Feeling Informal Science Spaces

• In Event: Space, Place, and Learning: The Material Conditions of Education Equity

Abstract

Objectives
Spaces, as contexts for learning, are more complex than geographic locations or static containers for learning (Leander, Phillips, & Taylor, 2010). Spaces are continually under construction (Massey, 2005) while still in part constituted by the geographic and material environment. In this paper we use the cases of three middle school informal science programs that take place in: 1) a university-based science lab, 2) a public middle school, and 3) a mobile bus outfitted with a lab that visits learners’ neighborhoods. We consider how, at the intersection of material environment, instructional design, and learner agency, students may engage in activity toward justice-oriented and scientific experiences of space (Soja, 2010).

Modes of Inquiry
Our study considers lesson design and pedagogical strategies together with analysis of learners’ activity and their relationships within and across communities. We investigate how the learning environment and participants’ activities in tandem serve to (de)legitimize and (re)position learners as members of these spaces in dynamically unfolding interaction (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Microanalysis focuses on corporeal and sensory engagements (Goodwin, 2017; Pink, 2008) with science tools and materials in the three programs.

Theoretical Framework
Science is a set of practices and ways of knowing that are culturally, socially, and historically constructed. There is a range of ontological and epistemological commitments that may be considered “scientific” (Kimmerer, 2013); the cultural practices of scientists may promote the participation and success of certain populations, while marginalizing others (Morton, Gee, & Woodson, 2019).

In a science laboratory, it is not just the material resources available, but how these materials feature in learning activity and how learners are positioned in relation to them that influences learning. Setting and activity are reciprocal, each shaping the other in continual, dynamic interaction. For science, the spatiality of the lab and the field can be variably liberating or oppressive, depending on how learners see themselves (Nasir & Saxe, 2003), and how science constructs the field–especially when the field is their own community (Nxumalo & ross, 2019).

Further, participation in many formal science spaces is racialized, and the dominant culture of science itself affects the experience of science for students. Students may take up, resist, or otherwise respond to the normative aspects of scientific culture. Supporting justice-oriented science participation requires us to attend to who does or doesn’t have access to learning and doing science, including who seeks to participate in, reshape, or avoid these spaces.

Data & Insights
We argue that whether or not young people can see themselves as scientists, or even feel that they have access to science practices, depends on where they are learning. Findings trace how these engagements accumulate on a spatial-temporal trajectory, offering insights not only into past and present selves but also into the possibilities of future scientific selves.

Scholarly Significance
We build on research in the learning sciences that describes how identity construction influences ideas of “who” does science. Our focus on spaces of learning extends this conversation with the question of “where” science can be done, and how it’s done differently in different spaces.

Authors

• Jasmine Y. Ma, New York University

• Latasha Wright, BioBus

• Wendy Barrales, New York University

• Olivia Ortiz, New York University

• Shaghig Chaparian, New York University

• Luz Velasco Vela, BioBus