Sengupta, 2020). Some essentials of systems thinking, and dynamic system action were also found missing in this research indicating opportunities for future similar executive level senior leadership team research. Findings reveal: (a) a lack of informal networks, (b) misalignment between the leaders, and (c) little to no experimentation within the senior leadership teams. These findings answer the research questions and reveal how the senior leadership teams enabled or constrained their adaptability.
Open Access
Figured Worlds of STEM For Saudi High School Girls: Exploring Identities in a School-Based STEM Course
(2021-10) Alamr, Hebah; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Sengupta, Pratim; Adams, Jennifer
There is a growing effort from the Saudi Ministry of Education to include integrative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the formal curriculum. As an initial step toward this goal, the Ministry launched a number of informal programs that deliver the integrative STEM education experience to students in their school and during their school hours. This study investigates how one of these programs has contributed to building a STEM identity for young female students in their last year of high school and how these identities have motivated or hindered their pursuit of STEM careers. Saudi literature on women in STEM education reflects their relative exclusion from some STEM fields. The importance of this research lies in demonstrating the importance of building STEM identities as a way to overcome the cultural challenges that hinder some Saudi women from choosing STEM fields, specifically engineering, as a career. The study took place in one high school in Riyadh city in Saudi Arabia; seven participants consented to participate. Using a case study methodology and employing identity in practice as a theoretical framework (D. Holland, Skinner, Lachicotte, & Cain, 1998), I was able to trace the students’ identity development over 11 months. Data were collected via several methods: one-time surveys, three observations, and three interviews. I collected the data over three episodes: at the beginning of the program, when the class moved to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and after students started their post-secondary education pathways. Thematic analysis of the data demonstrated that formal schooling in Saudi Arabia has a deep impact on students’ understanding of themselves as STEM people. All participating students exhibited a “good STEM student” identity at the start of the program based on their experiences with formal STEM courses. Furthermore, they carried their STEM identities into the informal STEM classroom, and due to the different structure, they began to view their positionalities as STEM students differently and to adapt to the new structure of the informal STEM classroom.
Open Access
Grafemos: Design for Complexity Education Based on Maya-Kaqchikel and Western Perspectives
(2022-04) Lam-Herrera, Marilu; Sengupta, Pratim; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Takeuchi, Miwa
Amid growing interest in the Learning Sciences in issues of ethical and axiological perspectives in educational design, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the literature on complex systems and computational modeling in K-12 education. This work Highlights Guatemala's Non-Western narratives, ethical-historical concerns, educational dignity, and traditional representational Maya practices that informed and re-shaped the design and practice of modeling technologies (computational and non-computational) for complex systems education. This work is informed and advised by the Ixkoj Ajkem Community Council, a Mayan cultural organization that protects the Mayan Weaving Art. I illustrate how teachers engaged in and designed complexity modeling activities for education, integrating traditional ways of life and knowing –while centering dignity and ethical-historical perspectives and concerns with Western practices. My findings illustrate how teachers engaged in Embodied, Computational, and Physical modeling and designed multi-modal representations of interconnectedness in understanding complex, emergent phenomena by centering their traditional and more-than-human epistemologies.
Open Access
Inspiring Change: A Hermeneutic Phenomenology Exploring the Lived Experience with Emotional Labor by Female Health Champions Implementing Comprehensive School Health Reforms
(2018-07-09) Kendrick, Astrid Helene; Lund, Darren E.; Kowch, Eugene Gary; Sengupta, Pratim; Francis, Nancy; Lind, Candace
This hermeneutic phenomenological study explored the lived experience with emotional labor of five female Health Champions as they navigated through flux and systemic instability while implementing Comprehensive School Health initiatives. Framed by complex adaptive systems theory, the purpose of this study was to discover the immediate emotional and embodied experiences identified by five change agents having horizontal differentiation of roles including: pre-service student teacher, educational assistant, teacher, school leader, and system leader while undertaking educational reforms introduced between 2009 and 2016 in Alberta, Canada. This study uncovered insights into their common understanding the phenomenon of emotional labor while implementing the Comprehensive School Health framework, a reform to Physical and Health Education that coincided with the Inspiring Education movement. The findings of this study include: insight into the unique nature of the emotional work of change agents in educational settings; a phenomenological example of a possible lived experience with emotional labor; and suggestions for areas of future study for educational leaders interested in implementing Comprehensive School Health initiatives.
