Pratim Sengupta

• Ph.D
• Professor (Full) at University of Calgary

In this chapter, we argue for an epistemological shift from viewing coding and computational thinking as mastery over computational logic and symbolic forms, to viewing them as a more complex form of experience. Rather than viewing computing as regurgitation and production of a set of axiomatic computational abstractions, we argue that computing an...

In this article, we argue that when complex sociopolitical issues such as ethnocentrism and racial segregation are represented as complex, emergent systems using agent-based computational models (in short agent-based models or ABMs), discourse about these representations can disrupt social studies teacher candidates' dispositions of teaching social...

This chapter presents a critical overview of the contributions in this book, that re-imagines STEM education along two themes. The first theme offers heterogeneous illustrations of transdisciplinarity, and the second theme illustrates the complex relationship between the body, hegemony and decolonization. Overall, we argue that this book advances c...

In this paper, we demonstrate how multi-agent simulations of gender and sexuality-based marginalization can help us understand gender and sexual experiences as complex, emergent, multi-level phenomena, which involve dynamic interactions between individuals, groups and institutions. We present Flocking QT Stories, a multiagent-based simulation that...

In this Foreword to the book "Fostering computational thinking among underrepresented students in STEM: Strategies for supporting racially equitable computing" by Leonard and colleagues, first, I position the book in light of the troubled history of computing and technoscience, which has historically decentred Black, Indigenous and People of Color...

Studies of both professional science practice and children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice. In science education research, however, students' care is often overlooked. In this paper, we describe the expression of care across two STEM classrooms...

We illustrate how a group of newcomer (refugee), young women of color engaged in filmmaking using stop-motion animation to represent a story of a family becoming refugees in the face of war. We ask the following research question: How did the youth adopt, negotiate, and represent their ethical stances in telling stories of forced migration using st...

We present a case of two youth who are sisters and newcomer immigrants of color in Canada as they work towards redesigning and re-imagining a computational model entrenched in white, colonial, and masculine ideologies. We show how centering their desires, personal and sensory-affective histories dis/oriented colonial and technocentric approaches to...

Voice Your Celebration was a public computing installation at Canada’s National Music Center, which offered a re-staging of computer code as a heterotopic form of participatory theatre. In the same way that the stage and the script can stand in between the audience on one hand, and actors and creators of a play on the other, in performances involvi...

The performance installation Moral Horizons of Pain (MHP) responds to calls to centre touch, presence, and poetics in the praxis of medical care. In their account of the project, researcher-creators Pratim Sengupta, Ariel Ducey, Martina Ann Kelly, Santanu Dutta, and Erin Knox describe MHP’s critical framing in relation to negative-form counter-monu...

Since emerging as a concept in the 1990’s STEM and STEM education has become an area of broad interest in Canada in the past 15 years. STEM programs are well-promoted in science faculties at Canadian universities and associated provincial education programs, raising the question as to the degree to which STEM and courses teaching (about) STEM are p...

What courses are available for STEM in Canadian BEd programs.

In this paper, we emphasize the importance of looking beyond technology itself and including interactional and experiential elements in our research gaze in informal computing education in science museums. We argue that, in these contexts, facilitation can be understood as design work that is both complex and challenging. We identify how focusing o...

Research about modeling emphasizes the importance of heterogeneity in science learning. At the same time, a growing body of scholarship seeks curricular pathways for epistemic and representational convergence. In response to this tension, we propose two constructs: heterogeneity-seeking curricula and commitments. Heterogeneity-seeking curricula emp...

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 wit...

Viewing code as heterogeneous language we offer an investigation of the relationship between language and symbolic violence in computational models of sociopolitical phenomena such as segregation and ethnocentrism. We offer a critical phenomenological account of how the transparency and ambiguity inherent in computational models of ethnocentrism em...

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 occu...

Design-based research, when taking place within research practice partnership, leads to an essential tension between the interventionist nature of educational design and a commitment to praxis. We encountered this tension within a DBR project to design a computational science exhibit within a science museum, and in this paper, we highlight how payi...

An exploration of coding that investigates the interplay between computational abstractions and the fundamentally interpretive nature of human experience. The importance of coding in K–12 classrooms has been taken up by both scholars and educators. Voicing Code in STEM offers a new way to think about coding in the classroom—one that goes beyond dev...

Modeling is generally recognized as the core disciplinary practice of science. Through examinations of rich learning environments which expand the boundaries of modeling and the practices connected to it, researchers are broadening what modeling means in disciplinary settings. This interactive session brings together a diverse spectrum of scholars...

We illustrate how agent-based modeling of emergent phenomena can be re-imagined through the lens of decolonization by partnering with Indigenous Mayan women weavers, high school teachers, and the Ixkoj Ajkem Council in Xenacoj, Guatemala.

