Goals in Motion: How Emergent Embodied Goals Support Elementary Students’ Mechanistic Reasoning in Collaborative Modeling Activities

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This paper explores how students navigate individual and collective goals in collective embodied modeling activities as part of an elementary science curriculum on states of matter. We propose the Convergent and Divergent Embodied Activity (CDEA) framework to recognize the emergence, adoption, and shifting of goals via students’ collective embodied interactions. Drawing on established frameworks for learning in embodied activity and mechanistic reasoning, we use interaction analysis to illuminate the mediating processes that learners engage in as they develop and pursue different modeling goals through actions, and how these activities promote and reveal students’ mechanistic reasoning. We highlight the unique features of embodiment when examining goal formation and pursuit. We conclude with a set of design considerations that attend to how mediated goal convergence and divergence within collective embodied activities contribute to science learning.