Designing for Student-Directedness: How K–12 Teachers Utilize Peers to Support Projects

Student-directed projects—projects in which students have individual control over what they create and how to create it—are a promising practice for supporting the development of conceptual understanding and personal interest in K–12 computer science classrooms. In this article, we explore a central (and perhaps counterintuitive) design principle identified by a group of K–12 computer science teachers who support student-directed projects in their classrooms: in order for students to develop their own ideas and determine how to pursue them, students must have opportunities to engage with other students’ work. In this qualitative study, we investigated the instructional practices of 25 K–12 teachers using a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews to develop understandings of how they used peer work to support student-directed projects in their classrooms. Teachers described supporting their students in navigating three stages of project development: generating ideas, pursuing ideas, and presenting ideas. For each of these three stages, teachers considered multiple factors to encourage engagement with peer work in their classrooms, including the quality and completeness of shared work and the modes of interaction with the work. We discuss how this pedagogical approach offers students new relationships to their own learning, to their peers, and to their teachers and communicates important messages to students about their own competence and agency, potentially contributing to aims within computer science for broadening participation.

Children's perceptions of scientists, and of themselves as scientists

In rapidly developing countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where this study took place, having a body of competent, dedicated key workers in STEM fields is critical to growing national economies. This, in turn, requires motivated, well-qualified graduates of STEM degrees. School students' perceptions of science, scientists and science careers have been shown in some research to affect uptake of science degrees later on. How much of their science classwork students experience as authentically 'feeling like scientists' is less understood, yet important. This study took place in upper primary science classrooms in the UAE. Immediately following a science lesson, children were interviewed in focus groups (n=66, with an approximately even gender split). Broad questions were explored, such as whether they felt like 'real scientists' when they 'performed' science in the classroom, whether they enjoyed science, and their science career aspirations. 83% of students stated enjoying science, while 61% would like to have a career involving science in the future. The interview data revealed that, overall, children mostly disagreed that their classroom science was reflective of work a 'real scientist' would do, chiefly due to perceptions of a lack of discovery element in their work, which suggested to them a lack of authentic science exploration, and of the work not being dangerous enough. Students frequently reported feeling that they were 'following steps' because the teacher 'already knew the answers', which was different from the work of a scientist. The implications of these findings to classroom practice are discussed.