You're It! Body, Action, and Object in STEM Learning

In this special double symposium, sixteen established and emerging scholars from seven US universities, who share theoretical perspectives of grounded cognition, empirical contexts of design for STEM content domains, and analytic attention to nuances of multimodal expression, all gather to explore synergy and coherence across their diverging research questions, methodologies, and conclusions in light of the conference theme "Future of Learning." Jointly we ask, What are the relations among embodiment, action, artifacts, and discourse in the development of mathematical, scientific, engineering, or computer-sciences concepts? The session offers emerging answers as well as implications for theory and practice. THERE was a child went forth every day; And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became; And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. (Walt Whitman) Introduction: "You're It!" Is More Than a Tagline "You're it!", so mundane a playground exclamation, appears to capture much more of human experience than a game of tag. To each of us—16 established and emerging scholars from seven different universities across the US—"You're it!" bears in profound and empirically substantiated ways on relations among action, embodiment, artifacts, reasoning, and discourse, as these relations pertain to developing competence in some STEM domain (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Our distinct yet teaming ideas, we sense, should be gathered and shared among us and the larger learning-sciences community, because apparently these ideas collectively hone and point toward what might be the theoretical core and pedagogical promise of the embodiment approach. In this symposium, we attempt to shed light on the nature and dynamics of enactment, integration, and signification as naturalistic learning phases that can be recruited via pedagogical design for content instruction. Each study interprets cases of mediated interactions designed and facilitated with the objective of fostering knowledge (which we conceptualize and pin down from varying epistemological perspectives as professional perception, insight, models, skills, etc). Moreover, each presentation provides rich qualitative analyses of paradigmatic moments, in which study participants' physical action—whether with, upon, or about objects that are either material, virtual, or imaginary—contributes to individual microgenesis of target subject matter. Yet more specifically, we are all interested in elaborating from a grounded-cognition perspective theoretical models pertaining to manipulation—whether actual, vicarious, or simulated—and how these operations contribute to learning. All the data discussed in this symposium were collected in instructional situations, writ large. Turning to instructional practice, we are also interested in determining and characterizing any unique pedagogical affordances of particular technology and interaction strategies vis-a-vis student cognition of focal content. Thus, in accord with the ICLS 2012 "The Future of Learning" theme, this symposium attempts to ground next- generation interaction design in established tenets of learning sciences theory. Our discussant, Mike Eisenberg, brings to this symposium his renowned expertise in cognitive science, computer science, mathematics, engineering, and integrated multimedia design for STEM content learning. In writing our individual sections, we chose to use a common format, so as to highlight our similarities and suggest our synergies. The sections present the proposed papers in their intended order of presentation. During the 120 min. session, these six individual papers (6 x 15 min.) will be followed by comments from our discussant (20 min.), and then we will engage in a general discussion with the audience (10 min.). To varying degrees, presenters will bring software, media, and artifacts from their respective research studies that will enhance post-symposium informal follow-up conversations with interested members of the audience. ICLS2012