Students’ Tool-Shaped Conceptualisation of the Idea of Statistical Distributions: The Case of FridaSpringer Science and Business Media LLC -
Stine Gerster Johansen
AbstractThis article presents a case study that explores digital experiences in statistics teaching within Danish lower secondary school, focusing on the development of students’ statistical concepts. The study tracks the progress of a student named Frida, who engages with the digital tool TinkerPlots over the span of a year. Frida developed a unique ‘plot–stack–drag’ technique that significantly influenced her conceptual development during this period. Her routines with the tool not only supported her in some instances, but also created conflicts due to their impact on her personal goals and anticipations. This article delves into the educational implications of the dialectical relationship between students’ development of tool-based routines and their personal goals established during the process. The research findings highlight the profound impact of interactions between students and digital tools, such as TinkerPlots, on shaping students’ understanding of statistical concepts. This underscores the importance of educators’ heightened awareness of students’ personal goals and anticipations influenced by digital tools, which, in turn, opens the door to innovative learning opportunities.
Using Computer Simulations and Culturally Responsive Instruction to Broaden Urban Students’ Participation in STEMSpringer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 5 - Trang 101-123 - 2019
Jacqueline Leonard, Joy Barnes-Johnson, Brian R. Evans
This article describes the findings of a pilot study that used computer simulations to broaden urban children’s opportunities to learn and participate in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Culturally responsive instructional practices were used to engage urban children in mathematical reasoning and science process skills to create computer simulations. In this study, African-American and Latinx students’ self-efficacy in technology and twenty-first-century skills, as well as attitudes toward STEM and STEM careers, were examined using the context of critical race theory. Due to the small sample size, a non-parametric test was performed. The results revealed significant differences from pre-test to post-test on the constructs of twenty-first-century skills, science attitude and engineering careers. The effect sizes were moderate. Qualitative data revealed the instructor engaged in four out of six elements associated with culturally responsive instruction. Future studies should examine how instructors’ use of sociopolitical consciousness and funds of knowledge influences underrepresented students’ interest in and motivation to learn about STEM.
A Brief History of Music, Computers and Thinking: 1972–2015Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 1 - Trang 87-100 - 2015
Jeanne Bamberger
The inaugural issue of the International Journal of Computers and Mathematical Learning (IJCML) appeared in 1996. Now, nearly 20 years later, Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education (DEME) arises like a Phoenix from its ashes. I would like to use the occasion to reflect, on the travels of Logo and specifically MusicLogo beginning with the 1970s when it was first taking shape in the Logo Lab at MIT, through its status as reported in the 1996 IJCML. Then, looking back from here, 20 years later again, the scene looks quite different: MusicLogo has disappeared having morphed into Impromptu, and Impromptu is now available on an iPad. But this journey is just a small instance of related travels that I hope will be pursued by others—for example why did Logo, the original progenitor, disappear as it morphed into Scratch, Netlogo, Boxer and more?
Coming to See Action as Symbol: the Computer as CollaboratorSpringer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 6 Số 2 - Trang 233-243 - 2020
Jeanne Bamberger
AbstractOur work with young children began as a project and a place that we called The Laboratory for Making Things. Our hypothesis was that deep learning could accrue in an environment where projects were designed that used differing kinds of objects/materials, that utilized differing sensory modalities, that held the potential for differing modes of description, but that shared conceptual underpinnings. This article focuses on the work of one eight-year-child, whom I call Laf, whose most notable quality was integrity – he needed to understand for himself. I trace Laf’s work as an example of a response to the question I had put to myself: Could the computer be a collaborator in helping children effectively make moves between their own body actions in clapping and the necessary numerical–symbolic instructions to make the computer drums play what they had clapped?
Fostering Dialogue in the Calculus Classroom Using Dynamic Digital TechnologySpringer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 2 - Trang 21-49 - 2016
Patricia Salinas, Eliud Quintero, Juan Manuel Fernández-Cárdenas
In this article, we discuss the dynamic digital software SimCalc MathWorlds and its potential to promote dialogue in the first calculus course for engineering students at Tecnológico de Monterrey, México. Sixty students participated in a pedagogical sequence of tasks that had been designed to help them appropriate the relations between a function and its derivative. In the classroom, the software provided a visual scenario supporting the various tasks. The simulation of cartoon motion over a straight line was included during the interaction. Corresponding graphs of position and velocity gave meaning to the function and its derivative. Active and exploratory visual perception allowed the interpretation of mathematical relations being sought as affordances provided by the software. Co-action between students and mathematical knowledge through software use promoted dialogue in order to identify those relations as invariants. A qualitative method, predominantly ethnographic, was applied during the 2 weeks of the classroom experience. The results revealed the students’ appropriation of the relations by means of mathematical language. With this experience, we propose the term ‘dialogic ecosystem’ as a way to emphasize the design and performance of the pedagogical sequence, where the teacher, students and software cohabit in an environment resulting in dialogue as an important component for the acquisition of mathematical knowledge.
