Encouraging Teachers to Adopt Inquiry-Based Learning by Engaging in Participatory Design

Encouraging Teachers to Adopt Inquiry-Based Learning by Engaging in Participatory Design Daniel Hannon, Ethan Danahy, Leslie Schneider, Eric Coopey, Gary Garber dan.hannon@tufts.edu, ethan.danahy@tufts.edu, leslie.schneid@gmail.com, eric.coopey@tufts.edu, ggarber@bu.edu Abstract - Inquiry-based methods are effective for STEM education, but perceived as difficult to implement Often teachers have not experienced inquiry-based learning themselves, which limits their appreciation of the value of these methods Changing this situation requires modifications at the classroom level to simplify implementation of inquiry-based methods and modifications at the teacher level to encourage their adoption A participatory design project is described that is part of a multi-year program in which five high school physics teachers are collaborating with researchers at Tufts University to develop classroom educational technology tools for promoting inquiry-based education By participating in a technology-design project, teachers are experiencing the inquiry process as well as developing tools that will facilitate using inquiry-based methods in their classrooms The research and design effort to date has led to requirements for (and a prototype of) a classroom tool that promotes students sharing their own ideas An overview of the design is provided along with a discussion of the activities planned for the implementation phase Index Terms – Participatory design, inquiry-based learning, educational technology INTRODUCTION It is widely understood that collaborative design of technologies and activities are effective at supporting inquiry learning for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education improves student content and processing skills Yet teachers are often reluctant to engage in these methods noting many barriers, such as excessive time demands, lack of materials or equipment, and lack of student readiness Although educators acknowledge the value of the type of student-centered, open-ended problem solving activities that comprise inquiry-based learning, even the most experienced and inquiry-oriented teachers will tend to utilize teacher-centered activities (e.g., lecturing or pre-made lab exercises) when other job demands compete for their time [1][2] Additionally, the layout of conventional classrooms (i.e., students at desks, teachers at the front of the room) reinforces this teaching style Realizing more inquirybased student-design learning in STEM education, therefore, will require both a change in the affordance structure of the classroom and supports for teachers that lower the barriers to engage in these methods Technology has an important role /10/$25.00 ©2012 IEEE March 9, 2012, Ewing, NJ Integrated STEM Education Conference to play, but only if it is tightly tightly integrated with a pedagogically sound instructional process and classroom activities [3][4] Collaborative inquire learning represents a huge departure from traditional pedagogical methods and has enormous implications for research, design, and professional development Teachers require encouragement to utilize inquiry-based methods due to their limited experience with them Many teachers, particularly those new to the field, have not experienced an inquiry-based learning process for themselves when they were students and are not fully aware of the powerful impact on student learning According to Dillenbourg and Jermann [5], teachers need to be empowered to innovate in the classroom as an “orchestrator” of curriculum, assessment, time, and space, among other things In addition to classroom-based changes that support inquiry-based learning, teachers also need to participate in inquiry-based learning activities so they can better understand the impact of their teaching style on their own students The role of researchers is not just as agents of “technology transfer” but as “innovation guides, who help schools better understand how needs, approaches, benefits and alternatives fit together compellingly and cohesively in order to develop innovative solutions” [6] And technology development is viewed as iterative and transformative that involves engaging students and teachers in a collaborative participatory design process The present investigation is aimed at meeting these two purposes, by engaging a team of five high school physics teachers as members of a participatory design team tasked with the development of educational technology tools for promoting inquiry-based physics education A multi-year project is being conducted in which teachers collaborate with researchers from the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) at Tufts University in the design of the technology tools and in the classroom implementation In the process, the teachers both engage in their own collaborative inquiry-based learning activity (i.e., technology design) and practice using inquiry-based learning in the classroom with their own students during implementation PARTICIPANTS Five high school physics teachers from different school districts comprise the participatory design team, one female, four males Three are from urban school districts, two from rural; two are from private schools, and three from public schools; one teacher works with special needs students; two teachers are relatively early in their careers, and three have 10 or more years of experience The schools also differ in the availability of educational technology resources and class sizes This group of test schools also include students that represent a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds ranging from primarily Caucasian (Littleton High School), to Somerville and Fenway with over 60% minority students and more than 70% on free/reduced lunch, to Sant Bani with 15% foreign students See table for more specifics on the participants School BU Academy Somerville HS Fenway HS Sant Bani School Littleton HS TABLE I PARTICIPANTS