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Enabling Mathematics Teachers’ Research to Expand Latinx Learners’ Authentic Experiences in Computer Programming (ESTRELLA)

ESTRELLA draws from an interdisciplinary research team with areas of expertise in electrical and computer engineering, bilingual education, and mathematics education. The team collaborates with middle and high school teachers to co-design lessons that advance student understanding of mathematics through computer programming of visual representations. Teachers conduct action research projects to study topics of interest to them as they implement this integrated curriculum. For example, the middle school teacher focused on fractions and the relationship between distance, rate, and time. The high school teacher focused on geometry and exponential growth and decay. Over the past two years, ESTRELLA has served 101 middle and high school students from primarily Latinx backgrounds and two teachers. Both teachers are supported to implement the integrated mathematics and computer programming curriculum by the researchers and a group of 5 undergraduate engineering students who are from diverse backgrounds. The teachers can choose to add support by including middle school student co-facilitators. The middle school student co-facilitators and the undergraduate student facilitators attend professional development focused on understanding the same mathematical tasks that their students will engage with; best teaching practices; and asset-based approaches to working with culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Pillar 1: Innovative Use of Technologies in Learning and Teaching

To broaden the participation of Latinx students in STEM, we use Google Colab notebooks openly available at https://github.com/pattichis to support teachers in co-designing mathematics lessons. These lessons include fractions; distance, rate, and time; geometric transformations; and exponential growth and decay. Students use image and video representations to understand mathematics and programming concepts in their final projects. Through action research projects, teachers reflect on how to improve mathematics lessons.

Pillar 2: Partnerships for Career and Workforce Preparation.

All students participating in ESTRELLA are exposed to computer programming in their mathematics classrooms. The charter schools that we partner with have access to the local university and include coursework that prepares students for careers in STEM. Other schools that have expressed interest in participating in our project in the future also have industry partners involved in recruiting students for internships and work with students to support ongoing projects.

Pillar 3: Strategies for Equity in STEM Education

ESTRELLA’s central goal is to broaden the participation of Latinx students in STEM fields. These students are in secondary mathematics classrooms in rural and urban school contexts. The co-designed lessons that integrate mathematics and computer programming are taught in small groups using students’ language preference of Spanish or English. Furthermore, the professional development sessions prepare facilitators to center students’ home language and interests as resources to draw from while teaching and learning.
ESTRELLA-Phuong's Group-Flores-Spring 2024
Discipline(s)
Interdisciplinary
Target Gradespan(s)
Middle school (6-8)
Target Participant(s)
Hispanic/Latino participants
Project Setting(s)
Formal Education
Category
Developing and Testing Innovations (DTI)
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