LabZone: Undergraduates and Youth Learning From Each Other in Informal Education Settings

• In Event: Reimagining Teacher Education Through University-Community Partnerships

Abstract

The LabZone is an after-school learning space housed at a YMCA near San Diego State University. The program runs twice per week for 2-hour sessions. Participants in this space include upper-elementary and middle-school aged youth (4 to 12 per session) as well as undergraduates (4 attending on Mondays and 7 attending on Wednesdays ) who are enrolled in a service-learning course which focuses on informal learning of science, engineering, and mathematics. Approximately 75% of learning activities in the LabZone are created by a coordinator and the professor teaching the university service-learning course. The balance of the learning activities are developed by the undergraduates enrolled in the service-learning course with support from their instructor. Such support was provided during weekly class meetings at the university, where undergraduates participated in exemplary learning activities, discussed readings relevant to informal learning of science, engineering, and mathematics, as well as worked in teams of 3-4 to develop and evaluate learning activities for the youth in the LabZone. In addition to weekly class meetings and weekly visits to the LabZone, undergraduates wrote field notes after each LabZone visit as well as analyzed the effectiveness of each learning activity that they developed and implemented.
The paper will describe the work in LabZone and interpret the data from the initial experience in the Spring of 2011. The main source of data are: 1)undergraduate students' journal, and 2) field notes and interviews with the participant youth. Results from this project focus on the extent to which undergraduates developed deeper understanding of how children engage in learning within an informal, urban after-school educational setting.
In analyzing undergraduates’ field notes and analyses of learning activities, we noticed a qualitative shift in their focus from particular actions of participants to how particular aspects of the activities provided affordances for engaging or disengaging youth in the LabZone based on their individual traits. In particular, as the semester developed, undergraduates were more likely to write theme-based field notes and analyses that focused on learning theory. For example, one participant focused on how youth packaged eggs for an egg drop for his first analysis while examining how participants’ funds of knowledge interacted with a domino game toward the end of the course. In addition, undergraduates’ descriptions of the learning activities developed to include participants’ actions (their own and youth’s) as examples for a theoretical framework for the learning process during LabZone activities versus stand-alone actions. Moreover, undergraduates became more likely to use individuals’ names and connecting their idiosyncrasies to particular aspects of learning activities. The undergraduates reported value in the program with recommendations that the course should be required for prospective teachers. Likewise, participating youth were eager to come back in the subsequent school year.
The paper will contribute to the growing overlap between theories on informal learning and teacher education (Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder, 2009). LabZone can be a significant experience for practitioners, educators, and theorists involved in both fields.

Authors

• Alexander W. Chizhik, San Diego State University

• George Franklin Sweeney, San Diego State University

• Ariane Grubb, California State University, San Diego

• Ricardo Nemirovsky, San Diego State University