CAREER: Designing Communities of Practice to Support Math, Science, Technology, and Pedagogy Learning

“虚拟社区”的概念已经引起了大众和学术界的关注。 这种兴趣发生在一个越来越担心失去面对面社区的美国。 网络社区的倡导者希望通过利用技术，我们可以重新创造一个“我们”，这个“我们”已经逐渐被侵蚀成许多孤立的“我”。教育工作者正在探索采用“社区”模式支持学习的价值。这个想法是，通过参与一个社区，新手学习者可以通过与他人合作学习，并与更有经验的“老前辈”一起工作。“就像学徒一样，学习者观察老前辈，然后逐渐开始采用社区的做法。在这种模式中，学习不是从有用的活动中抽象出来的，而是它的一部分。通过使学习变得即时、实用和真实的，教育者希望克服让学生和教师参与有意义的学习的历史问题，以及学生对学校不满的当代问题。以社区为基础的学习方法具有巨大的理论和实践潜力，但必须对这些环境进行实证研究。 社区学习方法的教育价值是什么？ 通过参与社区学习是否可以帮助学生克服进入数学、科学和技术的历史障碍，促进数学、科学和技术技能的发展？ 它在促进深度学习方面是否有特殊的作用？ 他们的性别差异，我们如何才能发展网上社区，不加剧数字鸿沟？虽然这笔赠款将借鉴其他成功的项目（例如，Tapped In、Math Forum等），这项工作将主要集中在研究和设计三种不同的学习环境，旨在支持学习数学，科学和技术。 这些项目中的每一个都是实质性的，并为我们通过社区参与学习的理解做出了独特的贡献。然而，一个彻底的跨项目分析将利用每种情况的独特方面，同时使我们能够在不同的情况下提出有科学依据的主张。我们将系统地研究这种社区方法在学习方面的有效性以及这种社区形成的过程。 对于每一种情况，我们将强调不同类型的证据。第一，研究性学习论坛项目需要一个基于网络的专业发展网络，以改善在职和在职数学和科学教师的教学实践。 我们将使用话语分析来检查他们的在线讨论，访谈和问卷调查的质量，以评估他们的教育观念，并访问他们的教室，以观察实际做法。 在第二个针对学习数学和科学的儿童的在线社区中，我们将对他们对数学和科学的理解进行前测和后测，访谈以测试他们对这些内容领域的理解深度，我们将使用内容标题来检查他们作为社区参与的一部分产生的工件的丰富性。 第三，在技术课程中，我们将分析课堂作业，使用标尺来检查与技术教学的档案袋，并观察他们的课堂实践。所有这些工作的核心是承诺不仅要产生关于建立在线社区的科学可信的知识，以支持学习数学，科学和技术技能，而且要提供参与和促进变革的社区服务。

The idea "virtual communities" has captured popular, as well as scholarly, attention. This interest takes place in an America that is increasingly concerned about the loss of face-to-face community. Advocates of online communities hope that by leveraging technology, we can recreate a "we" that has steadily eroded into many isolated "I's." Educators are exploring the value of employing a "community" model for supporting learning. The idea is that through participating in a community, novice learners can learn through collaboration with others and work with more experienced "old-timers." Much like in an apprenticeship, learners observe old-timers, and then gradually begin to adopt the practices of the community. In this model, learning is not abstracted from useful activity, but a part of it. By making learning immediate, practical, and real, educators hope to overcome the historical problems of engaging students and teachers in meaningful learning, and the contemporary problems of students who are disaffected by school. The community-based approach to learning has enormous theoretical and practical potential, but it is imperative that these environments be studied empirically. What is the educational value of a community approach to learning? Can learning through participation in a community help students overcome the historical barriers to entering math, science, and technology, and promote the development math, science, and technology skills? Does it have a special role in fostering deep learning? Are their gender differences and how can we develop online communities that do not exacerbate the digital divide? While this grant will learn from other successful projects (e.g., Tapped In, Math Forum, etc.), this work will primarily focus on the research and design of three different learning environments designed to support learning about math, science, and technology. Each one of these projects is substantial and offers a unique contribution to our understanding of learning through community participation. However, a thorough cross-project analysis will leverage the unique aspects of each situation while at the same time allowing us to make scientifically grounded claims across cases. We will systematically research both the effectiveness of this community approach in terms of learning as well as the processes through which such communities form. For each setting we will emphasize different types of evidence. First, the Inquiry Learning Forum project entails a Web-based professional development network for improving pedagogical practices of preservice and inservice math and science teachers. We will use discourse analysis to examine the quality of their online discussions, interviews and questionnaires to assess their conceptions of pedagogy, and visits to their classrooms to observe actual practice. In the second online community targeted toward children learning math and science, we will conduct pre- and post-tests on their understanding of math and science, interviews to test the depth of their understanding of these content areas, and we will use content rubrics to examine the richness of the artifacts they produce as part of community participation. Third, in the technology course for preservice teachers, we will analyze class assignments, use rubrics to examine portfolios of teaching with technology, and observe their classroom practice. Central to all this work is a commitment to not only producing scientifically credible knowledge about building online communities to support learning math, science, and technology skills, but also to providing a community service that takes part in and facilitates change.