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ERIC Number: EJ1386757
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Sep
Pages: 37
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0036-8326
EISSN: EISSN-1098-237X
Emotional Configurations in STEM Classrooms: Braiding Feelings, Sensemaking, and Practices in Extended Investigations
Pierson, Ashlyn E.; Brady, Corey E.; Lee, Sarah J.
Science Education, v107 n5 p1126-1162 Sep 2023
Attending to emotion in science classrooms can expand the range of resources valued for science learning, and it can offer insights into students' investigations. However, research that characterizes emotion as a part of disciplinary science learning is relatively nascent. In response, we explore the dynamic relationships between feelings, sensemaking, and practices in a sixth-grade STEM classroom, guided by: (1) Kimmerer's (2013) account of braiding Eurocentric disciplinary science with other resources, including feelings; and (2) Vea's (2020) framework of emotional configurations. We analyze data from multiple iterations of a 9-week curriculum about guppies' survival needs and the dynamics of ecosystems, illustrating how students' feelings and their sensemaking through practices involving observation were intertwined in generative and mutually-reinforcing ways. First, we show how the teacher and researcher made space for students to express feelings, in part in response to a student who used feelings to challenge "business as usual" classroom discourse on a day when guppies were discovered to have died. Then, we show how, in subsequent implementations, feelings, sensemaking, and practices were braided together to shape classroom investigations. We argue that attending to feelings in this way, as valued resources to be integrated with sensemaking and practices, is an important step toward equitable science teaching and learning and toward understanding learning in student-driven contexts.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 6; Intermediate Grades; Middle Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1742138