Teaching students to reflect about complex datasets: Design approaches for curriculum

Introduction 1.1 Overview of the study I propose a program of design research to inform the process of creating curriculum units which develop students' dispositions necessary for conducting reflective inquiry in the classroom using complex datasets. In particular, I will study the processes of designing and enacting a 6-week earth science middle-school curriculum unit, which was designed with the purpose of helping students develop a reflective mode of inquiry with complex sets of geological data. The main intent of this study is to characterize changes in students' modes of activity over the weeks of the unit's enactment. Observed changes in students' actions and dispositions will be examined in light of our (myself and collaborating teachers) design intentions in creating the unit: to enculturate students into a reflective mode of inquiry using complex datasets, in which meaning is made of these datasets through the generation of questions, observations and explana