Open Access
Intellectual Emancipation and Embodiment in Early Mathematics Learning
(2020-09-15) Liu, Shimeng; Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Sengupta, Pratim; Simmons, Marlon
When mathematics language is defined narrowly, emergent bilinguals in classrooms could be systematically positioned as “learners of deficiency.” Recent scholarships in the field of learning sciences call for expanding the notion of mathematics language and scrutinising learning opportunities of emergent bilinguals in relation to the history and institutional spaces. Taking a holistic and critical perspective, this study draws from Rancière’s notion of intellectual emancipation as the leverage for emergent bilinguals’ agency in mathematics learning. My study was situated in a larger project conducted in a linguistically and racially diverse school in Western Canada. Together with a teacher, the research team altered temporal-spatial structure of the mathematics classroom that can mobilize learners’ bodies in an intellectually emancipatory manner. My analysis focused on classroom discourses and emergent bilinguals’ agency in different configurations of learning environment. My findings show, in the routine session, the teacher’s intelligence and will prevailed over that of students, thus the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) or Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequences were quickly completed and the discourses alternative to the pre-set plan were discouraged. The narrow space that configured the routine session also constrained the mathematics thinking mediated by bodies to a minimal level. The teacher’s monitoring of students’ physical movements further tightened the control over learner bodies. In this learning environment, the mathematical thinking and learning tended to be compressed to unidirectional acquirement. Conversely, in the designed session, the teacher’s will and students’ intelligence took the lead. Temporal structure of classroom discourse was thinned out to the expanded intervals between teacher utterance and student utterances, and even with the absence of “evaluation” in the sequence of IRE/F. The previously restrictive area in the school was transformed to a place that augments the embodied mathematics learning. Temporally and spatially, the designed sessions were expanded and offered more uncertainty and spontaneity due to the decreased control of the teacher as an explicator. In this context, mathematics pedagogy offered a complex system of iterative adaptation and decentralized learning. Based on these findings, I discuss how integrating embodied learning and the perspective of intellectual emancipation can address equity issues in early mathematics education.
Open Access
Measuring a Lack of Engagement in Raging Skies
(2022-01) Mattingly, Peter; Clark, Douglass; Clark, Douglas; Sengupta, Pratim; Greenberg, Matthew
A lack of engagement is bad for measurement via assessment (Kane, 2006). Traditional qualitative measures of a lack of engagement are error prone and expensive (V. Shute & Ventura, 2013). Thus, a quantitative approach is used in this study to attempt to address such issues. This study attempts to find a characteristic behaviour associated with a lack of engagement: Rapid-Guessing Behaviour (RGB; Wise, 2017). Data used during analysis comes from a project by Dr. Man-Wai Chu which studied learner data as they played a Game-Based Assessment (GBA; Chu & Chiang, 2018); A GBA is a game used as a platform for assessment (Ren, 2019). Analysis failed to reveal a strong link between RGB and a lack of engagement in this study. However, it is believed that learners with some behaviour patterns were exhibiting Enjoyment Seeking Behaviour; In short, they disengaged from the assessment to seek enjoyment elsewhere.
Open Access
Multi-Agent Simulations of Intra-colony Violence in Ants
(Springer, 2020-06) Martin, Kit; Sengupta, Pratim
This paper seeks to elucidate key aspects of a rarely-studied interaction in ant colonies -- intra-colony violence -- using multi-agent-based computational simulations. A central finding is that intra-colony violence is heritable, though not prevalent. Results from our simulations reveal specific conditions in which such infrequent forms of violence occur and can be inherited, which in turn helps us understand why Atta cephalotes may persist killing colony members, even though it dampens colony carrying capacity. We also discuss the concerns and implications of our work for modeling conflict and violence more broadly, which in turn raises questions about the ontological nature of the computational and evolutionary models.
