Critical Transdisciplinary And Embodied Approaches In Stem Education

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 recent decolonizing efforts in public education, are also beginning to be acknowledged as legitimate issues in STEM education. Taking a reflexive approach to the intersection of these concerns, this book presents a collection of papers making new theoretical advances addressing two broad themes: Transdisciplinary Approaches in STEM Education and Bodies, Hegemony and Decolonization in STEM Education. Within each theme, praxis is of central concern including analyses of teaching and learning that re-imagines disciplinary boundaries and domains, the relationship between Art and STEM, and the design of learning technologies, spaces and environments. In addition to graduate research seminars at the Masters and PhD levels in Learning Sciences, Science Education, Educational Technology and STEM education, this book could also serve as a textbook for graduate and pre-service teacher education courses.

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 device-level engagement to consider the interplay between computational abstractions and the fundamentally interpretive nature of human experience. Building on Mikhail Bakhtin's notions of heterogeneity and heteroglossia, the authors explain how STEM coding can be understood as voicing computational utterances, rather than a technocentric framing of building computational artifacts. Empirical chapters illustrate this theoretical stance by investigating different framings of coding as voicing.

The Learning Sciences in Conversation explores the unique pluralities, complex networks, and distinct approaches of the learning scientists of today. Focused on four key scholarly areas – transdisciplinarity, design, cognition, and technology – this cutting-edge volume draws on empirical and theoretical foundations to illustrate the directions, perspectives, methods, and questions that continue to define this evolving field. Contributions by researchers are put in dialogue with one another, offering an exemplary analysis of a field that synthesizes, in situ, various scholarly traditions and orientations to create a critical and heterogenous understanding of learning.

STEM Teacher Preparation and Practice for the 21st Century: Research-based Insights introduces the reader to a collection of thoughtful, research-based works by authors that represent current thinking about the future of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics or STEM as it known today, as well as STEM education for a rapidly evolving global society and the preparation of STEM teachers to meet the educational needs of a changing educational landscape. Each chapter focuses on STEM teaching and the preparation of teachers who will enter classrooms to instruct the next generation of students in STEM. Research in the learning sciences focuses on the cognitive, epistemological, and socio-cultural characteristics of scientific and engineering research communities in their efforts to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. STEM education is a means to help individuals develop different strategies in order to solve interdisciplinary problems and gain skills and knowledge as they are engaged with STEM related activities through formal and informal learning programs. Research also suggests that STEM may well stand as the new general education for the 21st century. In much of the current discourse on teacher quality and preparation, two essential points for consideration have emerged: the strength of the relationship between teacher content knowledge and student achievement, and the specific representations of knowledge that are most conducive to effective teaching. Add to these two points one additional: the nature of transforming a chaotic system of discreet preparation and clinical experiences into a coherent, aligned and logical system of continuous and progressive development and support throughout a teacher’s career. These three points apply to STEM teacher preparation, induction and professional learning as well as to teacher preparation, induction and professional learning in general. Importantly, the contributing authors to this book have brought to the foreground research-based insights concerning STEM teacher preparation. Each chapter presents clear paths to understanding and reimagining STEM teaching and the importance of STEM teacher preparation, acknowledging the value of STEM literacy and the interdisciplinary nature of STEM teaching.

This book introduces Critical Language Awareness (CLA) Pedagogy as a robust and research-grounded framework to engage and support students in critical examinations of language, identity, privilege and power. Starting with an accessible introduction to CLA, chapters cover key topics—including World Englishes, linguistic prejudice, news media literacy, inclusive language practices, and more—in an inviting and thought-provoking way to promote reflection and analysis. Part I provides an overview of the foundations of CLA pedagogy, while Part II highlights four instructional pathways for CLA pedagogy: Sociolinguistics, Critical Academic Literacies, Media/Discourse Analysis, and Communicating Across Difference. Each pathways chapter is structured around Essential Questions and Transferrable Skills, and includes three thematic learning sequences. Part III offers tools and guidance for tailoring CLA pedagogy to the reader’s own teaching context and to students’ individual needs. The volume’s wealth of resources and activities are a pedagogical toolkit for supporting and embracing linguistic diversity in the classroom. The cohesive framework, concrete strategies, engaging activities, and guiding questions in this volume allow readers to come away with not only a deeper understanding of CLA, but also a clear roadmap for implementing CLA pedagogy in the classroom. Synthesizing relevant research from educational linguistics and writing studies, this book is ideal for courses in English/literacy education, college composition, L2 writing instruction, and educational linguistics.

This book is about the Internet of Things in the field of education. Specifically, it focuses on two major topics: IoT (Internet of Things) solutions to support distance education and new pedagogical approaches to support development of computational thinking with educational devices possessing the characteristics of IoT. As the educational landscape has dramatically changed in times of global pandemic, online resources and media, such as IoT, have become increasingly important. This situation compels all educational scholars, researchers and practitioners to search for new solutions, new educational pathways and new agents for knowledge development to support learning. This book presents the possibilities of IoT as both a catalyst and performance tool for education. The convergence of multiple technologies, real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, and embedded systems can serve as tools for learning support and this book details exactly how these powerful tools can be utilized to best effect.

This book fills a void in the literature around how urban agricultural education can be used to create opportunities to educate youth and citizens who live in urban areas about growing food. To date, very little has been written about program design and the impact of such experiences on learning outcomes. In fact, most of the journal articles and research to date has focused on access, contextual factors, sustainability, relevance of urban agricultural education, and the intersection of science of agriculture. This book will cover such topics as how urban youth learn science while engaged in urban agriculture programs, how such programs support youth in becoming interested about healthy eating and science more generally, and how to design urban agriculture programs in support of STEM education. The chapters in this book are written by educational researchers and each chapter has been reviewed by researchers and practitioners.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, Pervasive Health 2021, held in December 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 28 full and 7 short papers were selected from 74 submissions and are organized in 3 main tracks: hospitality and community care, homecare and medical education. The COVID 19 pandemic was challenging all dimensions of Pervasive Health (PH) and traditional ways of monitoring, diagnosing, treating and communicating changed dramatically.