Neurodiverse Telematic Embodied Learning

Research/Practice Partnership with Neurodiverse Education Research Center (2020-2025)

collaboration with: Sha Xin Wei, Kenneth Mims, Mirka Koro, Anani Vasquez, Tim Wells

In 2020 I assembled a group of learning science PhDs to work begin research and experimentation in "at-home" learning environments. We worked with the Science Prep Academy, a Phoenix middle and high school geared towards STEM for autistic youth and their siblings.

I designed and ran a 4-week online module with Science Prep students on Zoom where we made music together with computer instruments designed in MaxMSP. I also observed my colleagues in learning science's workshops with the middle and high-schoolers which asked them to observe and design their learning environment in their home spaces.

There were two outcomes from this: an NSF award for almost one million dollars US and a paper on neurodiverse responsive pedagogy through Erin Manning's concepts of technicity.

NSF Research Practice Partnership

This collaboration grew into a larger group of researchers and practitioners, who together proposed and received a NSF research-practice partnership award to work with teacher fellows at school across the US Southwest over three years with gestural music technologies to better understand the intersection of musical expression, computational thinking, and autistic embodiment. Although as a graduate student I was not able to be formally named on this award, the PI has described my contributions as project as "foundational". I worked on this project until I graduated in 2022.

Bibliography

Vasquez, A. M., Wells, T. C., Basu, M., & Johnson, G. L. (2022). From Technique to Technicity: Non-Methodological Explorations of Chairs, Neurodiversity, and Schooling. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.5147