Open Access
The Musical Imagination: Re-imagining a Sound Education Through Musical Boundary Play
(2022-04-29) Cutler, Michael John; Sengupta, Pratim; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Kim, Beaumie; Stark, Trevor; Azevedo, Flavio
The purpose of this study is to understand what musical boundary play can look like when beginner musicians work with professional musicians with an emphasis on composition. In doing so, my goal is to investigate how music education can be re-imagined through the lenses of boundary objects and boundary play by engaging non-professional musicians in collaborative sound creation, improvisation, and composition along with a professional musician. The literature reviewed for this research explores the epistemological perspectives connected to music education and situates musical boundary play as an alternative approach to the more prevalent paradigms of music education in K-12 settings. A qualitative multiple-case study design was chosen to seek an in-depth understanding of the role of boundary objects and musical boundary play. The study will gather relevant data using audio and video recordings of musical boundary play, artifacts, and observations. Findings from this study can offer insight to the development of a more inclusive music education and potentially yield a pedagogical framework for music education based on musical boundary play, the musical imagination.
Open Access
Queering Virtual Reality: A Prolegomenon
(Springer, 2019-01) Paré, Dylan; Sengupta, Pratim; Windsor, Scout; Craig, John; Thompson, Matthew
In this chapter, we investigate how innovations in STEM, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D Sculpting, can support the development of critical literacies about gender and sexuality. Our work arises from the concern that the assumed \naturalness" of male/female binary categories in biol- ogy is often at the center of the queer, trans, and intersex panics in public education. Echoing sociologists and critical scholars of gender and sexu- ality, we posit that transgender and queer identities should be positioned as realms of playful, active inquiry. Further, we investigate how new forms of computational representational infrastructures can be leveraged to support productive and playful experiences of inquiry about gender and sexuality. We present a retrospective analysis of a design group meeting of a small group of friends in their early thirties with gender nonconforming and queer identities and life histories. The group interacted in VR-based environments, where they engaged in two di erent forms of construction- ist learning experiences: creating 3D sculptures of personally meaningful objects, and re-creating their VR avatars in VR social media. Our analysis illustrates how such experiences can be productively analyzed using so- cial constructivist perspectives that situate knowing as boundary play and gured worlds, and the roles that play and friendship have in supporting deep and critical engagement with complex narratives and marginalized
Open Access
Re-Orienting Design: An Unbearable Pain
(2020-01-22) Sengupta, Pratim
Invited talk in International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020 Special Session (Identity & Learning Strand), June 22, 2020.
Open Access
Reframing Coding as “Mathematization” in the K–12 Classroom: Views from Teacher Professional Learning
(Alberta Teachers’ Association, 2018-04) Sengupta, Pratim; Brown, Barbara; Rushton, Kenzie; Shanahan, Marie Claire
There is now a growing body of literature that argues for the use of computational programming and modelling in K–12 science classrooms. However, one of the common pedagogical challenges of using computational modelling in the classroom is the overhead of learning programming, which interrupts curricular flow because it requires specialized technical knowledge. In this article, our goal will be to illustrate a pathway for integrating computational modelling and programming in the science classroom for teachers with little or no background in programming. Drawing upon our findings from an ongoing series of design-based professional learning sessions with 56 teachers in K–12 public and charter schools in Alberta organized by the Galileo Educational Network, we will argue that (a) when teachers, with little or no background in programming, view programming as a way to “mathematize” the world, they can visualize and implement seamless integration of programming and modelling with their science curricula; and (b) the use of multiple and complementary forms of programming and modelling (e.g., physical, virtual and embodied) can facilitate such integration.
Open Access
Sensing Someone Else's Pain: Ethical Historical Traces of Disciplined Interactions in Medical Care
(International Society of the Learning Sciences, 2022-06) Dutta, Santanu; Sengupta, Pratim; Ducey, Ariel
This paper highlights the ethical and moral dimensions of relational work and dignity in technoscientific spaces which are elusive in normative disciplinary practices. Using the lenses of ethical perceptions and embodied actions, we locate how microinteractions within physician-patient interactions during pain diagnosis and care are intertwined with interpersonal dignity, racialized emotions and historicized violence on Indigenous people. We discuss the implications of our work in light of dismantling normative views of disciplinary authenticity that underlie technoscience education.