Background We outline a case for how the Learning Sciences is at a powerful inflection point where the “real world” needs to be seen as comprised of the political entities and processes in which learning happens. We seek to sharpen the principle that learning is political by elucidating historical and contemporary processes of European and U.S. imp...

This symposium advances the discussion on transdisciplinarity as a key theoretical construct to disrupt hegemonic disciplinary silos in the learning sciences and to open up equitable and inclusive disciplinary practices that make visible the silenced voices and hidden histories. This symposium is a collection of five papers connected to the central...

There is broad belief that preparing all students in preK-12 for a future in STEM involves integrating computing and CT tools and practices. Through creating and examining rich learning environments that integrate “STEM+C”, researchers are defining what CT means in STEM disciplinary settings. This interactive session brings together a diverse spect...

In this study, we focus on how different kinds of participation negotiation play out in public computing exhibits among family members. We examine how children's ideas, knowledge and desires are centered (or not) in public computing and how that influences the types of engagements that families have in a public computing environment. We present an...

In this paper, we investigate the ways in which infrastructuring is emergent and enacted by facilitators of a public computing exhibit in a museum setting. We collected data in the form of video-recorded interactions of facilitators and visitors at the exhibit, interviews with facilitators, and field notes. Drawing from the experience of one facili...

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education garnered significant attention in recent years and has emerged as a key field of research globally. The goal of this article is to offer a critical review of how STEM education and its transdisciplinarity were defined and/or positioned in empirical studies published during the early...

In recent years, the field of education has challenged researchers and practitioners to incorporate computing as an essential focus of K-12 STEM education. Integrating computing within K-12 STEM supports learners of all ages in codeveloping and using computational thinking in existing curricular contexts alongside practices essential for developing...

Objective We illustrate how agent-based modeling of emergent phenomena can be re-imagined through the lens of decolonization by partnering with Indigenous Mayan women weavers and the Ixkoj Ajkem Council in Xenacoj, Guatemala. Theoretical Framework Research on complex systems emphasizes the importance of understanding emergent phenomena through buil...

Research on complex systems in K-12 STEM education has been typically grounded in Western perspectives; however, several Indigenous and Western scholars have argued that focusing on complexity, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary forms of engagement with science can be synergistic with Indigenous epistemologies. Western perspectives emphasize...

Our design of learning environments, such as museums, should match the expansiveness with which we think about the diversity of human learning. In contrast to schools or school-adjacent spaces, museums are often designed to elicit various forms of learning–including affective, embodied, cultural forms–through a variety of pathways for participation...

Our goal is to advance scholarship in STEM education by illustrating how computational modeling of complex, emergent phenomena can be re-imagined from an Indigenous perspective. Several Indigenous and Western scholars have argued that focusing on complexity and interdisciplinary forms of engagement with science can be synergistic with Indigenous wa...

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 biology is often at the center of the queer, trans, and intersex pa...

There is now a growing body of research focused on integrating computational thinking and modeling in teacher education, ranging from studies that investigate preservice teachers’ perceptions of computational thinking to those that evaluate the efficacy of computational tools that can support such integration. Our work extends this literature by in...

Studies of scientific practice demonstrate that the development of scientific models is an enactive and emergent process (e.g., Pickering 1995; Chandrasekharan and Nersessian 2017). Scientists make meaning through processes such as perspective taking, finding patterns, and following intuitions. In this paper, we focus on how a group of fourth grade...

This paper situates a critical review of studies that we have conducted within the broader research literature to analyze the affordances of integrating modeling within disciplinarily-integrated games from computational thinking and science as practice perspectives. Across the studies, the analyses pursue two themes: (a) the role of agent-based mod...

Digital games can be used as a productive and engaging medium to foster scientific expertise and have shown promise in supporting the co-development of scientific concepts and representational practices. This study focuses on the integration of a disciplinarily-integrated game, SURGE NextG, with complementary model-based activities to support the d...

Over the past decade, integrated STEM education research has emerged as an international concern, creating around it an imperative for technological and disciplinary innovation and a global resurgence of interest in teaching and learning to code at the K-16 levels. At the same time, issues of democratization, equity, power and access, including rec...

Although research on complex systems in K-12 STEM education has been typically grounded in Western perspectives, it emphasizes the importance of understanding emergent phenomena through building progressively complex relationships among individuals and between individuals and their environments. Several Indigenous and Western scholars have argued t...

This chapter presents a brief review of complexity research in mathematics education. We argue how research on complexity, as it pertains to mathematics education, can be viewed as an epistemological discourse, an historical discourse, a disciplinary discourse, and a pragmatic discourse.

As digital games and simulations become more commonplace in educational settings, it is important to document and analyze the way such digital learning environments merge with the traditional discourses and spaces of classroom-based learning environments. The current study contributes toward this goal by analyzing a representative transcript from a...

