Using dual language picturebooks with children in an after school club

Dual language picturebooks use more than one language in the text of the book. There is increasing literature showing the potential of such books to support language learning, and recent studies explore their use in classrooms to raise awareness of multilingualism. This article describes the ways in which dual language picturebooks were used in an after school club of 8-11 year olds in a Latinx neighbourhood in Arizona. Over a six week period an inquiry cycle was used as a curricular framework for exploring dual language picturebooks featuring both familiar and unfamiliar languages for the children. Findings showed the importance of providing time for connection with the books, followed by demonstrations or readings of the picturebooks, and the importance of invitations for the children to explore ideas from the picturebooks. The article provides guidelines for using dual language picturebooks in classrooms, and ends with a provocation suggesting that bilingual picturebooks are not necessarily only for bilingual children.

The Inquiry Cycle and Applied Inquiry Cycle: Integrated Frameworks for Field Studies in the Environmental Sciences

Empirical place-based studies remain the research mode of most environmental field scientists. For their own sake and that of synthetic analyses based on them, such studies should follow rigorous, integrated frameworks for formulating, designing, executing, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting investigations. The inquiry cycle and applied inquiry cycle provide such frameworks: research questions complying with strict guidelines, research design following 17 detailed steps, and ordered sequences of reflections on data that begin with possible causes of their general tendencies and exceptions (outliers) and then consider possibilities involving other spatiotemporal scales. The applied inquiry cycle evaluates alternative place-based management guidelines. In these studies, reflection on results can lead to implementing the most promising alternative examined, monitoring the consequences, and engaging in adaptive management. The integration from start to finish and the numerous reality checks of the two frameworks provide field researchers with tools to carry out the best, or least flawed, field investigations possible.

Scientific Reasoning in Elementary School Children: Assessment of the Inquiry Cycle

Scientific reasoning abilities are already developing in elementary-school-aged children and enable them to understand the world around them. The goal of the current study was to develop a new instrument for 8- to 10-year-old children in Grades 3 and 4 to measure their understanding of the steps of the scientific inquiry cycle (SIC). Such an understanding is essential for scientific reasoning as well as for inquiry-based learning approaches and, above all, for scientific practice. We developed and applied 15 items in a sample of 878 third- and fourth-grade students ( n = 434, Grade 3; n = 435, Grade 4). As confirmed by item response theory (IRT) modeling, the items produced reliable scale scores. Furthermore, we explored the relations between children’s SIC performances, cognitive abilities, and epistemic beliefs. As expected, intelligence, text comprehension, experimentation strategies, and sophisticated epistemic beliefs were positively associated with children’s SIC performance, a finding that helps to establish initial evidence for the construct validity of the SIC test scores.

Using the Inquiry Cycle in a Science Club to integrate public school and university in the north coast of São Paulo state

O Centro de Biologia Marinha (CEBIMar) da USP promove algumas ações de extensão universitária, com destaque para um projeto em parceria com uma escola pública, denominado Clube de Ciências, que trabalha o processo de construção do conhecimento científico com alunos do ensino fundamental. As atividades são pautadas pelo Ensino de Ecologia no Pátio da Escola (EEPE), uma proposta didático-pedagógica que utiliza a curiosidade como base para o questionamento e investigação do ambiente. A ferramenta metodológica do EEPE é o Ciclo de Indagação, uma abordagem alternativa ao método científico convencional que presume responder uma pergunta originada da observação do ambiente por meio de uma ação que resulta numa coleta de dados, os quais levam a uma discussão e à proposição de uma nova pergunta. As atividades contaram com participação relevante dos estudantes, docentes e discentes de ambas as instituições. A forma de trabalho vem sendo avaliada e modificada desde o início do Clube, a fim de tornar a atividade cada vez mais atrativa e lúdica para os participantes. Apesar das dificuldades em manter o número de estudantes até o fim das atividades, o Clube de Ciências demonstrou ser um poderoso agente para o envolvimento da comunidade acadêmica em projetos de extensão universitária e no engajamento de alunos do ensino público com temas socioambientais.

Building a Conceptual Framework for Data Literacy

Background The increasing focus on education as an evidence-based practice requires that educators can effectively use data to inform their practice. At the level of classroom instructional decision making, the nature of the specific knowledge and skills teachers need to use data effectively is complex and not well characterized. Being able to characterize this requisite knowledge and skills supports definition and measurement of data literacy. Evolving from empirical analyses, an emergent conceptual framework of knowledge and skills is proposed for the construct, data literacy for teaching. The framework is based on a domain analysis, which is the first step of an evidence-centered design process for data literacy. The framework is contextualized in existing research, with an objective of having it ground future work in the development of instruments to measure data literacy. Purpose This article reports on work to develop a conceptual framework to undergird research, development, and capacity building around data literacy for teaching. The emergent nature of the framework is intended to inform the discussions around data literacy so that continued refinement of operational definitions of the construct will emerge. Without such operational definitions, measurement of progress toward teacher data literacy is not possible. Research Design The conceptual framework is based on a sequence of qualitative studies that sought to determine the nature of knowledge and skills that are required for teachers to be considered data literate. A first study examined the ways that the knowledge and skills around the use of data were characterized in practical guides, books, and manuals on data use, formative assessment, and related topics. These characteristics were integrated with definitions of data literacy elicited from experts. A second study examined the licensure and certification documents required by states for teacher candidates for their treatment of data- and assessment-related knowledge and skills. The synthesis of these studies and their components have yielded an evolving conceptual framework for a new construct: data literacy for teachers. Conclusions The conceptual framework described in this article reflects an evolving effort to understand what it means for teachers to be data literate—that is, what knowledge and skills are required for teachers to use data effectively and responsibly set within an iterative inquiry cycle. The work posits that the construct comprises three interacting domains (data use for teaching, content knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge), six components of the inquiry cycle (identify problems, frame questions, use data, transform data into information, transform information into a decision, and evaluate outcomes), and, finally, 59 elements of knowledge and skills embedded within those components. However, the complex construct requires additional discussion from policy, research, and practitioners to refine and reorganize it and to expand it beyond a cognitive focus on knowledge and skills to include beliefs/values, identity, and epistemic elements. Next steps will include structuring an ongoing discussion about the nature of the framework and expansion beyond domain analysis through the evidence-centered design process to the development of a suite of instruments to measure the construct.