Texts and Tasks in Elementary Project-Based Science

elementary literacy instruction;project-based learning;elementary science instruction;designed learning environments;Education;Social Sciences;Educational Studies

Fitzgerald, MirandaCervetti, Gina N ;

University of Michigan

关键词: elementary literacy instruction;    project-based learning;    elementary science instruction;    designed learning environments;    Education;    Social Sciences;    Educational Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/144100/mfitzge_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Standards-based reforms in K-12 literacy and disciplinary education call for engaging students in meaningful uses of literacy tools of reading, writing, and oral language in service of participating in disciplinary practices and building disciplinary knowledge. Despite calls for educational reform and the introduction of new academic standards, such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSSO, 2010) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), too few K-12 classrooms have meaningfully taken up these ideas in curriculum and instruction. For example, literacy instruction has long been divorced from knowledge building. Further, limited instructional time for disciplinary instruction in elementary classrooms poses challenges to achieving the objectives outlined in rigorous standards-based reforms. One approach to addressing these problems is the thoughtful integration of literacy and science instruction in the elementary grades. In this dissertation study, I investigated the design and enactment of texts and tasks in an elementary project-based science curriculum. The following research questions guided this study: (1) How do texts and related tasks, designed for – and enacted in – project-based science instruction, support or constrain third-graders’ knowledge building and development of foundational and disciplinary literacies? (2) How might modifications to texts and tasks within the designed curriculum better support third-graders’ knowledge building and literacy development? This study took place in one third-grade classroom with 31 students and their teacher across a full year of project-based science instruction. The focal curriculum, Multiple Literacies in Project-based Learning (MLs), integrates science, English language arts, and mathematics, and addresses the three-dimensional learning goals of the NGSS and select CCSS. Within and across MLs units, students had multiple opportunities to read and interpret a variety of traditional print, multimodal, and digital texts. The teacher was an experienced elementary school teacher and a second-year participant in the MLs project. I used design-based research (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992) and case study methods (Stake, 1995) to investigate the design, enactment, and improvement of focal texts and tasks. I used conjecture mapping (Sandoval, 2014) to identify salient and theoretically compelling features of the design of the instructional intervention, focused on literacy integration, and to map how features of the designed curriculum and the teacher’s enactment worked together to produce specific outcomes. Data sources for this study included field notes and videos of classroom observations, interviews with focal students and their teacher, artifacts, and the designed curriculum materials. Focal students were selected to represent a range of reading achievement and to reflect the demographics of the class. Findings indicated that: (a) the pairing of texts and tasks in the context of project-based science instruction created meaningful purposes for students to read and interpret multimodal informational texts; (b) the design and enactment of texts and tasks engaged students in using text in service of disciplinary knowledge-building and practice, creating opportunities for – and supporting – students’ science and literacy learning; and (c) texts served as tools for creating and sustaining coherence in PBL. I also identified missed opportunities within the design and enactment of the curriculum, which may have constrained students’ opportunities to learn in the context of project-based science instruction. These findings can inform revisions to the design of the MLs curriculum, and have implications for future curriculum design, the availability and use of informational text in elementary-grade classrooms, and educational policy.