IN STUDY Type Size Location Private Small Boston MA Public Large Somerville MA Public Small Boston MA Private Small Sanbornton NH Public Small Littleton NH Setting Urban Urban Urban Rural Rural METHODS Several different methods for knowledge elicitation have been used to understand current teaching practices and to gather teacher input for design First, researchers from the CEEO performed several classroom observations in each school Next, a task analysis was conducted with each teacher individually for the development and implementation of an inquiry-based learning activity was conducted This was followed by a prticipatory design workshop with researchers and teachers to dicuss and identify barriers to conducting inquiry-based education From these results, design philosophies, general requirements, and technical specifications were determined for tools that would facilitate inquiry-based learning in the classroom RESULTS Classroom observations yielded a mixture of results that were somewhat unique to each teacher All relied, for various amounts, on a teacher-focused approach that involved lectures and worksheets To some degree, the more experienced teachers were observed utilizing a greater variety of methods, including open-ended questioning, but there were no obvious and consistent themes correlated with any particular group of participants Interviews with the teachers yielded two different approaches to the planning and execution of inquiry-based activities One approach focused more on the planning of a lesson in advance with varying degrees of open-ended activities for the students Teachers differed slightly in how much preparation time would be needed, but all appeared to be taking responsibility for student success by insuring that everything was ready ahead of time (i.e., lab equipment, worksheets, etc.) The second approach was focused primarily on the problem being solved and engaged the students in every step of designing the lesson, including /10/$25.00 ©2012 IEEE March 9, 2012, Ewing, NJ Integrated STEM Education Conference identifying what equipment would be needed, how they would get it, and who would the work The participatory design workshops engaged the teachers as co-creators in the technology design and development process itself They worked with researchers and technologists to define different approaches to implementing collaborative inquiry-based activities in the classroom and identified potential barriers to success Prominent barriers included taking into account the different levels of students (e.g., conceptual physics vs mathematically-based physics), student readiness for tackling inquiry-based activities, and the technology and equipment available for completing inquiry-based activities Teachers noted that differing student levels would limit the extensiveness of what they attempted It was also noted that students often haven’t had much exposure to collaborative inquiry-based learning themselves and would need to build up to more involved projects A teacher in a rural district noted that his students had been together for many years and were perhaps more comfortable working together than students in a more dynamic urban school system environment The availability of equipment, including educational technology resources, such as Internet access, was also considered as a potential barrier DESIGN A significant theme that emerged from the participatory design workshops was the need to promote student collaboration as an element of the inquiry process [4][7] In order to change the focus of learning from a teacher-centric into a student-centric activity, the emphasis needs be on students generating and sharing their ideas as they negotiate and share meanings relevant to the problem-solving task The next step, therefore, was to utilize the observation, interview, and participatory design workshop results to formalize the design requirements for a tool that would support student collaboration and sharing These included:  Require a minimal technology footprint, ideally utilizing existing resources in each classroom  Allow students to participate actively and contribute ideas and inputs that can be viewed, shared, and valued by all  Allow teachers multiple ways of working with the tool to support teacher-centric (if needed) and student-centric activity  Allow for ease of access for students and teachers  Allow students to take initiative for their own learning, and explore and improve on ideas from different perspectives These requirements led to the following design for an in-class tool that allows student information to be aggregated and viewed on a common screen via a projector Individual student work can be selected for viewing, along with composites from multiple students, to engage the entire class in a process of collaborative sense-making Instead of the teacher doing all the thinking, this encourages students to contribute and learn from one another The illustration in Figure provides a schematic of how this tool works FIGURE TOOL’S FUNCTIONALITY, INCLUDING TEACHER PREPARATION, STUDENT CONTRIBUTIONS, DATA AGGREGATION, AND GROUP VIEWING DISCUSSION By actively participating in the design process, the teachers have been engaging in their own collaborative inquiry-based learning activity The open-ended nature of this has led to many discussions among them as they compared their different points of view about teaching, listened to each other, debated the merits of different approaches, and built off of and improved upon each others’ ideas Following Koschmann [8] and others involved in the study of computer-supported collaborative learning, the goal for design (and learning) is “constituted of the interactions between participants” [8] The development and implementation of this tool is happening as a result of teachers’ participation and they are able to directly see the result of their efforts as the tool materializes (Figure shows screenshots of the tool’s initial prototype that is currently being tested in classrooms