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This research is aimed at developing novel theory to advance innovative methods for examining how collaborative groups progress toward productively engaging during classroom activity that integrates disciplinary practices. This work draws on a situative perspective, along with prior framings of individual engagement, to conceptualize engagement as a shared and multidimensional phenomenon. A multidimensional conceptualization affords the study of distinct engagement dimensions, as well as the interrelationships of engagement dimensions that together are productive. Development and exploration of an observational rubric evaluating collaborative group disciplinary engagement (GDE) is presented, leveraging the benefits of observational methods with a rubric specifying quality ratings, enabling the potential for analyses of larger samples more efficiently than prior approaches, but with similar ability to richly characterize the shared and multidimensional nature of group engagement. Mixed-methods analyses, including case illustrations and profile analysis, showcase the synergistic interrelations among engagement dimensions constituting GDE. The rubric effectively captured engagement features that could be identified via intensive video analysis, while affording the evaluation of broader claims about group engagement patterns. Application of the rubric across curricular contexts, and within and between lessons across a curricular unit, will enable comparative studies that can inform theory about collaborative engagement, as well as instructional design and practice.

Many studies investigating inquiry learning in science domains have appeared over the years. Throughout this period, inquiry learning has been regularly criticized by scholars who favor direct instruction over inquiry learning. In this vein, Zhang, Kirschner, Cobern, and Sweller (2022) recently asserted that direct instruction is overall superior to inquiry-based instruction and reproached policy makers for ignoring this fact. In the current article we reply to this assertion and the premises on which it is based. We review the evidence and argue that a more complete and correct interpretation of the literature demonstrates that inquiry-based instruction produces better overall results for acquiring conceptual knowledge than does direct instruction. We show that this conclusion holds for controlled, correlational, and program-based studies. We subsequently argue that inquiry-based and direct instruction each have their specific virtues and disadvantages and that the effectiveness of each approach depends on moderating factors such as the learning goal, the domain involved, and students' prior knowledge and other student characteristics. Furthermore, inquiry-based instruction is most effective when supplemented with guidance that can be personalized based on these moderating factors and can even involve providing direct instruction. Therefore, we posit that a combination of inquiry and direct instruction may often be the best approach to support student learning. We conclude that policy makers rightfully advocate inquiry-based instruction, particularly when students’ investigations are supplemented with direct instruction at appropriate junctures.

With accelerating advances in artificial intelligence, it is clear that introducing K-12 students to AI is essential for preparation to interact with and potentially develop AI technologies. To succeed as the workers, creators, and innovators of the future, we argue students should encounter core concepts of AI as early as elementary school. However, building a curriculum that introduces AI content to K-12 students presents significant challenges, such as connecting to prior knowledge, developing curricula that are meaningful for students, and creating content that teachers feel confident to teach. To lay the groundwork for elementary AI education, we investigated the everyday experiences and ideas of students in grades 4 and 5 (ages 9 to 11) about AI to inform possible entry points for learning. This yielded themes around student conceptions, examples, and ethics of AI. For each theme, we juxtapose the student ideas with the teachers' reflections on those ideas as frames of reference to consider in co-designing curricular approaches.

Facilitating the collaboration of multiple groups is a critical element in problem-based learning (PBL). In face-to-face learning environments, PBL facilitators require sufficient information about a group's progress and collaboration in real time to make decisions about when and how to facilitate. The capacity of facilitator is limited as PBL scales up. Online PBL settings can mitigate this challenge by presenting data from multiple groups to support facilitators using orchestration technology. A learning analytics dashboard with visual displays is one type of orchestration technology. This study examined 10 PBL facilitators' use of such an orchestration technology to assess the collaboration patterns of multiple groups. Think-aloud protocols were collected from PBL facilitators as they used the technology to understand group collaboration patterns, which were illustrated through learning analytics visualizations. The think-aloud method enabled the PBL facilitators to verbalize their thought processes, and content analysis was conducted to analyze the transcripts. This study found that the expert facilitators made consistent formative assessments and strategically selected the most relevant visualizations to examine knowledge co-construction and group collaboration. In addition, they used multiple visualizations to calibrate and confirm their understanding of the students' learning and group processes, rather than relying on one visualization. Understanding how facilitators use the information generated from a learning analytics dashboard to assess collaboration in an online PBL environment is critical for better support of online facilitation and the design of orchestration technology.

As problem-based learning (PBL) has gained popularity across disciplines, its move from small medical-school inquiry groups into large-class undergraduate inquiry has led to an increasing need to understand the elements of successful PBL implementations in large classrooms. In this study, we investigated how PBL was appropriated among students to develop historical thinking skills in a 96-person introductory undergraduate history survey course. The video analysis demonstrated that students initially found the appropriation of PBL routines and norms to be challenging. However, instructor interaction with both the students and representational tools in a large classroom provided multiple co-occurring and dynamic supports. This synergistic scaffolding structured around representational tools was instrumental in a semester-long intervention in which we supported student learning of historical thinking skills by encouraging appropriation of the activities that govern PBL.

