Restructurating Science Learning with Emergent Systems Microworld (ESM)-based Learning Environments

Dabholkar, Sugat

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-8tm3-4470

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Restructurating Science Learning with Emergent Systems Microworld (ESM)-based Learning Environments

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This dissertation is about designing learning environments that foreground students’ epistemic agency as they do science in a science classroom. I build on the prior work that combines two important strands in learning sciences - agent-based modeling of complex systems and constructionism to design learning environments. I call such learning environments Emergent Systems Microworld (ESM)-based learning environments. ESMs are computational tools (a model or a collection of models) that are designed as constructionist microworlds. ESMs use agent-based representations to model emergent phenomena. Because an ESM has consistent underlying rules regarding agent properties and behaviors, it makes ESM an excellent experimental system for learners to investigate various aspects of the modeled phenomena. ESM-based curricula are designed for students to collectively construct knowledge of these phenomena by engaging in scientific inquiry practices. I use Wilensky and Papert’s theory of restructurations to investigate the potential of agent-based representations in constructionist learning environments to restructurate science learning. I envision such restructuration of science similar to the restructuration of arithmetic that happened because of the invention and use of Hindu-Arabic numerals. In my dissertation, I conducted three studies to analyze how properties of restructurations change how students engage in science practices and teachers design technology-enhanced science curricula. The first study focuses on students’ expansive learning from the perspective of their epistemic engagement in constructing knowledge of disciplinary ideas. The second study is about the reciprocity between a disciplinary context and science practices for students to use one as a generative space to learn the other. In the third study, I analyze a three-year-long partnership with a teacher that was about co-designing science curricula integrated with Computational Thinking. I investigate how using ESMs for codesigning such curricula facilitated teacher involvement in the co-design process, changed her teaching practices, and increased the richness of the curricula. These three studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the ESM approach to design and co-design curricula to engage students in scientific inquiry practices in general and computational thinking practices in particular. They also contribute to understanding how properties of agent-based restructurations combined with constructionist design principles facilitate students’ agentic participation in the process of collective knowledge construction.

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