Learning Sciences Lunch and Learn with Dr. Richard Duschl: “Data Texts in STEM Education – New Views for What Counts in the 21st Century”
Connect with colleagues during this in-person presentation at the GSE (Room 124). Pizza will be provided! Can’t attend in person? Join us remotely via Zoom!
In this presentation, Dr. Duschl examines knowledge-building dynamics that are central to scientific communities and involve dialog, debate, inquiry, and contested reasoning. Refining and developing knowledge is an often missing dynamic in pre-college educational programs. Practical reasoning and human decision-making are essential epistemic and social dynamics in knowledge-building struggles and quests for the truth. Implications are presented for how a “Context of Development” approach can address “knowledge about science” learning goals and provide a framework for embedding struggles into the design of investigations and inquiries. The goal is to provide learners/citizens with opportunities to acquire and make sense of evidence and then deploy that evidence for evaluating and explaining natural and social systems.
Suggested Reading(s):
- Duschl, R., Avraamidou, L., & Azevedo, N. H. (2021). Data-Texts in the Sciences: The Evidence-Explanation Continuum. Science & Education, 30(5), 1159–1181.
- Duschl, R. A., & Tahirsylaj, A. (2021). Evolving Conceptions of Educational Research and Inquiry. In R. G. Duncan & C. A. Chinn (Eds.), International Handbook of Inquiry and Learning (1st ed., pp. 17–38). Routledge.
Richard A. Duschl is the Executive Director of Caruth Institute for Engineering Education and Texas Instruments Distinguished Professor in the Lyle School of Engineering, Southern Methodist University.
His leadership roles include serving as Editor, Science Education (1990-2001); President of US NARST (2009-2011); and Director, Division for Research on Learning, NSF (2012-2015). He chaired the NRC research synthesis committee report Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (2007) and held chaired professorships as Waterbury Chair Professor of Secondary Education, Penn State University (2008-2018); Chair of Science Education, King’s College London – University of London (2000-2005).
Richard was the recipient of the 2021 NARST Fellow Award, the 2014 NARST Distinguished Career in Research Award and twice received the JRST Award for best publication in 1989 and 2003. In 2008, he was named an AERA Fellow. In 2007, he was honored as ‘Distinguished Alumnus of the Year – College of Education’ by the University of Maryland Alumni Association, where he completed his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees.
His current research focuses on:
- Science/STEM education in both Formal and Informal contexts; SMU-Toyota-Dallas ISD-West Dallas STEM School Project.
- Designing curriculum, instruction, and assessments that promote conceptual, epistemic, and social learning goals.
- Structuring and designing learning environments that facilitate knowledge-building discourses and reasoning processes and practices.