Video and co-design can be powerful tools to enrich problem-based learning experiences. We explore how a teacher and researcher engaged in co-design of a PBL experience focused on human-centered robotics as well as the resulting design. They explored the question "How can we design a robot that serves a need in our local community?" We highlight three aspects of the most recent iteration of our PBL curriculum that we have identified as central to its success. These three elements include: (1) co-design experiences that occurred before and during unit implementation, (2) the use of shared video viewing and analysis both in co-design and with student groups in the classroom, and (3) the bringing of local stakeholders into the classroom to work closely with students. These three aspects of our curriculum are positioned here as takeaways for researchers and educators working to design, implement, and study PBL.

This exploratory paper highlights how problem-based learning (PBL) provided the pedagogical framework used to design and interpret learning analytics from "Crystal Island: EcoJourneys," a collaborative game-based learning environment centred on supporting science inquiry. In "Crystal Island: EcoJourneys," students work in teams of four, investigate the problem individually and then utilize a brainstorming board, an in-game PBL whiteboard that structured the collaborative inquiry process. The paper addresses a central question: how can PBL support the interpretation of the observed patterns in individual actions and collaborative interactions in the collaborative game-based learning environment? Drawing on a mixed method approach, we first analyzed students' pre- and post-test results to determine if there were learning gains. We then used principal component analysis (PCA) to describe the patterns in game interaction data and clustered students based on the PCA. Based on the pre- and post-test results and PCA clusters, we used interaction analysis to understand how collaborative interactions unfolded across selected groups. Results showed that students learned the targeted content after engaging with the game-based learning environment. Clusters based on the PCA revealed four main ways of engaging in the game-based learning environment: students engaged in low to moderate self-directed actions with: (1) high and (2) moderate collaborative sense-making actions; (3) low self-directed with low collaborative sense-making actions; and (4) high self-directed actions with low collaborative sense-making actions. Qualitative interaction analysis revealed that a key difference among four groups in each cluster was the nature of verbal student discourse: students in the low to moderate self-directed and high collaborative sense-making cluster actively initiated discussions and integrated information they learned to the problem, whereas students in the other clusters required more support. These findings have implications for designing adaptive support that responds to students' interactions with in-game activities.

This special issue joins the recent but growing effort to expand knowledge in the learning sciences, by examining the notion of participation in teacher-researcher collaborative design (co-design). Co-design is not just a means to an end; it is a context where professional learning happens. Each of the seven papers describes teacher-researcher collaborations focusing on the professional learning of both teachers and researchers engaged in jointly designing learning environments. Central questions of interest are: What do teachers and researchers learn from each other, how, and why? What kinds of activities and opportunities support what kinds of learning and for whom? What can we learn from these collaborations about how to support these partnerships? The commentary addresses the importance of both multiple perspectives (alterity, meaning that the researcher and teacher perspectives are distinct), their affinity (common purpose), and the mutuality that these entail.

Prior research has highlighted that for teachers to develop robust practices, they need to develop rich professional vision (PV)--the ability to see nuanced issues of teaching and learning in situ, interpret them, and respond. In the context of problem-based learning (PBL), PV involves guiding student-centered learning and understanding when to provide just-in-time scaffolding as students navigate real-world problems. In efforts between teachers and researchers to co-design PBL experiences, design partners co-construct PV as they put forth different ways of seeing and navigate how to support student learning together. We need to better understand how (1) PV is interactionally constructed in these efforts and (2) what tools and designs support this co-construction. We use discourse analysis to explore how joint video analysis in one co-design effort supported the simultaneous development of PV for teacher and researcher. Findings revealed that collaborative video analysis of classroom interaction and student artifacts acted as boundary objects for design partners--a shared space for meaning making. On video, classroom interactions were revisited, and alternative possibilities reimagined. Group artifacts (e.g., drawings and notes) made students' thinking available for interpretation. Consistent open-ended questions in co-design (e.g., "how are we seeing PBL in action here?") supported the negotiation and alignment of PVs, setting shared goals, and planning actions for upcoming class periods. This research contributes to our shared understanding of how to support research and practice that is responsive to local context and is mutually beneficial for researcher and teacher.

