Conceptual Agency in Making: Young People's Engagement in a Science Center Summer Camp

• In Event: 34.028 - From Making to Agentic Participation: Perspectives on and Approaches to Fostering Epistemic Engagement in Making

Abstract

‘Making’ is believed to offer a powerful context for young people’s creative and personally meaningful engagement in STEM learning (Peppler et al., 2016). However, little is known about the opportunities and contextual resources of making that support such engagement. This study addresses this gap by investigating young people’s conceptual agency during making in a science center summer camp. We contend that conceptual agency is pivotal for STEM learning as it involves rich sensemaking and creativity in response to novel problems (Greeno & van de Sande, 2007). This study asks: How does conceptual agency manifest itself in young people’s making? What contextual resources do young people draw upon to achieve conceptual agency?
We define conceptual agency as an interactional achievement mediated by contextual resources (Linell, 1998; Rajala, Martin, & Kumpulainen, 2016). We also follow Pickering's (1995) distinction between conceptual and disciplinary agency. Whereas disciplinary agency involves following accepted procedures and terminology of the discipline, conceptual agency refers to generative and selective use of material, interactional and conceptual resources as well as their critical judgment in a given disciplinary domain.

We draw on a case study of young people (9 females and 21 males, age 14-16 years old) during making activities in two, week-long summer camps in a Finnish science center. Making activities took place in a FUSE Studio (FUSE), a choice-based, digital infrastructure for STEM learning and interest development (Stevens et al., 2016). The primary data comprise of 50 hours of video-recorded interactions of the participants. In addition, informal conversational interviews were conducted and the materials produced in FUSE were collected as secondary data.

The video data were transcribed and analyzed with interaction analysis taking account of verbal, visual and material conduct (Jordan & Henderson, 1995; Streeck, Goodwin, & LeBaron, 2011). ‘Contextual resource’ (Linell, 1998) was used as an analytical tool to investigate how participants achieved conceptual agency in their engagement in making. We also focused on the temporal aspects of participants’ engagement in making as to understand how past-present-future contexts interacted in the establishment of conceptual agency.

Our analysis revealed several ‘telling cases’ (Mitchell, 1984) how the participants achieved conceptual agency in their making by (a) applying and validating their previous experiences as sources of knowledge, (b) explaining their making activities with others, (c) helping others to pursue their making, (d) modifying and extending the STEM challenges in FUSE, and (e) constructing and contesting the sociocultural practices of what it means to engage in STEM learning activities.

In all, making in FUSE manifested itself in fluid, participant-initiated arrangements as the young people worked in pairs and/or individually on their chosen challenges. They also turned to their peers serendipitously to observe, help, share and explain their making. These findings call for rethinking how to capture STEM learning in making as standardised tests may not reveal such personalised learning paths and outcomes. Researching the manifestation of conceptual agency and its contextual resources appears as a prominent approach to examine how, when, and for whom making can foster productive engagement in STEM learning.

Authors

• Kristiina P. Kumpulainen, University of Helsinki

• Antti Juhani Rajala, University of Helsinki / Department of Teacher Education

• Anna Mikkola, University of Helsinki