It seemed like surveys were the dish of the week with these articles. All of them had some strong survey component and one had a post-pre survey which I’d actually never heard of. To be honest, I had a bit of trouble parsing the results of the Huang article because I’m just not familiar with the kind of statistical analysis implemented there.
Otherwise, I thought the results of the two longer articles were interesting. With only my personal limited science fair experience, I didn’t realize that implementation of these sorts of fairs varied so wildly, and would have never considered how these implementations would affect learning outcomes. I really enjoyed reading the case studies in this paper and the teacher reasoning for why they chose one method or another to use. It seems almost always there was an issue with the time that such a fair takes out of typical class instruction time and I always wonder about this element when trying to implement more open-ended science lessons, labs, etc.
The other article I found surprising was the one by Huang. I wouldn’t have thought about how lessons can actually negatively impact the attitude of students who may have a bit of a headstart over their peers. I would have thought that this may be a universal feeling in group work when one member doesn’t put in the time/effort that others do, but didn’t think to link it specifically to students who have more background knowledge in the subject. I’m curious to learn more too about their different DEEP levels and hopefully get some help parsing them in class. I’ve never heard of such a ranking systems and it seems bizarre to me.
The last article didn’t really hold any surprises for me. If science practices are inaccessible for whatever reason, then naturally someone wouldn’t be able to picture themself pursuing a career in science. I feel like this is likely true for more than students with disabilities, but also those in schools without funding for science equipment, e.g.
“I wouldn’t have thought about how lessons can actually negatively impact the attitude of students who may have a bit of a headstart over their peers. ”
Just the other day, I was complaining bitterly about group work in my one undergraduate course, but if you had checked in on my feelings about group work in 3rd grade, 8th grade, 11th grade, undergrad, etc., my general feeling about group work would have been the same. I’m glad that there is at least one study on the impacts of group work fore people who have a “headstart” for whatever reason.
As a counterpoint to what Beth said above, I loathe being put in situations where I feel I am expected to “develop the skills needed to be able to help their peers with the course.” I’m happy to help others when I can, and certainly benefit from help myself sometimes, but when the expectation is put on me by a teacher or professor, I feel it[s a bit of an abdication of their responsibilities.
Great insights and questions! The Huang article results matched what I have observed in my own classrooms when students who are significantly farther along in understanding of a course are consistently grouped with students who have a more introductory understanding. I found that switching groupings and grouping styles regularly based on the purpose of the activity or group work helped alleviate the frustration those students could feel and helped them develop the skills they needed to be able to help their peers with the course. Having times where they could also work with like understanding peers gave them opportunities to dive much deeper into content or to challenge themselves within the group, and having times where everyone worked with friends of their choice gave them opportunities to create their own heterogeneous groupings, too.