This study examines how middle school students develop an increasingly coherent understanding of aquatic ecosystems. As part of a broader design research study that used Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) theory as an organizing conceptual representation, we created two instructional units that focused on pond and aquarium environments. We coded and analyzed 70 middle school students' drawings of aquatic environments collected before, during, and after a technology-rich instructional intervention. Coding considered several relations between multiple system levels: Macro-Micro (MM), Biotic-Abiotic (BA), and SBF. Hierarchical Linear Modeling analysis was used to examine the relationship within and between levels. This suggested that students followed multidimensional trajectories toward an increasingly coherent understanding of aquatic ecosystems (i.e., separately across the MM, BA, and SBF dimensions). Even so, the ability to observe phenomena at multiple MM and BA levels may be an underlying constraint to observing integrated SBF relations and the development of a more coherent understanding of ecosystems. We discuss implications for instruction and the design of learning environments.

This study examines to what extent students transferred their knowledge from a familiar aquatic ecosystem to an unfamiliar rainforest ecosystem after participating in a technology-rich inquiry curriculum. We coded students' drawings for components of important ecosystems concepts at pre- and posttest. Our analysis examined the extent to which each of the drawings showed evidence of understanding of photosynthesis, cellular respiration and decomposition. The results demonstrate that students experienced greater learning gains in aquatic systems (the learning measure) than in the rainforest (the transfer measure). However, they also made significant learning gains on the rainforest task from pre- to posttest, suggesting that students transferred some knowledge from one system to another. Further research is needed to examine a wider range of relevant concepts and more distant contexts.

Collaborative inquiry learning affords educators a context within which to support understanding of scientific practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. One approach to supporting collaborative science inquiry is through problem-based learning (PBL). However, there are two key challenges in scaffolding collaborative inquiry learning in technology rich environments. First, it is unclear how we might understand the impact of scaffolds that address multiple functions (e.g., to support inquiry and argumentation). Second, scaffolds take different forms, further complicating how to coordinate the forms and functions of scaffolds to support effective collaborative inquiry. To address these issues, we identify two functions that needed to be scaffolded, the PBL inquiry cycle and accountable talk. We then designed predefined hard scaffolds and just-in-time soft scaffolds that target the regulation of collaborative inquiry processes and accountable talk. Drawing on a mixed method approach, we examine how middle school students from a rural school engaged with Crystal Island: EcoJourneys for two weeks (N=45). Findings indicate that hard scaffolds targeting the PBL inquiry process and soft scaffolds that targeted accountable talk fostered engagement in these processes. Although the one-to-one mapping between form and function generated positive results, additional soft scaffolds were also needed for effective engagement in collaborative inquiry and that these soft scaffolds were often contingent on hard scaffolds. Our findings have implications for how we might design the form of scaffolds across multiple functions in game-based learning environments.

Problem-based learning (PBL) designs are addressing the demands and potentials of an information-saturated era where accessing inquiry resources and new information is reconfiguring tutor-facilitated dialogues. Unclear is how incorporation of CSCL tools and the rich digital multimodal resources they collaboratively access and generate are re-shaping the traditional problem-based cycle of inquiry and intersubjective sense-making. This study in higher education adopts Interactional Ethnography (IE) as a logic-of-inquiry to examine how a group of medical undergraduate students and their facilitator (n = 12) collaborated to access, review, appropriate and devise multimodal digital and visual texts within and across one problem cycle (three face-to-face tutorials and self-directed learning). Drawing on concepts of 'multimodality' and 'intervisuality' from literacy theory, we extend theoretical understandings of how multimodal texts become actors within a developing PBL event, not just objects of study or cultural tools. Through this multi-focal approach, we make visible how what occurs at one point in time with these texts in the developing dialogic space is consequential for what students can and do undertake in subsequent engagements with such texts in and across one bounded cycle of learning activities. Arising from this analysis, we propose the concept of dialogic intervisualizing to characterize the dynamic interplay between and among information problem-solving processes, textual negotiations and purposeful, facilitated dialogue for deep knowledge co-construction within and across collaborative, computer supported learning activity in an inquiry cycle.

Purpose: The authors explored shifts in social interactions, content engagement and history learning as students who were studying one pandemic simultaneously experienced another. This paper aims to understand how the Net.Create network visualization tool would support students as they tried to understand the many complex interactions in a historical text in a remote learning environment and how sustained knowledge building using Net.Create would shape student attitudes toward remote learning, collaboration and engagement. Design/methodology/approach: This paper explores changes in engagement and learning in a survey-level history course on the black death after a shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors used activity theory to focus the adaptation of Net.Create, a web-based collaborative social-network-analysis tool and to understand how it supported group-based remote learning. The authors describe how the redesigned activities sustained engagement with historical content and report coded student network entries, reading responses and surveys to illustrate changes in engagement and learning. Findings: The results suggest that students benefit from personal connections to historical content and their peers. Net.Create supported both through collaborative knowledge-building activities and reflection on how their quarantine experiences compared to the historical content they read. It is possible to avoid student frustrations with traditional "group work" even in a remote environment by supporting collaborative learning using Net.Create and a mix of individual and group contributions. Originality/value: This is the first use of a collaborative network visualization tool to support large classroom interaction and engagement with history content at the undergraduate level.

