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Pathways to Consequential Learning and "Science That Matters"

Sat, April 18, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Sheraton, Floor: Ballroom Level, Sheraton V

Abstract

Purpose
Our work focuses on documenting how youth from non-dominant backgrounds, and in the middle years (ages 11-14), navigate the complex terrain of people, programs, and places as they seek to create meaningful experiences for themselves and others. We are interested in how and why such youth author pathways in science that challenge normative views of what such pathways might look like and what it means to become an expert.

Questions
1. What pathways do middle school youth from non-dominant backgrounds author in/through science, and how do these pathways take shape over time?
2. What resources do youth gain access to, create, move across settings, and re-purpose towards their own pathway goals and trajectories?
3. What interactional processes afford and constrain such authoring?

Framework
“Science that matters” is a phrase used by the youth in this study to contrast science you learn “because you need to pass” with science that “makes a difference” in one’s life and/or community. We conceptualize learning “science that matters” as situated within local practice, a result of the complex interactions between “agent, activity and the world” (Lave & Wenger, 1999, p.33), and involving vertical (disciplinary) and horizontal (cross-community) movement (Engeström, 2001). Such movement shapes the pathways that youth author, including the outcomes of learning (e.g., forms of participation, identity). It also attends to the layered social context(s) of learning/doing, with attention on power dynamics (e.g., how actors are positioned, the funds of knowledge brought to the process, and whether/how those funds are legitimized) (Nasir, 2011).

Method
Our investigation is based upon multi-year, multi-media cases co-authored by four middle school girls from non-dominant communities who took up pathways that challenged normative views of science engagement/expertise. We took a youth-collaborative design based approach to building these cases to privilege the girls’ insider perspectives. Data sources include: Youth-authored multi-media cases, science artifacts produced by youth across settings, individual and group interviews, and participant/observations across settings. We employed a complex adaptive systems lens to document pathways youth take within/across settings over time, the impact these pathways have on their learning, and their influence on the nodes of connections.

Findings
First, we describe four pathways, including the importance of different starting points, places of learning/engagement, and goals to where these pathways lead. We also describe common authoring practices/strategies that allowed youth to take up pathways that challenged normative views of science and expertise in science despite differences in the pathways, including: 1) re-purposing science ideas/practices to align with context and purpose; 2) converting non-traditional funds of knowledge into desired science capital; 3) brokering for peers/adults through hybridized ideas, discourses and practices; and 4) shifting locus of responsibility for learning/doing/taking action from inside the individual to within the community. Second, we describe how consequential transitions in pathways often involved careful re-purposing of artifacts/resources/tools towards new forms of participation and recognition.

Significance
Understanding how pathways take shape across the middle grade years is important because access and opportunity at this age in under-resourced communities significantly shape life-long educational and economic possibilities.

Authors