Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: November 26th, 2024 by Stephanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Diana Royea from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: November 26th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

Today, Diana Royea did a mock presentation for her doctoral defence. She explained that her research was inspired by noticing that many teachers (PSTs) were finding their programs and coursework theory heavy with few opportunities to plan math lessons. She wanted to support teachers in connecting theory and practice in mathematics.

Diana used Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenology as a methodology to explore the experiences of PSTs. She enhanced her understanding of students’ experiences by combining Activity Theory and Professional Theorizing to complement the phenomenological study. These were her research questions:

• What are PST’s lived experiences of participating in learning study as part of their learning to teach math coursework?
  • Themes from Q1: PST understanding of learning study; PST experience Studenting; PST collaboration
• How do PST elementary math teachers understand and use variation theory to inform their pedagogical decisions while collaboratively planning learning situations?
  • Themes from Q2: understanding theory in relation to practice, developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

Through her presentation, Diana discussed how she used Learning Study as a collaborative action research model. Learning Study uses a theory of learning to inform pedagogical decision making and student learning, and Diana decided on Variation Theory – a learning theory that she clarified in the questioning period as a theory of learning stating that students’ conceptual understanding gains sophistication through small variations. She used the example of mathematics where if students are developing a deeper understanding of the equal sign, the format of the equations they are engaging with would be varied.

Thirty-eight student teachers participated in the Learning study which involved labs; however, only 7 individual students and 2 groups of 5-6 students participated in the research as participants. Diana showcased how her project and the learning study enabled students to have a more meaningful connection with theory—such a meaningful finding for supporting PSTs in their journey to developing praxis! Additionally, Diana’s study is only the 3^rd study in Canada to focus on Learning Study and teacher education! Thanks Diana!

Here are some slides from Diana’s presentation:

Bio

Diana Royea is a doctoral student in EDCP and is preparing to defend her dissertation on December 3, 2024. Her committee includes Dr. Cynthia Nicol (supervisor), and committee members Dr. Ann Anderson, Dr. Tony Clarke and the late Dr. Carl Leggo.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: November 12th, 2024 by Stephanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Ariane Faria dos Santos from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: November 12, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on November 12th, 2024, Ariane Faria dos Santos shared about her experience writing comprehensive exams, and specifically, her thought process on finding, analysing, and managing literature. In her presentation, she covered the following platforms:

• Covidence platform and its many functions particularly for systematic review.
• Mendeley – for tracking sources and their characteristics
• NVivo – for coding papers for themes in the literature

She also shared her thoughts on how to approach literature reviews and reading literature. For example:

• How to decide on a kind of literature review: scope vs systematic. Systematic uses a methodological approach that is replicable by others and formulaic and is intended to capture the state of established fields; scoping literature reviews are intended for emergent topics and takes an explorative approach that covers broader connections.
• How to choose databases: ERIC, Education Source, Academic Search Complete, and Scopus are databases that would capture educational literature.
• How to narrow down research focus for the paper and main question guiding the literature review : think deeply about what exactly it is you want to synthesize and how it supports the topic that you are reviewing the literature for.
• How to choose search terms for the library database: this is trial and error, but you can refine your search terms as you go and repeat the searches. Look to see what terms the literature you are interested in is using have in their abstracts, titles, and search terms.
• How to do a Boolean search in the UBC library: see your friendly librarian!

Here are some slides from Ariane’s presentation:

We were happy to have Ariane join us and give some insight into how to approach various types of literature reviews and choose the platforms that will work for us!

Bio

Ariane Faria dos Santos is a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Her research interests include curriculum implementation and teaching practices to improve learning opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds. She is particularly interested in understanding how to better connect both micro (classroom/school) and macro (policymaker) stakeholders to design and implement more equitable curriculum policies.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: October 29th, 2024 by Stephanie La France
Presenter/Guest Speaker: Tony Domina from Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of British Columbia
Date: October 29th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on October 29^th, 2024, Tony Domina shared about his recently completed Capstone project on Project Based Learning (PBL) in/through STEM education. Tony interviewed various STEM subject teachers to find out about their experiences with and perspectives on PBL in hopes to gain insight into how we might support future practice and refine ideas for projects at his school. He engaged with thematic analysis coming to three major themes. The first theme in his research indicated that teachers felt STEM PBL developed key skills like critical thinking and collaboration through group work, and that the open-ended nature of the projects fostered creativity. The second theme showed that, for these projects to be considered successful, there must be scaffolding of engagement for students, a balance between theory and practice, and that projects align with global issues of relevance. Finally, in his analysis, the third theme that emerged was around challenges and sustaining practice of PBL. He noted that there were three factors: lack of time and resources, simplifying complex problems, and building and sustaining partnerships with community.

In considering the future of PBL in STEM education, Tony suggests interdepartmental collaboration (and even beyond) through various online platforms like Google Classroom (as an example). He considers various avenues for how to get communities of practice going and sustained within his school and across his district.  He notes that a stronger community of practice would lead to better alignment between assessment and instruction through the projects (rather than as a separate enrichment activity). This would enable students to progress through the project while teachers could more efficiently support their trajectory through curriculum. He emphasized that this collaboration would help students learn concepts in the curriculum and get excited about learning by sharing their great ideas with the community.  In fact, John Larmer talks about PBL to motivate students because students start connecting projects with real life challenges and helps them feel like they are making a difference; the project becomes more authentic, and so the activity associated with the project becomes more authentic.

Here are some slides from Tony’s presentation:

We are excited to see what future projects Tony takes up as it relates to his research interests like connecting with a broader community, engaging with longitudinal studies on STEM-based projects fitting the PBL frameworks, and studies that include student feedback. Tony is also excited by the potential for mixed methods studies and the use of quantitative data to complement qualitative. He feels that future studies are critical to support teachers sense of self-efficacy in implementing PBL in meaningful and authentic ways that promote student-centered decision making. “A lot of teachers do amazing things, it’s just that we so often do it individually, so I want to encourage more collaboration to share ideas.” We couldn’t agree more, Tony!