CAREER: Advancing Technological Fluency of Underrepresented Youth and their Teachers through Project-Based Learning Opportunities

这项为期五年的研究计划旨在增进我们对如何有效地让不同的青年群体学习核心IT概念的理解，以激励他们在未来的教育中继续学习。基础研究和面向设计的研究将分三个相互关联的阶段进行。第一阶段将专注于扩大我们对学生接触新技术的机会、兴趣和经验的了解，重点是确定公平的障碍和揭示学习资源。调查和访谈工作将对加州硅谷地区社会经济阶层的一大群不同的学生进行，以调查他们获得各种学习机会的机会，以及他们对各种学习机会的兴趣。这项研究将记录创造性的学习机会是如何在不同的社区中分配的，以及它们对学生兴趣的影响。它还将有助于定义学生流利性的不同特征，以及这些特征如何与由自我、家庭、同龄人群体、学校和社区的交织环境构成的学习生态相关联。第二阶段的工作将集中于与教师共同开发课程。这些课程的核心指导原则将是以学生为设计师的主要重点，学习目标将是帮助学生理解设计是一个每个人都可以参与的人类过程。课程材料将在学生设计、规划和实施解决青年兴趣问题的信息系统的项目背景下建立流畅性。这种方法将使学生成为知识和流程的真正贡献者，同时建立对NRC流利性报告中概述的核心概念和能力的理解-例如编程、信息设计和人机交互。在第三阶段，将系统地研究这些课程的教与学过程，特别是协作设计工作。本研究的一个主要目的是为协作学习理论做出贡献。将确定富有成效的合作设计做法，并阐明这种合作往往不那么有成效，而可以使其更有成效的方式。合作技术设计工作的学习特性将被确定为认知结果之外的实证研究，包括动机、关系和元交流结果。除了与当地教师密集地共同开发课程外，该项目的教育部分将包括创建一个视频案例研究库，突出多产和少产的小组协作互动的范例。这些将被用来帮助教师(职前和在职)和新手研究人员找到让学生参与学习的方法，以支持流利的学习，并增加兴趣和广泛使用和理解技术的能力。视频案例的使用将支持关于教学过程的对话，因为它们提供了具体的参考，可以从多个角度重新审视和反思。这些视频案例将用于改进现有课程和针对更广泛的信息技术教师和研究人员社区的传播活动。

This five-year research program is designed to advance our understanding of how to effectively engage diverse groups of youth in learning core IT concepts in ways that motivate them to continue learning in their future education. Basic research and design-oriented research will be conducted in three inter-related phases. The first phase will focus on expanding what we know about students' access, interest, and experiences with new technologies-with an emphasis on identifying barriers to equity and revealing learning resources. Survey and interview work will be carried out with a large and diverse group of students across socio-economic strata in California's Silicon Valley region to investigate their access to, and interest in, various kinds of learning opportunities. The research will document how creative learning opportunities are distributed across different communities and their effects on student interests. It will also contribute to defining different profiles of student fluency and how these are associated with learning ecologies constituted by the interweaving contexts of self, family, peer group, school, and community. The second phase of the work will focus on co-developing courses with teachers. A core guiding principle of these courses will be a primary focus on the student as designer and a learning goal will be to help students understand design as a human process in which everyone can be involved. The course material will build fluency in the context of projects in which students design, program, and implement information systems that address issues of youth interest. This approach will allow students to be authentic contributors of knowledge and processes while simultaneously building understanding of the core concepts and capabilities outlined in the NRC Fluency report-such as programming, information design, and human-computer interaction. In the third phase, the teaching and learning processes in these courses will be studied systematically, with a particular focus on collaborative design work. A key goal of this research is to contribute to theories of collaborative learning. Productive collaborative design practices will be identified and the ways that such collaborations are often less than productive and can be made more productive will be articulated. Learning properties of collaborative technology design work beyond cognitive outcomes will be identified for empirical study, including motivational, relational, and meta-communicative outcomes. Beyond the intensive co-development of courses with local teachers, the educational component of this project will include the creation of a library of video case studies that highlight exemplars of more and less productive small group collaborative interaction. These will be used to help teachers (both pre-service and in-service) and novice researchers see ways of engaging students in learning that support fluency and increase interest and the ability to use and understand technology broadly. The use of video cases will support conversations about teaching and learning processes as they provide concrete references that can be revisited and reflected on from multiple perspectives. The video cases will be used to improve existing courses and in dissemination activities directed at the broader community of information technology teachers and researchers.