now.) Perhaps what is most significant about this experience is that, as often is the case in product design, the process is not sequential or linear There are many tangential discussions, arguments over minor details, disagreements, and frustrations However, the emergence of a useful product is the result of all of these events Therefore, it is the willingness to work together to create “artifacts, activities, and environment that enhance practices of group meaning /10/$25.00 ©2012 IEEE March 9, 2012, Ewing, NJ Integrated STEM Education Conference making” [7] that is the basis of collaborative inquiry-based learning For teachers to engage their students in inquiry- experiments, models, simulations, etc to share different approaches to tackling the same problem The next phase of this project is to implement the tool in the classrooms and assess teacher and student use In addition to learning gains, the Tufts CEEO researchers will be exploring student engagement and satisfaction with the use of the tool Social network analysis will be used to determine whether students collaborating and sharing information promotes new social structures in the classroom and allows for new connections to be made among students ACKNOWLEDGMENT This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No 1119321 Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation FIGURE PROTOTYPE SCREENSHOTS based learning, they must believe in this process The value of having the teachers engage in the participatory making of meaning in the context of joint activity, in part, is that they experience for themselves how inquiry-based learning works The additional benefit from this activity is the emergence of a tool that promotes collaborative inquirybased learning for students The tool has been co-designed with teachers who are now themselves better tuned into the inquiry-based learning process In the end, the tool is able to support many different learning styles Hopefully, the teachers will continue to explore new ways of integrating it into their practice In fact, some early brainstorms have already emerged from the initial group of teachers The use of this tool in the classroom can range from heavily scaffolded questions to largely open-ended design challenges Instead of being fed equations and concepts by the teacher-lecturer, the tool can be used to enable students to work together to develop theories and the mathematics behind them in guided inquiry learning For instance, within a class of several small groups of students, image collection from student work on white boards can allow varied approaches to the same problem, using written logic, algebraic equations, or diagrams and geometry After the student contributions have been aggregated, the teacher can organize the submissions into trends (and differences) that the students can easily view, summarize, and argue for or against After ideas have been developed, the tool can also be used to help students test theories by designing experiments and models (instead of performing a canned experiment.) After aggregating different ideas, student groups can narrow down their experimental proposals to a few ideas to actually implement and test The same can be said for modeling and working with computer simulations to represent a problem At the end of a unit, students can each present the results from their /10/$25.00 ©2012 IEEE March 9, 2012, Ewing, NJ Integrated STEM Education Conference REFERENCES [1] Chinn, C A and Malhotra, B A., “Epistemologically authentic inquiry in schools: A theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks.” Science Education, 86, 2002, pp 175–218 [2] Driver, R., Squires, A., Rushworth, P., and Wood-Robinson, V, Making Sense of Secondary Science: Research into Children’s Ideas, 1993 [3] Barron, B J S., Schwartz, D L., Vye, N J., Moore, A., Petrosino, A., and Zech, L., “Doing with understanding: Lessons from research on problem- and project-based learning.” The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 7, 1998, pp 271–311 [4] Gertzman, A., and Kolodner, J L., “A case study of problembased learning in a middle-school science class: Lessons learned.” International Conference of the Learning Sciences, 1996 [5] Dillenbourg, P and Jermann, P., “Technology for Classroom Orchestration.” New Science of Learning, 2010, pp 525-552 [6] Roschelle, J., Rafanan, K., Bhanot, R., Estrella, G., Penuel, W R., Nussbaum, M., and Claro, S “Scaffolding group explanation and feedback with handheld technology: impact on students’ mathematics learning.” Educational Technology Research and Development, 10.1007/s 11423-009-9142-9, 2009 [7] Stahl, G., Goschmann, T., and Suthers, D., “Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical perspective.” Cambridge Handbook of Learning Sciences, 2001, pp 409-426 [8] Koschmann, T., CSCL: Theory and Practice of an emerging paradigm, 1996, pp 307-320 AUTHOR INFORMATION Daniel Hannon, Professor of the Practice, Department of Mechanical Engineering/Human Factors, Tufts University Ethan Danahy, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Tufts University Leslie Schneider, Project Manager, Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO), Tufts University Eric Coopey, Ph.D Candidate, Department of Computer Science, Tufts University Gary Garber, Physics Teacher, Boston University Academy /10/$25.00 ©2012 IEEE March 9, 2012, Ewing, NJ Integrated STEM Education Conference ... with teachers who are now themselves better tuned into the inquiry-based learning process In the end, the tool is able to support many different learning styles Hopefully, the teachers will continue... SCREENSHOTS based learning, they must believe in this process The value of having the teachers engage in the participatory making of meaning in the context of joint activity, in part, is that... will continue to explore new ways of integrating it into their practice In fact, some early brainstorms have already emerged from the initial group of teachers The use of this tool in the classroom