There is a need for research in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teacher education that addresses the challenge of building teachers' pedagogical skills in fostering the development of mathematical reasoning in students. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics provide teachers with guidance on how to promote mathematical practices that emphasize reasoning and justification through problem solving and that encourage an exploration of viable strategies, through mathematical modeling and facilitating communication in the classroom, to critique mathematical arguments (National Governors Association, 2010). For many teachers, these kinds of mathematical practices may not be what they experienced as learners, and, therefore, it is not clear to them how to engage their students in ways that enact the new Standards of Mathematical Practices. The use of video clips of children thoughtfully engaged in doing mathematics offers a new lens through which to view student learning and brings forth a question that guides the authors' work: Does teacher study of certain videos improve their ability to recognize the variety of forms of reasoning used by the children? They have been conducting research in teacher education using the problem-solving tasks and videos from prior long-term research on the development of mathematical reasoning in students. This work is part of the Video Mosaic Collaborative, which also makes videos, tasks, and related resources available via the Internet (www.videomosaic.org). In this article, the authors report the results of quasi-experimental studies conducted over three years with pre- and in-service teachers. The underlying hypothesis was that a particular video collection can serve as a pedagogical tool for deepening teachers' awareness of how students' mathematical reasoning can emerge naturally through problem solving when appropriate conditions have been established in the learning environment (Maher, 2008). This hypothesis is premised on the notion that teachers' ability to recognize children's reasoning is likely essential for tackling the bigger challenge of subsequent change in teaching practice. Thus, the authors start to address that challenge by investigating their hypothesis about the pedagogical value of certain videos.

This study explores a third-grade teacher's (Deb) developing knowledge and practice for incorporating representations into her teaching of science over the course of 2 years. Data was gathered from the same science unit (Rock Formation) over 2 years, and consisted of video of seven lessons, one of which was the same lesson taught over both years. Also collected were artifacts from the lessons, pre (planning) and post (reflection) lesson conversations for each of the seven lessons, and interviews conducted with Deb before and after her teaching of the full unit each year. The results showed Deb's learning process of using representations was multi-faceted and incremental. Even with using the same representation forms and/or activities, in the second year, Deb was able to 1) incorporate representations on multiple aspects of teaching such as reviewing previous knowledge, introducing new topics, and assessing students thinking; 2) use multiple representations in one aspect of teaching; 3) engage students in higher levels of learning. These changes were related to Deb's reasoning of selecting representations, which are described further in the paper. This research contributes to an emerging knowledge base on what teachers know and are able to do with incorporating science representations into their practice. It also contributes to the field of science teacher professional development and the need for considering the multi-faceted nature of teacher learning. Implications for teacher professional development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful problem-based learning (PBL) often requires students to collectively regulate their learning processes as a group and engage in socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL). This paper focuses on how facilitators supported SSRL in the context of middle-school game-based PBL. Using conversation analysis, this study analyzed text-based chat messages of facilitators and students collected during gameplay. The analysis revealed direct modeling strategies such as performing regulative processes, promoting group awareness, and dealing with contingency as well as indirect strategies including prompting questions and acknowledgment of regulation, and the patterns of how facilitation faded to yield responsibilities to students to regulate their own learning. The findings will inform researchers and practitioners to design prompts and develop technological tools such as adaptive scaffolding to support SSRL in PBL or other collaborative inquiry processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary goal of instruction is to prepare learners to transfer their knowledge and skills to new contexts, but how far this transfer goes is an open question. In the research reported here, we seek to explain a case of transfer through examining the processes by which a conceptual representation used to reason about complex systems was transferred from one natural system (an aquarium ecosystem) to another natural system (human cells and body systems). In this case study, a teacher was motivated to generalize her understanding of the Structure, Behaviour, and Function (SBF) conceptual representation to modify her classroom instruction and teaching materials for another system. This case of transfer was unexpected and required that we trace back through the video and artefacts collected over several years of this teacher enacting a technology-rich classroom unit organized around this conceptual representation. We provide evidence of transfer using three data sources: (1) artefacts that the teacher created (2) in-depth semi-structured interview data with the teacher about how her understanding of the representation changed over time and (3) video data over multiple years, covering units on the aquatic ecosystem and the new system that the teacher applied the SBF representation to, the cell and body. Borrowing from interactive ethnography, we traced backward from where the teacher showed transfer to understand how she got there. The use of the actor-oriented transfer and preparation for future learning perspectives provided lenses for understanding transfer. Results of this study suggest that identifying similarities under the lens of SBF and using it as a conceptual tool are some primary factors that may have supported transfer.