A pathway towards STEM integration: Embodiment, mathematization, and mechanistic reasoning

Abstract

A challenge facing STEM education is integration, advancing student conceptual development and disciplinary practices within and across STEM domains. The study described here was supported through a focus on mechanistic reasoning about systems of levers. The literature suggests that children (and adults) have difficulties recognizing an output link's rotation and causally ascribing that rotation to the constraint of the fixed pivot. To foster mechanistic reasoning, fifteen third-grade students in an urban elementary school were engaged in the design of kinetic toys composed of systems of levers within an after-school STEM program. To make the operations of these systems salient, students participated in an embodied activity highlighting properties of these mechanisms. Students re-described and inscribed these embodied experiences in order to support reasoning about mathematical (the geometry of circles) and physical systems (systems of levers). The coding of student talk and gesture during the first two days of this engineering program as well as pre- and post-assessments showed students made gains on measures of mechanistic reasoning, mathematical reasoning, and engineering practices.