Michelle Wilkerson is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her talk was titled "Putting Student Ideas to Work: Tools to Support Scientific Expression and Progress in K-12 Classrooms." 

Abstract

In scientific practice, simulations and data visualizations serve as epistemic and communicative tools that guide inquiry. I study how such tools might serve a similar function in the science classroom. For example, the SiMSAM project explores how middle school students engage in model-based inquiry using an animation and simulation toolkit designed to highlight students' ideas. Similarly, the DataSketch project examines how enabling learners to build their own data-driven animations might serve to support exploration and modeling of the quantitative relationships that underlie systems. In this talk, I will provide an overview of my research agenda—focused on connecting theories concerned with learning by design, idea diversity, and community knowledge building—and a broad description of emerging results. I will then illustrate these ideas through a more detailed analysis of a two-week classroom enactment of SiMSAM, where fifth grade students constructed and revised models of evaporation and condensation. I will focus on two groups who developed models drawing from different experiences: everyday activities like cooking, and school lessons about the water cycle. These groups' simulations foregrounded complementary elements and mechanisms, which the class then integrated to create a consensus model with more explanatory power. This analysis reveals specific ways simulation served to guide the structuring, elaboration, coordination, and eventual synthesis of diverse ideas throughout the modeling process.