Walking in an Environmental Scientist’s Footprints: 4E Cognition Through the Seek by iNaturalist Citizen Science Application

Abstract

Cognitive processes such as learning and thinking are theorized to be an interaction between the mind, body, and environment in four ways: embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Collectively, these four types represent the four “E”s of cognition. The Next Generation Science Standards has called for curricular reform that centers students as active participants in their learning experience, with instructors as peripheral knowledge facilitators. Science literacy disparity persists between deaf and hard of hearing learners compared with their hearing counterparts, as well as between English language learners and their peers who speak English as their primary language. Considering these factors, a student-centered, inclusive, multimodal lesson plan incorporating Universal Design for Learning principles was implemented. Students explored their natural environment (embodied and enacted cognitions), recording images of organisms during species identification on their smartphones (embedded cognition). Images were stored as an observation that could be returned to at any time in the future for reference (extended cognition). Using everyday technology, students embody the footprints of an environmental scientist, engaging with living organisms through experiential enactment extended by a citizen science application and thus gaining a perspective of their world that can only be acquired through firsthand, direct interaction that does not occur within classroom walls.

Keywords:

• Cognition
• Embodiment
• STEM education
• Technology
• Science literacy
• Student centered
• Inclusive
• Universal Design for Learning

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Virginia Flood at SUNY University at Buffalo for her thoughtful recommendations and Dr. Jess La Sala at National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology for her valuable feedback.