Expanding sixth-grade youth's understanding of engineering through critical multilingual journalism

这个为期四年的项目将开发，制定和研究关键的气候技术新闻课程，以支持多语言六年级学生的知识和工程实践。该项目综合了气候技术、通信和多语言教育方面的专业知识，将让学生参与调查、设计和交流有关基于社区的技术系统的关键工程知识。学生将学习工程，因为他们构建和传达有关气候技术在他们的社区为家庭成员，社区团体和公民领袖的观众的信息。虽然许多现有的中学工程课程强调为客户或用户创建工程设计问题的最佳解决方案，但该项目采取了以公民为导向的方法，让学生参与工程，向多语言受众介绍影响当地社区的气候技术。参与该项目的城市学区的一个重要特点是，学生会说50多种语言，近50%的学生在家里说的语言与主流社会的语言不同。有鉴于此，专业发展研讨会将支持教师学习制定课程，使多语言青年以具有文化意义的方式参与工程设计实践。在拟议课程单元的三个基于设计的研究周期中，该团队将产生关于关键技术新闻方法如何影响六年级青年工程学习的循证理论，包括来自多语言家庭的学生。该项目旨在回答三个研究问题：（1）学生学习成果的演变，包括他们的工程，通信和跨语言实践，他们对气候技术的想法，以及他们对工程和技术传播对社区价值的看法？(2)学生在参与课程时利用了哪些社区资源（语言和文化、背景）？（3）课程资源和教师促进措施对学生学习结果有何影响？为了回答这些问题，研究小组将使用定性方法，包括课程制定的视频记录和采访教师和学生。该团队将使用交互分析和话语分析的技术来分析这些数据。除了七名教师和920名学生在四年的项目期间直接参与课程外，该项目的社区技术出版社网站将与更广泛的社区分享最终确定的课程单元及其辅助材料。这一传播旨在使全国各地的教师能够调整这一方法，为多语言学生创建与当地相关的课程。该项目由发现研究preK-12计划（DRK-12）资助，旨在通过研究和开发创新资源，模型和工具，显着提高preK-12学生和教师的科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12项目中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究以及为拟议项目提供理论和经验依据的先前研究和开发工作的基础上。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This four-year project will develop, enact, and study a critical climate technology journalism curriculum to support multilingual sixth grade students’ knowledge and practices in engineering. Synthesizing expertise in climate technology, communication, and multilingual education, the project will engage students in investigating, designing, and communicating critical engineering knowledge about community-based technological systems. Students will learn engineering as they construct and convey messages about climate technology in their community for an audience of family members, community groups, and civic leaders. While many existing middle-school engineering curricula emphasize creating an optimal solution to an engineering design problem for a client or user, this project takes a civic-oriented approach, where students engage in engineering to inform multilingual audiences about a climate technology affecting their local communities. An important characteristic of the urban school district partnering on this project is that students speak more than 50 languages and nearly 50% speak a language at home that differs from that of the dominant society. Given this, professional development workshops will support teacher learning to enact the curriculum so that it engages multilingual youth's participation in engineering design practices in culturally meaningful ways.Over the course of three design-based research cycles with the proposed curriculum unit, the team will generate evidence-based theory about how a critical technology journalism approach influences engineering learning among sixth-grade youth, including students from multilingual families. The project aims to answer three research questions: (1) What is the evolution of student learning outcomes, including their practices of engineering, communication, and translanguaging, their ideas about climate tech, and their perceptions of the value of engineering and technical communication for the community?; (2) What community resources (language and culture, contexts) do students draw on as they participate in the curriculum?; and (3) What is the influence of curriculum resources and teacher facilitation moves on student learning outcomes? To answer these questions, the research team will use qualitative methods that include video recordings of lesson enactments and interviewing teachers and students. The team will analyze these data using techniques from interaction analysis and discourse analysis. Beyond the seven teachers and 920 students directly engaging in the curriculum during the four-year project, the project's Community Tech Press website will share the finalized curriculum unit and its supporting materials with the broader community. This dissemination intends to enable teachers across the country to adapt this approach to create locally-relevant curriculum for their multilingual students. This project is funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) that seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models, and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.