Second chance at first life: Fostering the mathematical and computational agency of at-risk youth.

摘要

In the USA, women and many ethnic minority groups are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) professions. Amidst the failure of federal responses, e.g., NCLB, to reach students by operating at the school level, this dissertation explores the viability of a campaign to reach each individual student and mobilize and empower them as agents in their own STEM learning.;At an alternative high school serving predominantly at-risk underrepresented students evicted from mainstream education, I implemented Fractal Village, a critical/computational/constructionist-pedagogy (C 3) learning environment of my design. Fractal Village, instantiated in the virtual-world "Second Life," constituted an empirical environment to research my emergent model of mathematical/computational agency (m/c) as well as an intervention aiming to foster such agency. Key research objectives were to: (1) study relations amongst cognitive, affective, material, technological, and social factors that would contribute to individual development of m/c agency; (2) delineate design principles for fostering m/c agency; (3) implement a sustainable program in collaboration with school personnel.;The student cohort engaged collaboratively in virtual-world imaginative construction activities each manifesting generative themes (Freire, 1968), to which the designers-as-teachers tailored mathematical and computer-science concepts, such that students appropriated the STEM content apropos of tackling their own emergent construction problems. Through the lens of three case studies, I argue that to build agency, students must develop both skills and dispositions---a spiraling inter-constructive growth. Student S., a self-professed gang member who could not imagine his post high school future at the beginning of the study, expressed interest in becoming an architect after learning basic programming concepts while constructing a virtual skyscraper. Student B., categorized as Special Education with an Individual Education Plan limiting his intellectual activity to 20-minute durations, realized for the first time ever that he could become an engineer after engaging in 110-minute demanding sessions. Student D, however, discontinued participation in the project, underscoring the imperative to sensitively evaluate in-coming students' skills and dispositions. I conclude that we can, and must, engage at-risk youth by helping them to build STEM identities, engaging their a priori m/c agency, and customizing skills and dispositions-related classroom discursive supports.