Designing With Teachers, Families, and Communities for Heterogeneity in Field-Based Science Learning

• In Event: 28.071 - Designing for and Engaging With Heterogeneity in Students' Thinking in Science

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger project that that seeks to co-design innovative research and practice with educators, families, and community based organizations that cultivates equitable, culturally based, complex socio-ecological systems learning and sustainable decision-making utilizing “field based” science education in outdoor places, including gardens, for children in Kindergarten to 3rd grade. In this paper, we ask the question: What ideas about field-based learning are brought into the design space, especially by families, and how are they taken up and applied in the design process? The project focused on the Human Impacts and Earth and Human Activity strands of the Earth and Space Sciences standards in NGSS (NRC, 2012).

We view learning as a dynamic cultural process constituting the constellations of practices, values, goals, and worldviews of one’s communities (e.g., Nasir et al. 2006). Research suggests there is a connection between outdoor practices, relational epistemologies, and students’ ecological understanding and decision making of complex ecological systems (e.g. Atran, et al, 2005; Assaraf, et al, 2012). Further families learn science outside of school, including habits of mind, motivation, and identities as scientists (Barton, 2001; Bell et al, 2009).

Data for this study comes from two co-design summits in which teachers, school district staff, families, and community-based organizations (32 people total) gathered to think develop field-based science investigations. The co-design summits took place over the course of three days for a total of 48 hours of video tape and the main data sources were videotaped observations and field notes. Utilizing discourse analysis and interaction analysis (e.g., diSessa, Levin, & Brown, 2015; Cazden, 2001) data were analyzed for emergent themes and tensions during co-design. We focused analysis on how family members’ contributions shifted the focus of design discussions and ultimately design decisions.

Preliminary findings include: (1) when families co-design with teachers, heterogenous nature-culture relations are put at the center of the discussion, and (2) family contributions can initiate discussions that broaden conceptions of and understandings of science for everyone. For example, one elder in the room contributed a Chinese saying that “the seasons control the world”, which was immediately taken up by a teacher who says, “that's so true, we're dependent and controlled by the seasons. I think it just gives us a chance to think about things in a different way as the seasons change, kind brings to mind how time changes...it's important to bring in culture...” While other interactions occur, phenology – the study of seasons - becomes the central organizing phenomena of our designed investigations. Further, the heterogeneity of children and families lives and decision-making across the seasons is embedded in instruction throughout.

This paper makes two significant contributions. First, it details the co-design process with educators, families, and CBOs as core partners marking a expansive model of research practice partnerships that cultivates heterogeneity in science learning from its inception. Second, this paper explores the ways in which engaging heterogeneity in practices of observing and explanation can support expansive forms of complex ecological systems reasoning and decision-making.

Authors

• Megan Bang, The Spencer Foundation

• Carrie T. Tzou, University of Washington - Bothell

• Nathaneal Mengist, University of Washington

• Alice Tsoodle, University of Washington