Joseph Polman

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · School of Education

Project-based learning (PBL) grounds instruction in authentic learning experiences where students engage in real-world explorations that culminate in a final product or performance. We report on a mixed methods study with 43 ninth-grade English language arts (ELA) teachers (22 PBL and 21 comparison) and 1,671 students exploring the feasibility of e...

What are pathways toward critical and just data literacies? Achieving critical and just data literacies is especially challenging in an ideologically polarizing "post-truth" world in which we confront a rising tide of misinformation and fake news, alongside discourse that denigrates politically conservative perspectives. Although reasoning with dat...

This article compares how visual design tools are used during an internship for high schoolers co-researching science journalism through infographics. Drawing on interns’ documentation of design processes, we demonstrate that tools shape both how youth create visual representations and how features of tools enable and constrain youth in positioning...

This study was conducted in a museum-based lab setting where scientists research the genetics of taste. Unlike academic labs with graduate students, the museum lab model trains volunteers (community scientists) who are (in true citizen science fashion) primarily responsible for enrolling museum guests into clinical studies; thus, they collect the b...

A conceptual framework is presented to understand and study the role of students’ agency in their school (dis-)engagement from a Funds of Identity (FoI) perspective. The framework includes the notion of agency combined with Funds of Learner Identity (FoLI): learning preferences that can be considered part of people’s Funds of Identity. The framewor...

Feminist science approaches recognize the value of integrating empathy, closeness, subjectivity, and caring into scientific sensemaking. These approaches reject the notion that scientists must be objective and dispassionate, and expand the possibilities of what is considered valuable scientific knowledge. One avenue for engaging people in empatheti...

Learning context has been an important focus of research and pedagogy-related discussions in education. However, despite increasing efforts to contextualize content and pedagogical processes, context has been often conceptualized as a static input variable framed by teachers, textbooks and instructional designers, as opposed to the learners themsel...

The emerging field of Data Science has had a large impact on science and society. This has led to over a decade of calls to establish a corresponding field of Data Science Education. There is still a need, however, to more deeply conceptualize what a field of Data Science Education might entail in terms of scope, responsibility, and execution. This...

Historically, researchers have observed that some African American youth suppress public expression of their interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) topics. Prior research has attributed youth denial of STEM identities to their perceived social pressures. When researchers interview participants in STEM education experiences, w...

The cyberlearning community in the United States brings computer scientists and learning scientists together to design and study innovative learning technologies. The Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology highlights examples of the exciting work our community is engaged in as we integr...

This study presents descriptive analysis of young adults' use of multiple representations in the context of science news reporting. Across one semester, 71 high school students, in a socioeconomically diverse suburban secondary school in Midwestern United States, participated in activities of researching science topics of their choice and producing...

The papers in this symposium together address new contexts, modes and concerns related to teaching and teacher professional development in the age of social media, with a particular focus on the socio-technical affordances and challenges of social network sites and teachers' perceptions and experiences. The presentations included in this symposium...

Teaching young adults about interpreting and creating the sort of multimodal infographics increasingly prevalent in science communication creates considerable challenges for teachers and practitioners, as there is no guide to determine the quality or effectiveness of this new genre of inscriptional forms, and to scaffold students’ performances in t...

In this paper, the authors describe how the practices of expert science journalists enable them to act as “competent outsiders” to science. We assert that selected science journalism practices can be used to design reform-based science instruction; these practices not only foster science literacy that is useful in daily life, but also complement pr...

This paper explores how participating in a program spanning an informal science institution and multiple school sites engaged youth with science in a different way. In particular, teens in the program selected and researched science topics of personal interest, and then authored, revised, and published science news stories about those topics in an...

The case for classroom discussion as a core method for subject matter learning stands on stable theoretical and empirical ground. However, much of the extant research has occurred in math and science classrooms. The four papers in this symposium examine the nature of whole-class discussion in history classrooms, and begin with the premise that teac...

The making of art creates possibilities for youth to simultaneously learn about what is being represented and develop their own identity in relation to the representation and how it is accepted or reacted to by others. Each paper will present a different case of students making art, how the process that they engaged in afforded different learning o...

Applied researchers, whether working with the framework of design-based research or intervention science, face a similar implementation challenge: practitioners who enact their programs typically do so in varied, context-specific ways. Although this variability is often seen as a problem for those who privilege fidelity and standardization, we argu...

This article reports on a descriptive study of youth identity as developing through ‘‘trajectories of identification’’ in a science outreach apprenticeship program designed to transition urban African American youth to professional work and career aspirations. A sociocultural framework of identity development is utilized, incorporating the notions...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and elaborate the theoretical notion of the «zone of proximal identity development» (ZPID). Building on Vygotsky's (1978) notion of a «zone of proximal development» (ZPD) where learning takes place when an individual is supported by others in participating in an activity, the ZPID posits a similar zone for...

History learning has been of interest to learning scientists for many years, though it has not been investigated as vigorously as the Science-Technology-Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. This symposium presents four projects that are united by two goals: helping young learners understand what makes the discipline of history unique, an...

The Science Literacy through Science Journalism (SciJourn) project aims to reframe the discussion of science literacy for citizenship, and explore how science journalism practices can be used to inform a cognitive apprenticeship that increases the science literacy of participants. This symposium features four paper presentations that report on the...

Using a case study approach, the authors examine the democratic and civic engagement learning outcomes of a campus protest. The conceptual framework is built on the ideas outlined in Learning Reconsidered (Keeling 2004) and modeled in its pragmatic follow-up, Learning Reconsidered 2 (Keeling 2006). Results suggest student and campus administrator a...

