Making sense of sensemaking: using the sensemaking epistemic game to investigate student discourse during a collaborative gas law activity

Beyond students’ ability to manipulate variables and solve problems, chemistry instructors are also interested in students developing a deeper conceptual understanding of chemistry, that is, engaging in the process of sensemaking. The concept of sensemaking transcends problem-solving and focuses on students recognizing a gap in knowledge and working to construct an explanation that resolves this gap, leading them to “make sense” of a concept. Here, we focus on adapting and applying sensemaking as a framework to analyze three groups of students working through a collaborative gas law activity. The activity was designed around the learning cycle to aid students in constructing the ideal gas law using an interactive simulation. For this analysis, we characterized student discourse using the structural components of the sensemaking epistemic game using a deductive coding scheme. Next, we further analyzed students’ epistemic form by assessing features of the activity and student discourse related to sensemaking: whether the question was framed in a real-world context, the extent of student engagement in robust explanation building, and analysis of written scientific explanations. Our work provides further insight regarding the application and use of the sensemaking framework for analyzing students’ problem solving by providing a framework for inferring the depth with which students engage in the process of sensemaking.

Research on Influence of College Classroom Discourse on Students' Class Involvement

Classroom discourse can affect students’ classroom involvement and enthusiasm. Classroom discourse, one of the basic contents of classroom teaching in colleges and universities, is divided into student discourse system, teacher discourse system, and student-teacher discourse system. Strengthening all three can bring something unexpected to classroom teaching. Based on this, this article focuses on three things: the role of classroom discourse in classroom teaching, the impact of classroom discourse on student classroom involvement, and how to have no impact on the improvement of classroom teaching quality.

Fact Strategy Instruction + Meaningful Discourse = Student Understanding

This article provides actionable steps and tools for teachers to use to promote student discourse while teaching multiplication fact strategies.

Using Video to Highlight Curriculum-Embedded Opportunities for Student Discourse

History classrooms remain stubbornly resistant to instructional change. We explored whether using classroom video to help teachers identify curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse improved their understanding and facilitation of document-based historical discussions. We observed a relationship between teachers’ capacity to notice curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse in classroom videos and their growth in enacting document-based history discussions. For three of four teachers, the intervention appeared to improve both their analysis of document-based discussion facilitation and their enactment of the practice. Teachers’ incoming proficiency and familiarity with document-based history instruction appeared to inform their experience throughout the intervention. We discuss implications for practice and future research on professional development for history teachers.

How can teachers effectively use student dialogue to drive engagement with ancient drama? An analysis of a Year 12 Classical Civilisation class studying Aristophanes’ Frogs

Within this article I aim to explore how greater student dialogue in the classroom can drive engagement with ancient drama. As part of the Classical Civilisation A Level specification, students need to demonstrate knowledge and awareness in the examination of how Aristophanes’ Frogs might have been performed on stage and its possible reception by a classical audience. This research investigates how teachers can effectively encourage student discourse in the classroom for students to engage with and analyse Frogs as a piece of comic drama, rather than simply as an A Level set text.

The Student Discourse Observation Tool: Supporting Teachers in Noticing Justifying and Generalizing

In classrooms, students engage in argumentation through justifying and generalizing. However, these activities can be difficult for teachers to conceptualize and therefore promote in their classrooms. In this article, we present the Student Discourse Observation Tool (SDOT) developed to support teachers in noticing and promoting student justifying and generalizing. The SDOT serves the purpose of (a) focusing teacher noticing on student argumentation during classroom observations, and (b) promoting focused discussion of student discourse in teacher professional learning communities. We provide survey data illustrating that elementary-level teachers who participated in professional development leveraging the SDOT had richer conceptions of justifying and generalizing and greater ability to characterize students' justifying and generalizing when compared with a set of control teachers. We argue that the SDOT provides both an important focusing lens for teachers and a means to concretize the abstract mathematical activities of justifying and generalizing.