Understanding the Ways Science Educators Draw on Learners’ Resources for Meaning-Making in Virtual Field Trips

• In Event: Centering Teachers as Essential Components of the Learning Environment

Abstract

This study investigates science educators’ intentional pedagogical practices to attend to learners’ repertoires of practices and recognize the way they contribute to the learning process in museum virtual field trips. By observing four trips and interviewing educators, I explored how they facilitate meaning-making in informal science learning. Educators used moment-to-moment pedagogical moves and technology-based mediating tools to center students’ home resources for science meaning making and storytelling. This study contributes to the literature on equitable access in informal STEM education.

Author

• Xinxin Feng, University of Washington