Lobato, Rhodehamel, and Hohensee investigated how learners “transferred” knowledge from one situation to another. They found that both individual cognition and the social organization of the class drove the learners’ process of selecting, interpreting, and working with particular features of mathematical information. They also found the social arrangements of the class influenced what pieces of information students noticed and focused on.
Formal readings and lectures are effective at delivering explanations, but the information they impart can be so densely packed and de-contextualized that students may not make full sense of the content. Arena and Schwartz found that video games have the potential to unlock the expository content delivered by lectures, textbooks, and diagrams.
Researchers examined whether engineering activities and lessons can help students apply science and math content in real-world contexts and gain insights into the professional activities and goals of engineers.
The authors of this study investigated the educational potential of a digital math game called Zombie Division in an elementary classroom. Habgood & Ainsworth were interested in the effect of what they called “intrinsic integration” –linking the video game’s core mechanics of play to the educational content. The idea is linked to the field of research called intrinsic motivation, in which the only reward is pleasure in the activity itself. The researchers argue that, while a game like MathBlaster is fun, it does not embody the mathematics lesson as an intrinsic part of game play.
This article provides firm evidence, for formal and informal educators alike, that shared learning can be powerful and meaningful, if carefully considered. Findings from a study conducted in a summer middle school mathematics class suggest that when students are able to ask legitimate, authentic questions and share understanding about a common problem, their learning becomes truly “distributed by design.”
Dabney and colleagues examine the relationship between university students’ reported interest in STEM careers and their participation in out-of-school time science activities during middle and high school. The researchers examined the specific forms of OST science activities associated with STEM career interest and the correlations among those forms.
Teachers’ and learners’ gestures while giving explanations in mathematics can be categorized into three types, revealing their cognitive nature and communicative purpose: pointing reflects a grounding in the physical environment, representational gestures reveal mental simulations of action and perception, and metaphoric gestures reveal conceptual metaphors grounded in the physical human experience. Informal educators should reflect on their own gestures and those of learners, considering what they may contribute to greater learner understanding.
To create more equitable learning opportunities for students from marginalized communities, educators can design learning experiences that help young people connect their everyday interests and knowledge to academic content. Nasir et al. synthesized research on how students use sophisticated math in everyday practices like discussing basketball, playing dominoes, and selling candy. Then they explain how learning improves when varied student experiences are made relevant in informal and formal learning environments.
This article discusses the potential for learner engagement in the contexts of a basketball team and a mathematics classroom. The qualitative analysis centers on three aspects of each context: access to the domain, the integral roles available to learners, and opportunities for self-expression.
Many ISE educators design opportunities for children to collaborate in learning activities. This study's findings show that, when collaborations are designed to let children take responsibility for each other's understanding, the development of positive dispositions toward mathematics increases.
There is growing understanding that learning develops across time and settings. This paper describes a particular case in which a fourth grade boy’s mathematics learning is shaped by experiences both at home and at school. It is relevant to researchers seeking to understand and study learning as a cross-setting phenomenon. It is relevant to ISE educators in that it raises questions about how to coordinate experiences between home and other settings.
This article reports the results of a design research experiment in professional development for teachers of middle school mathematics. The authors report on how they developed their programs to account for three underlying conceptual challenges to their efforts: (1) the institutional contexts that teachers worked in, (2) the ways in which the learning developed in and through the community of practice, and (3) the relationship between teachers' learning in the program and teachers' teaching in their classrooms. Especially because of the different institutional cultures found in ISE versus