Open Access
Social Emotions in Cognition and Learning: Integrating Perspectives from the Educational Learning Sciences and Neurosciences
(2022-11-09) Hachem, Maryam; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Sengupta, Pratim; Chu, Man-Wai
Social emotions, like empathy, compassion, admiration, and envy, are dynamic and complex as they not only involve the neural systems of simple emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, fear), but also systems that support aspects of cognition, memory and emotion regulation. Research in neuroscience sheds light on the nested relationships between emotion, cognition and social functioning, and could provide a pivot for new research on the role of social emotions in education, however, studies that investigate neuroscientific insights in dynamic real-life settings rather than lab settings are scarce. Merging of perspectives from both fields has begun through the field of Mind, Brain and Education, which brings together the fields of neuroscience, psychology and education. The objective of this study is to examine the concept of social emotions primarily from an education perspective while integrating findings from cognitive and social-affective neuroscience. The study is divided into 2 phases (I & II). Through an interpretive methodological approach, this study examines the conceptualization of social emotions by preservice teachers and investigates how experiencing social emotions may impact cognition and learning in a real and dynamic learning setting. During Phase I, U of C Year 1 BEd students (n=107) were asked to define social emotions and how they would use this understanding in their design of classroom learning environments. In a different task, they were asked to reflect on video prompts that were either informative or emotional (i.e. targeting social emotions). During Phase II, U of C Year 2 BEd students (n=12) learned about 2 scientific topics, and worked in groups of 4 to complete learning tasks following similar videos used in Phase I. The final outcome was a collaboratively designed lesson plan about what they learned. Semi-structured individual interviews were held afterwards to discuss thoughts and perceptions about themselves as learners and teachers and their emotional states in relation to their learning experience overall. Emerged findings from the multiple layers of analysis help support neuroscientific hypotheses of the positive impact of social emotions on brain development and learning, and more importantly, shed light on the intricacies of learning in an authentic learning context through understanding the connections between cognition, emotions, and social context. Findings are discussed through a biopsychosocial model, and recommendations for future teaching education programs and learning environments, more generally, are made.
Open Access
Students’ Meaning-Making of Physical Chemistry Concepts: A Resources Perspective
(2021-09) Bhola, Shaily; Sengupta, Pratim; Shanahan, Marie-Claire; Kim, Beaumie
Chemistry forms an integral part of undergraduate STEM education, and the literature demonstrates that students experience conceptual difficulties in understanding key ideas in the discipline. While some scholars have argued for an ontologically disconnected view of learning in which students’ intuitive ideas need to be discarded in order to learn key disciplinary ideas, in this dissertation, I built on views of learning as a gradual and continuous process of refining prior ideas (bootstrapping), known as the Knowledge-in-Pieces framework (diSessa, 1993; diSessa & Sherin, 1998). The research questions I sought to investigate through this study are: How do undergraduate students develop explanations of problems in chemistry during tutorial conversations? and How do they bring together and/or deal with the dissonance between different sets of resources, representational, linguistic, and intuitive? I report a study that was conducted with first year undergraduate students as they worked in small groups during tutorial sessions in a naturalistic manner. Tutorials are a common and yet understudied form of learning experience for chemistry students at the undergraduate level. This was a qualitative study that used audio-recordings of group conversations and students’ field notes as sources of data. The data was coded for resources using thematic analysis and the constant comparison method. This study sheds light on students’ use of heterogeneous resources that are representational (graphs, chemical equations, expressions), linguistic (colloquial and terminological language) and conceptual (p-prims, symbolic forms, graphical forms). Furthermore, my analysis also suggests that a distributed form of meaning-making supported students’ conceptual understanding, which included invoking diverse conceptual schemas, language use and different forms of representational work. Based on the findings, the implications for undergraduate chemistry education include supporting students by paying attention to the heterogeneity of their representational and conceptual resources and designing purposeful opportunities for the integration of these resources.