Roundtable

What Is “Responsiveness”? Moving Beyond Deficit Models for Students with Disabilities and Difficulties to Broaden Participation

STEM Categorization
Day
Fri

Discuss approaches for tackling deficit models for students with disabilities and difficulties, and as they share their perspectives on strengthening responsiveness to students’ diverse ways of knowing and learning.

Date/Time
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This session focuses on broadening participation for students with disabilities and difficulties through a cross-project discussion around the essential questions of responsiveness and of tackling pervasive deficit models. The presenters find deficit models unacceptable. Learning is framed as a form of adaptation that respects the knowledge students bring to learning environments.

Helping Students Learn the Thinking Skills in the NGSS Crosscutting Themes

STEM Categorization
Day
Fri

Join the presenters of this session as they consider ways to support deep learning of the NGSS crosscutting themes, starting with examples from EcoXPT, followed by group discussion and sharing of artifacts.

Date/Time
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Presenters

The crosscutting themes in the NGSS call for forms of thinking that often are contrary to everyday forms of thinking and are not familiar to most students, especially students from underrepresented populations. Within each theme, there are supporting skills and understandings that students must have in order to understand the broader theme. For example, to reason well about cause and effect, students need to know when to attempt to isolate and control for variables and when to look for interactions, multiple contributing causes, and indirect causes.

DRK–12 Broadening Participation Topical Group Synthesis Feedback

STEM Categorization
Day
Fri

Discuss and provide feedback on brief syntheses of (a) DRK–12 research on broadening participation in STEM and (b) theories used to study broadening participation.

Date/Time
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Designing for Broader Access: Considerations in Providing Opportunities for Students to Create Computational Models

STEM Categorization
Day
Fri

This session explores the kinds of obstacles students encounter when creating computational models and potential approaches for addressing these issues.

Date/Time
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Students have traditionally faced difficulties in creating their own computational models due to steep learning curves associated with programming, difficulties in formulating mathematical equations, and lack of student-centered tools to facilitate the use of data from real-world phenomena to inform model design. Addressing these issues will make it possible to broaden participation by engaging students in computational thinking and modeling at younger ages, and by providing a pathway for students who struggle with mathematical formulas and data/graph literacy to participate.

Conceptualizing Rigor in the Design and Use of Practical Measures for Instructional Improvement

Day
Thu

In this session, the group explores the following question: What does it mean to attend to rigor in the design and use of practical measures for instructional improvement?

Date/Time
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Improvement science offers a promising set of tools and methods for assessing the implementation of instructional improvement strategies (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015). Improvement sciences utilizes rapid assessments of change to guide the development, revision, and continued fine-tuning of new tools, processes, work roles and relationships.

Broadening the Participation of Latinx Students in Learning Mathematics and Computer Programming: Affordances and Challenges

STEM Categorization
Day
Thu

Join presenters as they use an equity framework to engage participants in discussing broadening the participation of Latinx middle school students in a mathematics and computer programming program.

Date/Time
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This roundtable discussion begins by framing the affordances and challenges in the context of broadening the participation of Latinx middle school students in STEM+C using an equity lens (Gutiérrez, 2012). Four axes are included as part of this framework: access, achievement (in our case, understandings), identity, and power. Participants are asked to share their understandings of the issues in relation to this equity lens and share stories of opportunities and challenges, as well as ideas of how to address those challenges.

Broadening Participation Through Enhanced Relationships Between STEM Content and Disciplinary Language for Teaching English Learners

STEM Categorization
Day
Thu

Learn about a model of language-rich STEM inquiry for broadening participation of English learners in formal and informal spaces, followed by an interactive discussion.

Date/Time
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Presenters

This roundtable session begins with the presentation of a model of language-rich STEM inquiry for broadening participation of English learners (ELs) in formal and informal spaces. This model, developed through the work of this DRK–12 project, brings together EL students, their families, and their STEM teachers in both formal and informal STEM learning spaces. The goal of the model is to support teachers in better utilizing their EL students’ conceptual and linguistic assets to support STEM learning goals with the larger aim of broadening participation in STEM to include more ELs.

Engagement in Science Practices in Early Childhood: Discussing Successes and Challenges

STEM Categorization
Day
Thu

This session invites participants to discuss which science practices align with the abilities of young children and what supports young children need to engage in those practices.

Date/Time
-
Presenters

Researchers agree that scientific concepts do not stand alone and are meaningless if they are introduced as isolated facts. Instead, they suggest that science concepts be taught by engaging in the process of science (French, 2004; Gelman & Brenneman; 2004; Yoon & Onchwari; 2006). This science-as-practice approach is especially appropriate in early childhood.