Brokering Learning Opportunities in and out of the Classroom: A Cross-Setting Intervention

• In Event: Brokering Future Learning Opportunities: Theoretical and Practical Considerations for Linking Youth to Out-of-School Time Opportunities

Abstract

Objectives
In designing for equitable STEM learning across settings, the examination of brokering learning opportunities is important because brokers play an central role in fostering connections among people, settings, and practices (e.g. Ito et al., 2013; Penuel, Lee, & Bevan, 2014). This case study is part of a broader project that leverages a social practice focus to consider approaches for coordinating learning across settings in order to address inequities in access to science and engineering practices. This work addresses the questions: What is the role of brokering in the design of coordinated learning in and out of the classroom? What challenges arise for teachers as they broker learning for youth across settings?

Although learning occurs in pathways across time and settings, the burden is often on learners to coordinate their own learning across social settings over time (Banks et al., 2007; Bell et al., 2012; Lee, 2007). Learning brokers provide “resources or helpful services” (Ching, Santo, Hoadley & Peppler, 2015, p. 5) to others that have the potential to serve as connections across settings which (a) create access to networks (Brandt & Clinton, 2002); (b) extend learning pathways of youth in support of personal expertise development (Bricker & Bell, 2012, 2014); and (c) expand agency to imagine and co-create new possible futures (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010).

This study uses ethnographic and design-based research methods to examine how one teacher brokered learning opportunities in and out of the classroom. Fifth-grade students in a culturally and linguistically diverse elementary school used a mobile application to develop and carry out scientific investigations in order to understand the clean-up plan for a nearby Superfund site. Data analysis included developing analytic narratives and thematic coding of teacher brokering moves that facilitated the development of youths’ social capital and interest. Data includes student work and surveys from 64 students, ethnographic interviews with nine focal students, fieldnotes of participant observations across a school year, and video-recordings of 110 hours of classroom and fieldtrip activity.

Analyses highlight specific forms of brokering in relation to access to authentic resources, narratives of science, and practice-linked identification processes. First, Ms. Jones acted as a broker of learning by providing access to the authentic resources of contemporary science—people, places, texts, and roles. Ms. Jones connected students to a specific, ongoing storyline about themselves as science learners that set them up for further learning—with supportive mechanisms and connection to areas of personal and community consequence, they were all capable of doing science in ways that matter to community life and the broader society (NRC, 2012). Finally, Ms. Jones performed some of the roles of a cultural broker for her students, as she made some aspects of border crossing explicit for her students as they took on science-related identities through the investigation (Aikenhead, 2002). The results of this study point to design principles for the role of learning brokers in the classroom and in the design for connecting learning in meaningful ways across the settings of youths’ lives.

Author

• Shelley Stromholt, University of Washington