Emotional configurations in STEM classrooms

Braiding feelings, sensemaking, and practices in extended investigations

Bibliographic Data

ID21392775
AuthorsAshlyn Pierson (0000-0003-2893-5126, Department of Teaching and Learning The Ohio State University Columbus Ohio USA, corresponding author), Corey Brady (0000-0002-4086-9638, Department of Teaching and Learning Vanderbilt University Nashville Tennessee USA), Sarah J Lee (Department of Teaching and Learning Vanderbilt University Nashville Tennessee USA)
Year2023
Volume107
Issue5
Pages1126-1162
Publication date2023-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sce.21799
OpenAlexW4378233377
LanguageEN
Citations received25
References cited59

Attending to emotion in science classrooms can expand the range of resources valued for science learning, and it can offer insights into students' investigations. However, research that characterizes emotion as a part of disciplinary science learning is relatively nascent. In response, we explore the dynamic relationships between feelings, sensemaking, and practices in a sixth‐grade STEM classroom, guided by (a) Kimmerer's (2013) account of braiding Eurocentric disciplinary science with other resources, including feelings, and (b) Vea's (2020) framework of emotional configurations. We analyze data from multiple iterations of a 9‐week curriculum about guppies' survival needs and the dynamics of ecosystems, illustrating how students' feelings and their sensemaking through practices involving observation were intertwined in generative and mutually‐reinforcing ways. First, we show how the teacher and researcher made space for students to express feelings, in part in response to a student who used feelings to challenge “business as usual” classroom discourse on a day when guppies were discovered to have died. Then, we show how, in subsequent implementations, feelings, sensemaking, and practices were braided together to shape classroom investigations. We argue that attending to feelings in this way, as valued resources to be integrated with sensemaking and practices, is an important step toward equitable science teaching and learning and toward understanding learning in student‐driven contexts

Curriculum · Discipline · Feeling · Knowledge management · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Science education · Sensemaking · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Early Childhood Education and Development · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Psychology · Science Education and Pedagogy · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access