The learning sciences community has gleaned a good deal from research on traditional apprenticeships, and efforts to implement cognitive apprenticeships in schools. A hybrid model of "sociocognitive apprenticeship" is proposed, combining aspects of traditional and cognitive apprenticeships to aid culturally disadvantaged students to develop success...

Reviews the book, Science Education and Student Diversity: Synthesis and Research Agenda by Okhee Lee and Aurolyn Luykx (see record 2006-10316-000 ). In the ambitious synthesis and review book, Okhee Lee and Aurolyn Luykx have taken on a subject that is all too often dominated by the heat and light of political positioning and accusation. Their ext...

This paper includes a framework for combining narrative and logico-scientific thinking in the consumption and production of stories about the real world, such as journalistic and historical accounts. The framework involves graphical representation, at an intermediate level of abstraction, in "storygrams" showing sequences of actions involving agent...

This article uses a sociocultural approach to analyze how trajectories of identity de- velopment and learning intersect in actions carried out in a community of learners. The approach utilizes a framework for analysis with 5 aspects: the action, the agents, the goals, the cultural tools, and the scene. The study posits a distinction between mastery...

not available

Activity structures such as classroom lessons and initiation-reply-evaluation sequences are important cultural tools that help students and teachers accomplish everyday activity, but they are not well adapted to open-ended inquiry conducted by students in small groups with teacher guidance. In this research, I identified alternative activity struct...

A panel representing five design studies will describe the approach each is taking to help learners develop historical thinking practices through technology-supported inquiry, and the results of research conducted on the projects over the past few years.

In recent years, a number of curriculum reform projects have championed the notion of having students do science in ways that move beyond hands-on work with authentic materials and methods, or developing a conceptual grasp of current theories. These reformers have argued that students should come to an understanding of science through doing the dis...

Introduces a community-based science partnership in which students learn science and mathematics through inquiry-based investigations using technology and the unique history of a local cemetery. (KHR)

Introduction Researchers and theorists have extolled the promise of learning achieved through participation in the activities of a community of practice. Although he did not use the term "community of practice" in his seminal work Mindstorms, [Papert, 1980] described intergenerational learning that takes place in the preparation for a Brazilian fes...

Guiding Science Expeditions: The Design of a Learning Environment for Project-Based Science Joseph Louis Polman Project-based pedagogy has been revived recently as a teaching strategy for promoting students active engagement in learning science by doing science. Numerous reform efforts have encouraged project-based teaching in high schools, along w...

plex particulars of teachers' situated work with students, which includes cultural, historical, and social factors. To better understand the complexity of project-based science teaching in schools, I have undertaken an ethnography of one Earth Science teachers' work. Following a nineteen year career of teaching with a traditional "lecture-lab-demo"...

Inquiry-based science instruction offers great promise as a means of actively engaging students in authentic scientific problem solving, including consideration of research design issues. At the same time, inquiry introduces some difficulties. In particular, familiar "cultural tools" for classroom discourse, such as Initiation-Reply-Evaluation sequ...

Today's schools must prepare students to use computer-related technologies well in a range of tasks. For K12 schools to prepare their students, colleges and universities must prepare teachers to integrate technologies well for learning. Thus, reform in teacher preparation must become a high priority. Research has shown that lasting reform must be s...

Development among participants in learning environments is not limited to cognitive mastery, or "knowing how" and "knowing that." Rather, it often involves appropriation, a process of making ideas one's own, or part of one's identity. A case study of one child's development through participation in an after school club illustrates the benefits of c...

This paper describes the design of a learning environment, called the Climate Visualizer, intended to facilitate scientific sense-making in high school classrooms by providing students the ability to craft, inspect, and annotate scientific visualizations. The theoretical background for our design presents a view of learning as acquiring and critiqu...

An abstract is not available.

Macintosh HyperCard software makes a hypermedia presentation of texts a realizable application of the concept. A text can be presented on a disc with accompanying vocabulary and glossary, maps, a historical timeline for reference, and a variety of other features reflecting the web of information usually presented orally in the classroom. In additio...

As the Internet, computer networking, and computer-based communication tools gain a foothold in K-12 classrooms, educators need to understand adoption patterns of these technologies among students. Are some students reaping the benefits of these new tools while others are left behind? Are there characteristics inherent to students that are predicti...

Teachers interested in fostering science learning through inquiry or projects must play a complex role in discourse with students. They must scaffold student activities in the classroom without taking away students' active role, much like a coach. In this paper, we provide a framework for a specific form of scaffolding open-ended science inquiry, b...

Abstract The Digital History Project at the University of Missouri-St. Louis is an attempt to better prepare future teachers of secondary history and improve the historical thinking skills of high school students. Through a technology-rich after school program, students in a social studies methods,class and high school youth explored the history of...

Abstract In this paper, I discuss research on activity structure design in a project-based science classroom, and efforts to adapt designs from this setting to an after school program involving historical inquiry. I point out that common,activity structures such as classroom lessons and I-R-E sequences are important cultural tools that help student...

This study investigated teacher experiences that emerged as a result of the introduction of wireless technology that placed personal laptops in the hands of every student in their classrooms. Five themes emerged as major factors during the transition to the effective use of ubiquitous technology in the classroom and its positive effects on teachers...

The reform in teacher technology integration at our university is based on a school reform project. Thirteen area classrooms were equipped with the latest technology. We were selected to train the teachers to use technology and inquiry-based, student-centered learning. Monthly meetings, training sessions and classroom visits were instituted. Our te...

Project-based pedagogy has been revived recently as a teaching strategy for promoting students' active engagement in learning science by doing science. Numerous reform efforts have encouraged project-based teaching in high schools, along with a range of supports for its implementation, often including computers and the Internet. History has shown,...