Scaffolding Observations in the Design of Material and Dialogic Tools

• In Event: Designing Learning for Just, Sustainable, and Culturally Thriving Futures: Engaging Complex Socio-Ecological Systems in Place

Abstract

Objectives / Purposes
In order to imagine and redesign transformative science learning spaces, we need to attend to both the design and implementation of materials and curriculum. This study attends to the ways in which tools - both material and dialogic - scaffold attention and observations in a land-based, outdoor camp for Indigenous youth. Foregrounding Indigenous observation practices, such as attending to relationships, roles, and reciprocity were critical in both the design of tools as well as in the ways the instructors modeled these practices. This study examines how material tools were taken up in the field during lessons and investigations of ecological phenomena, and how they contribute to sense making about complex socioecological systems.

Theoretical Perspective
Observing practices are often overlooked as mundane activities that lead to theory building, however observations are deeply theory driven and culturally nuanced (e.g. Rogoff, 2003; Marin, 2013), and are critical in sense making about ecological systems (Author et al., forthcoming). Therefore, a theoretically and culturally driven understanding of observations are critical in land-based (outdoor) learning environments. Learning and development are sociohistorically influenced, dynamically emergent, and situated in interactions with people and materials in the environment (Author, 2015; Engeström, 2001, Rogoff, 2003). The design and implementation of learning environments that foreground cultural practices – in this case Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK; Cajete, 2000) - and support epistemic navigation is a way of facilitating agency and identity in STEM for Indigenous students (Author, 2016). Furthermore, materials (designed tools) are “semiotically charged… when included with local action, [and] incorporate ways of knowing and acting upon the world that have been inherited from predecessors” (Goodwin, 2013; p. 1). These materials are critical to fostering deeper understandings of complex socio-ecological systems as well as reimagining equitable and expansive STEM learning environments.

Methods / Data / Participants
Data was collected over 4 years of camp, and this study focuses on activities and lessons at beach and forest ecosystems. The data corpus includes 3 lessons and activities (2 structured and 1 unstructured), and over 10 hours of video. Participants include students and instructors in the camp; students ranged in age from 6-17 years old. This study employs interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) to study how students and instructors used designed tools to scaffold their observations.

Findings
Intentionally designing material tools to scaffold attention to relationships lead to deeper socio-ecological sense making when coupled with modeling by instructors. This supported students and instructors to interweave multiple epistemic worldviews in their sensemaking about ecological phenomena. However, without modeling and scaffolding by instructors, the material tools could de-place observations; in other words, the focus of observations were on the tool itself without attention to ecological phenomena in place.

Contribution to literature
Observations are critical for making sense of the ecological phenomena in field investigations, and are mediated through interactions with designed materials, cultural practices, and the placed natural kinds (Author ; Goodwin, 2013; Lemke, 2000).

Author

• Priya Pugh, University of Washington - Seattle