Rate-based processes comprise an important set of scientific phenomena, as well as an important part of the K12 science curricula. Electric current is one such phenomenon, which is taught in various forms from 4th - 12th grades. Research shows that students at all levels find electricity difficult to understand, and the difficulties persist even af...

In this chapter, we argue for an epistemological shift from viewing coding and computational thinking as mastery over computational logic and symbolic forms, to viewing them as a more complex form of experience. Rather than viewing computing as regurgitation and production of a set of axiomatic computational abstractions, we argue that computing an...

There is now a growing body of literature that argues for the use of computational programming and modeling in K12 science classrooms. However, one of the common pedagogical challenges of using computational modeling in the classroom is the overhead of learning programming, which interrupts curricular flow because it necessitates specialized techni...

Grafemos is an immersive environment designed for children to learn about complex systems. It integrates Indigenous perspectives on design and complexity and Western scientific and technological perspectives on computational modeling and complexity.

This paper introduces an immersive learning environment-Grafemos-that is designed for learning about complex systems that integrate two ways of knowing (epistemologies): Indigenous perspectives on design and complexity and Western scientific and technological perspectives on computational modeling and complexity. Using Grafemos, learners can learn...

Contemporary debates on "open science" mostly focus on the pub- lic accessibility of the products of scientific and academic work. In contrast, this paper presents arguments for "opening" the ongoing work of science. That is, this paper is an invitation to rethink the university with an eye toward engaging the public in the dynamic, conceptual and...

In this paper, we introduce ''public computation'' as a genre of learning environments that can be used to radically broaden public participation in authentic, computation-enabled STEM disciplinary practices. Our paradigmatic approach utilizes open-source software designed for professional scientists, engineers and digital artists, and situates the...

Disciplinarily-integrated games represent a generalizable genre and template for designing games to support science learning with a focus on bridging across formal and phenomenological representations of core science relationships (Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth, 2015; Clark, Sengupta, & Virk, 2016; Sengupta & Clark, 2016...

Computational thinking (CT) parallels the core practices of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and is believed to effectively support students’ learning of science and math concepts. However, despite the synergies between CT and STEM education, integrating the two to support synergistic learning remains an important...

How can elementary grade teachers integrate programming and computational thinking with the science curriculum? To answer this question, we present results from a long-term, design-based, microgenetic study where 1) agent-based programming using ViMAP was integrated with existing elementary science curricula and 2) lessons were taught by the classr...

Increasingly, researchers are using Social Network Analyses (SNA) to characterize school culture and collaboration characteristics of teachers involved in professional development sessions (Cela, Sicilia, & Sanchez, 2015; Daly et al., 2010). More recently, SNA has been used to understand STEM teaching and learning, and to suggest directions for fut...

In this paper, we introduce 'public computation' as a genre of learning environments that can be used to radically broaden public participation in authentic, computation-enabled STEM disciplinary practices. Our paradigmatic approach utilizes open source software designed for professional scientists, engineers and digital artists, and situates them...

How can elementary grade teachers integrate programming and computational thinking with the science curriculum? To answer this question, we present results from a long-term, design-based, microgenetic study where 1) agent-based programming using ViMAP was integrated with existing elementary science curricula and 2) lessons were taught by the classr...

We extend the theory of disciplinary integration of games for science education beyond the virtual world of games, and identify two key themes of a practice-based theoretical commitment to science learning: (1) materiality in the classroom and (2) iterative design of multiple, complementary symbolic inscriptions (e.g., graphs and agent-based progra...

In this paper, we present a third-grade ecology learning environment that integrates two forms of modeling--embodied modeling and agent-based modeling (ABMs)--through the generation of mathematical representations that are common to both forms of modeling. The term "agent" in the context of ABMs indicates individual computational objects or actors...

Studies of scientists building models show that the development of scientific models involves a great deal of subjectivity. However, science as experienced in school settings typically emphasizes an overly objective and rationalistic view. In this paper, we argue for focusing on the development of disciplined interpretation as an epistemic and repr...

We have iteratively designed and researched five digital games focusing on Newtonian dynamics for middle school classrooms during the past seven years. The designs have evolved dramatically in terms of the roles and relationships of the formal representations, phenomenological representations, and control schemes. Phenomenological representations c...

Digital games can make unique and powerful contributions to K-12 science education, but much of that potential remains unrealized. Research evaluating games for learning still relies primarily on pre- and post-test data, which limits possible insights into more complex interactions between game design features, gameplay, and formal assessment. Ther...

Clark, Sengupta, Brady, Martinez-Garza, and Killingsworth (2015) and Sengupta and Clark (submitted) propose disciplinarily-integrated games as a generalizable template for supporting students in interpreting, manipulating, and translating across phenomenological and formal representations in support of a Science as Practice perspective (Pickering,...

