Curiosity to Question
How do we develop scientists who have the knowledge, skills and courage to think within, across and beyond disciplines?
How can we teach students to work on questions that not only extend disciplinary knowledge, but that productively challenge and re-organize it?
How can we help students challenge restrictive assumptions about what science is and who gets to be a scientist?
These are the kinds of questions that have motivated our work on Curiosity to Question (CtQ), an emerging model for disciplinarily diverse Course-based Research Experiences (CRE). By recruiting for sociocultural diversity, mixing graduate and undergraduate students and emphasizing disciplinary mixing, mentorship and peer feedback, the semester-long research experience enhances research and writing skills and encourages novel interdisciplinary science discourses and identities. Through our work on CtQ, we are cultivating new cohorts of scientists and researchers with high levels of intellectual agency who can think and work across disciplines. Our formal research on CtQ is show how and why course-based research experiences work for students, and informing the development of inclusive, inquiry-based STEM learning models that can work in a variety of disciplinary and institutional contexts.
Open Educational Resources
Clarke, J., Crouch, N., Eliason, C., Legendre, L., Rodríguez-Saltos, C., & Papendieck, A. (2021). Curiosity to Question Instructional Modules for GEO 391/371T Research Design, Data Analysis and Visualization. Texas Data Repository, V2. https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/30VNW9
R Modules developed by Clarke Lab members for the course
Research
Papendieck, A., Clarke, J.A. (2024). Curiosity to Question: Tracing productive engagement in an interdisciplinary course-based research experience. Journal of the Learning Sciences 33, 323–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2024.2347597
Papendieck, A., Ellins, K., & Clarke, J. (2020). Developing a Disciplinarily Diverse Course-based Research Experience: Outcomes and Design Considerations. In Gresalfi, M. and Horn, I. S. (Eds.), The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 3 (pp. 1777-1778). Nashville, Tennessee: International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/6438
Papendieck, A., Cheah, Y. H., Eliason, C., & Clarke, J. (2018). Mapping Research and Writing Mentorship Assemblages in a Mixed Cohort Course-based Research Experience. In Kay, J. and Luckin, R. (Eds.) Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age: Making the Learning Sciences Count, 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2018, Volume 3. London, UK: International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/623
Clarke, J., Eliason, C., & Papendieck, A. (2017). Curiosity to Question: Mixed cohorts and tiered mentorship to scale course-based research and writing experiences. Symposium on Changing Education: Redesigning the Undergraduate Experience, Austin, TX.