Navigating Open-Ended Spaces: Writing, Representing, and Speaking in a Fifth-Grade Science and Engineering Unit

Abstract

Recent reforms in elementary science and engineering standards present intriguing new opportunities for the development of project-based interdisciplinary curricula. Although project-based learning has a long research tradition, the field could benefit from more observations and analyses of classroom-level lesson enactments to provide support for the notion that a project-based integrated science and engineering unit may provide a fertile context for students to be supported to engage in sense-making and communicate their thinking through disciplinary literacy practices that are novel to elementary instruction. Therefore, I studied the enactment of a fifth-grade unit on Polynesian wayfinding that I developed in collaboration with my advisor. I collected the data for this study during 2019-20 in a single classroom at a public school in the Midwest. This dissertation is comprised of two manuscripts that explore different aspects of the project-based integrated unit. In the first study, I explored the practice of scientific modeling and how students, with the support of peer feedback, transformed observations of a physical investigation into a drawn/written model. Through a conceptual analysis of student artifacts, classroom videos and field notes, and student interviews, I constructed explanations of students’ sense-making, and changes in their thinking, while engaged in the practice of modeling and peer review. The findings highlight that students created models that addressed spatial, temporal, and conceptual features of the phenomenon. Even as novice writer-designers, students used sophisticated techniques like multiple views and multiple timepoints. Students included invisible elements, such as evaporation and heat transfer, but they were not always successful in making clear connections among the components. Students improved the accuracy and completeness of their models by engaging in a one-on-one feedback process using a structured protocol. Findings from this study indicate that modeling, especially when supported by peer feedback, is an interdisciplinary practice wherein elementary students can bring to bear written and drawn elements to communicate sophisticated ideas in science. In the second study, I explored the practice of engineering design and how students used drawn/written plans to create physical models. Through a careful review of recordings from multiple cameras, supplemented with student artifacts, interviews, and surveys, I analyzed the enactment of a project to plan, build, and test physical models of long-distance voyaging canoes. The findings highlight that the use of a written design planner with embedded guiding questions supported students with many aspects of design, including discussing and providing reasoning for decisions about materials. Working with university mentors allowed students to receive focused attention from adults with specific disciplinary knowledge. Findings from this study indicate that the use of written design planners and the participation of university mentors supported students in successfully constructing canoe models and in deepening their conceptual understandings of the physics concepts related to sailing. Together, these studies provide illustrative examples of disciplinary literacy within the enactment of a fifth-grade project-based science and engineering unit. The findings add to existing research focused on the science practice of the development and use of models, and the engineering practice of design, at the elementary level. Overall, these studies offer ideas and inspiration for future educators, researchers, and curriculum designers.