Researchers and educators have argued that productive learning may occur when young people have freedom to organize their activity based on their own interests and concerns. Schools increasingly provide “makerspaces” that allow students to design and build objects and technical devices of their choosing, and researchers have developed in-school programs that provide students with a set of curated options among technology, engineering and design activities. Little is known empirically, however, about such environments: how young people learn when given the ability to decide and organize their activity, how districts establish and sustain choice-based environments, and how teachers organize and support them. In this dissertation, I explore these questions through an investigation of the STEAM Lab at Eagle Lake Middle School. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, the district became internationally recognized for its innovations, which included a substantial program of social and creative activities that provided opportunities for student choice and creative expression. Modern-day district leaders, seeing themselves as heirs to this tradition, undertook an experiment with the provision of choice to students. These innovations were a source of tension a century ago, and similar concerns echoed in the district today. The experiment with structured choice in the STEAM Lab at Eagle Lake is the focus of this dissertation. As an overall conceptual framework, I describe a conflict between scientific essentialist and humanistic conceptions of teaching and learning. I show that these instructional logics, which had come into conflict historically at Eagle Lake, were being contested by modern-day teachers and administrators. Drawing on 6 months of ethnography in the STEAM Lab, I describe the student learning process under conditions of structured choice, using grounded theoretical methods to develop a process model I call constructive interaction. I then present the case of a 7th grader named Kira. Troubled in school, Kira found a home in the STEAM Lab, acquiring sophisticated technical skills, becoming a skilled instructor for her peers, and discovering a potential future identity as a creative professional. I show that Kira was ultimately harmed, however, by Eagle Lake’s struggle to reconcile the competing instructional logics in the STEAM Lab through an assessment and grading rubric. I discuss alternative options for documenting student achievement in the STEAM Lab. This work may provide guidance for schools and districts seeking an appropriate balance of interests as they develop learning environments that provide increased freedom and choice to young people.

Creator

• Meyerhoff, Peter

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-8shs-8549

Subject

• Education

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15005
• etdadmin_upload_719129

Date created

• 2020-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright