scholarly journals What Will Keep the Fish Alive? Exploring Intersections of Designing, Making, and Inquiry Among Middle School Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Wallace ◽  
Tarrance Banks ◽  
Mishael Sedas ◽  
Krista Glazewski ◽  
Thomas A. Brush ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Middle School Teachers ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
University Professors ◽  
The World ◽  
Asking Questions

We can see why educators are drawn to making; maker environments hold tremendous potential for engaging learners in both (a) building and representing their knowledge and (b) fostering opportunities for seeing the world in new ways. This potential reflects what our team of middle school teachers, university professors, and graduate students observed during a year-long project in which students built aquaponic systems while simultaneously asking questions about food, food systems, and sustainability. Their systems took a variety of forms, supporting everything from bluegill to aquatic frogs and growing a variety of flowers and vegetables. However, together we all also experienced struggle and moments of doubt. How much guidance is enough? Too much? How do we build knowledge and not just “do projects”? How do we connect the doing and the building with our community? With the world? And, perhaps most practically, how do we fix what we just messed up?

scholarly journals What Graduate Students from Diverse Disciplines Learn about Teaching from Working with Middle School Teachers and Students

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Christopher Marc Roemmele ◽  
Jon Harbor ◽  
Daniel Nelson Moore
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Middle School Teachers ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Positive Culture ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
The Public ◽  
Teaching Knowledge ◽  
Teachers And Students

We investigated how a program (GK-12) that engages diverse graduate students with middle school teachers and children impacts the participants’ teaching knowledge over a period of one day a week over ten-weeks. The experience includes graduate students developing and delivering a standards-based, hands-on and inquiry-infused lesson centered around their research interests. Qualitative analysis of reflective journals of the participants show that this intensive engagement with teachers and students increased their understanding and experience with pedagogical techniques and strategies to promote and improve student learning and understanding, developing and enhancing personality traits that encourage a positive culture for learning, and acquiring strategies and the fortitude needed to meet and deal with multiple priorities in a complex teaching environment. These results suggest that GK-12 type programs provide graduate students with skills and experiences that can be valuable when seeking employment in industry, the public or nonprofit sector, or as faculty at post-secondary institutions. Continued research of the program is necessary to determine how past participants have utilized these skills as a competitive advantage in their careers.

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