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Beyond Shrink-Wrap: How Boundary Objects Can Support Learning and Sharing Between Informal Learning Networks

Sat, April 29, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Floor: Meeting Room Level, Room 221 D

Abstract

We will describe a study that took place in the context of a larger project where institutions in four cities worked together to develop a linked set of informal learning experiences about climate change (Snyder, et al., 2014). The idea was that each city would develop an organizational network to explore new ways to connect urban audiences with climate change education. The four city-specific networks would keep informed of each other’s progress and share tools, resources, and knowledge with each other. Each network would necessarily need to evolve to reflect each city’s identity, specific climate challenges, and existing organizational landscape. Thus, the networks were related in mission and goals, but were expected to be structured, and to function, differently depending on the city context.
We focused on how the tools, resources, and knowledge developed in one city’s network was shared with networks in other cities. The central problem in cross-network dissemination is the problem of local relevance. In order to be most effective in engaging audiences in a city, informal learning experiences were tailored to address the interests, concerns, and resources of public audiences in each city; as well as the interests, concerns, and resources of the specific organizations that made up each city-specific network. While this approach maximized the fit of each experience to the city it was designed for, it created problems in sharing across cities. How can we generalize from something that was designed from the outset to be fundamentally local?
Our work focuses on climate change education and, indeed, we will argue in this paper that wicked problems such as climate change are precisely the problems that most urgently require us to go beyond the traditional “shrink-wrap” approach to educational dissemination. However, our study also has implications for the dissemination of informal learning experiences more generally. There are relatively few situations where an informal learning experience can travel from one setting to another without modification. When we recognize that “shrink-wrapped” dissemination is difficult (perhaps even impossible) in the relatively controlled and predictable context of formal education (e.g., Brown & Campione, 1996), what hope is there for the less controlled and much more diverse contexts of informal learning?
Our answer to this question begins with the hypothesis that what generalizes best is process rather than product. As opposed to shipping a “shrink-wrapped” set of climate change education experiences from city to city, our dissemination focused on sharing network learning processes where experiences, tools, and professional development developed in one city could be adapted and customized for the local context of another city. We draw on boundary crossing theory (e.g., Star and Griesemer 1989) to describe the role of objects and processes in sharing between networks. We explore ways that informal learning experiences developed in one city can be shared with another city in ways that support customization while resisting “lethal mutations” to core the principles that make the learning experiences effective in the first place.

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