By Jennifer Wyld

Taking a break from beating my Maker drum this month, I thought I would write about the actual paid work I do while working on my degree.  I have a research assistant position on a longitudinal study happening here in the Northwest, in which I was lucky enough to get hired my first year of this PhD process and will see me through to my graduation.  Lucky indeed, in this world of expensive educations! The project I am part of is called Synergies, and the PI’s I work with from OSU are John Falk and Lynn Dierking- the other two-thirds of the FCL staff in our department.  We also have some colleagues from other universities, such as William Penuel,  in Boulder, Colorado.  The goal of this project is to follow the interest development of a cohort of early adolescents from 5^th through 8^th grade.  While we are particularly interested in STEM, we are noting other interest development as well.  To gather data, we are using both quantitative and qualitative techniques.  Each academic year, we are surveying every member of the grade cohort (who we can get a consent form from!) with a questionnaire covering topics such as interest in STEM fields, career aspirations, family practices, and out-of-school activities.  We are supplementi

The first two years of the study focused on establishing a base-line of understanding about what is currently happening in the community and with this group of youth.   We are using this data to start creating an asset map for the area as well as an “agent-based modeling system” that we intend to use as a predictive tool (if we tweak the community ‘x’ way, ‘y’ happens).  Our next step has been to build a collaborative relationship with both in-school and out-of-school organizations that we will leverage to create interventions to see if we can positively impact interest development around STEM.

Two graduate projects that are hoping to use these interventions are around gardening and Maker experiences.  You can probably guess who is working on the second one! However, the one of the overall goals of funders of the implementation part of  the study is to help create sustainable programs, so Deb Bailey (the other grad research assistant) and I will be working with groups already established in the greater area of our study, but who are not currently active in this particular community.  We are both still just in the planning stages- but we will keep you posted!

I have been watching a lot of superhero movies.  Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, even the Hulk provide me a lot of fuel for thought.  The biographies of many of these fictional characters are replete with narratives of lessons learned and relearned often not through the use of their super powers or acumen, but most often because of their human frailties and feelings.  It is the feelings that allow these superheroes to use their power for good and fight evil.

I often think that emotions play a large role in how we learn and what we learn.  I see this often in one of the classes I teach.  My students take a look at the subject matter and fear drives them to believe they cannot learn it and that they are incapable of being successful.  A different side of the same coin, self-confidence in a subject matter will make anyone feel like a Sheldon Cooper to that content.  (In case you don’t watch Big Bang Theory, that means uber smart.)  Emotions are often overlooked component to learning and learning environments.

New research on emotion and learning can give us some of the biochemical reasons how emotion impacts reason.  Research by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang from USC’d Rossier School of Education shows how emotion can be used by teachers to stimulate creativity.  She has even created curriculum for teachers to access these findings (http://www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience/index.html).  She explains that the “neuromechanisms responsible for feeling and managing the body’s physical survival and consciousness have been co-opted to also manage social survival” (mindshift blog, blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/how-emotional-connections-can-trigger-creativity-and-learning/).  In other words, the very feelings that help us survive in the physical world also help us navigate social setting such as learning environments.

So this week, I would like to challenge you to consider your feelings as you are learning something.  Do you experience excitement, concern, anxiety, or joy?  How do these feelings impact how you learn?  Can you interrupt your negative feelings, address them, and then move forward all at the same time?  If not, then how would you recommend that we as practitioners can motivate our students when they encounter strange experiences or unknown content area?  What personal experiences can you share about moving through feelings, whether positive or negative, to finally get at a learning experience?  Let us discuss…