In this paper, we argue that a democratic approach to children's computing education in a science class must focus on the aesthetics of children's experience. In Democracy and Education, Dewey links "democracy" with a distinctive understanding of "experience". For Dewey, the value of educational experiences lies in "the unity or integrity of experi...

In this chapter, we report two studies in which 3rd- and 4th-grade students used a distributed computing infrastructure (ViMAP-Tangible) in order to collaboratively invent “mathematical machines” for generating geometric shapes. ViMAP-Tangible combines the ViMAP visual programming language with a distributed computing infrastructure, in which stude...

Background In this paper, we investigate the relationship between theory and design in the context of creating digital games to support children's development of scientific expertise. Synthesis Theoretically, we consider two frameworks: Knowledge in Pieces (or KiP) and Science as Practice (or SaP). While KiP is a theory about the structure of human...

Introducing students to visual programming as a pathway to text-based programming.

Environments in which learning involves coordinating multiple external representations (MERs) can productively support learners in making sense of complex models and relationships. Educational digital games provide an increasing popular medium for engaging students in manipulating and exploring such models and relationships. This article applies co...

How does deep conceptual change occur when students play well-designed educational games? To answer this question, we present a case study in the form of a microgenetic analysis of a student’s processes of knowledge construction as he played a conceptually-integrated digital game (SURGE Next) designed to support learning about Newtonian mechanics....

In this paper, we investigate the interactions among oligarchs, political parties, and voters using an agent-based modeling approach. We introduce the OLIGO model, which is based on the spatial model of democracy, where voters have positions in a policy space and vote for the party that appears closest to them, and parties move in policy space to s...

There is now growing consensus that K12 science education needs to focus on core epistemic and representational practices of scientific inquiry (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007; Lehrer & Schauble, 2006). In this chapter, the authors focus on two such practices: argumentation and computational modeling. Novice science learners engaging in thes...

Simulations provide a suitable environment for discovery learning, but are not pedagogically effective unless exploration tasks are suitably scaffolded. We are developing an architecture for a computer based learning environment that includes a multi-agent based simulation, a causal modeling tool, and a set of contextualized scaffolds provided by a...

In recent years much research has explored the potential of using video games in education. This effort has produced many interesting games though it is unclear if "educational video games" have achieved their promise. Similarly, for many years constructionists have engaged children in learning across a variety of contexts, including game design. W...

We examine the process through which computational thinking develops in a perspectival fashion as two middle school students collaborate with each other in order to develop computational models of two graphs of motion. We present an interaction analysis of the students' discourse and computational modeling, and analyze how they came to a joint unde...

We investigate how the integration of visual agent-based programming and computationally augmented physical structures can support curricular integration across STEM domains for elementary grade students. We introduce ViMAP-Tangible, a socio-technically distributed computational learning environment, which integrates ultrasonic sensors with the ViM...

We represent a variety of educators and designers who have in common a deep concern about the quality of STEM learning and how new media tools are designed and used. These tools run the range of interactive simulations to embodied games with full arc narratives. We believe there is not one correct way to instruct in science using new media. For exa...

Computational Thinking (CT) is now considered a core competency in problem formulation and problem solving. In spite of the known synergies between CT and science education, integrating CT in K-12 science classrooms is challenging. This paper reports a teacher-led, multi-domain classroom study conducted with 6th graders using CTSiM-a learning envir...

We investigate how the integration of visual agent-based programming and computationally augmented physical structures can support curricular integration across STEM domains for elementary and middle school students. We present ViMAP-Tangible, a learning environment, which integrates ultrasonic sensors with the ViMAP visual programming language usi...

We present the OLIGO model, a multi-agent simulation of oligarchy. We extend previous multi-agent-based, spatial models of democracy by adding a new class of agents, oligarchs, which represent leaders of firms in a common industry who lobby for beneficial subsidies through campaign donations. We test hypotheses from the literature in political econ...

We posit that in the context of learning science using generative computational media, the lens of aesthetic experiences can provide us with a framework to understand how learners begin to develop representational fluency by appropriating computational tools into personally meaningful, computational expressions. We report two cases to illustrate ho...

Computational thinking (CT) draws on concepts and practices that are fundamental to computing and computer science. It includes epistemic and represen-tational practices, such as problem representation, abstraction, decomposition, simu-lation, verification, and prediction. However, these practices are also central to the development of expertise in...

Novice learners find motion as a continuous process of change challenging to understand. In this paper, we present a pedagogical approach based on agent-based, visual programming to address this issue. Integrating Logo programming with curricular science has been shown to be challenging in previous research on educational computing. We present a ne...

Computational thinking (CT) draws on fundamental computer science concepts to formulate and solve problems, design systems, and understand human behavior. CT practices (e.g., problem representation, abstraction, decomposition, simulation, verification, and prediction) are also central to the development of expertise in a variety of STEM disciplines...