Situated Action as Collective Identity Exploration in an Informal Science Education Project

• In Event: Identity, Motivation, and Situated Action in Educational Contexts

Abstract

Purpose
Researchers have explored the motivated actions of participants in informal science education programs, but little is known about the motivation of program steering committees toward the achievement of crucial project milestones (Gant, 2013). In this study, we frame the decision-making of one community-based project’s advisory board as identity exploration, in which collective self-definitions, beliefs, goals, and action possibilities are discovered, prioritized, and negotiated. We explore how the board’s situated action was shaped by the sociocultural context as its members resolved a dilemma - a consensus agreement on a theme for a county-wide STEAM challenge.

Theoretical framework
The study is situated within an informal STEAM education project that integrates perspectives on negotiated learning in makerspace environments (Forman & Fyfe, 1998) with community oriented museum exhibits (Giordano, 2013). To analyze and interpret the board’s negotiation and consensus building processes we applied the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (Kaplan & Garner, 2017) and identified self-definitions, beliefs, goals, and action possibilities at the collective unit-of-analysis. We also drew from the PRESS model of identity exploration (Sinai, Kaplan & Flum, 2012) and attended to factors, including perceived safety, that are known to support exploration, consensus building, and commitment development.

Methods
The study took place in a mid-sized town in the south-central United States. Participants included 12 board members (n=5 female, n=7 male) recruited by the project leaders for diversity in age, gender, race-ethnicity, profession, and community roles. Online meetings generated three transcripts with agendas, notes, and polling results as supporting artifacts. The transcripts were coded collaboratively, then independently, and then to consensus, using close reading, sentence and paragraph level coding, and summary and synthesis preparation procedures outlined in Kaplan & Garner, (2018). Two additional authors acted as auditors (Creswell & Miller, 2000).

Findings
Exploration, prioritization, and consensus development were dynamic and reciprocally influential (Figure 1). Discussions vacillated between exploring project and task goals, and considering various action possibilities (e.g., repurposing a disused, previously segregated school). Tensions emerged in the mid-point meeting when the prioritization task conflicted with the group’s goal of keeping multiple values and action possibilities in play. Productive negotiation co-occurred with explicit statements that fostered safety and self-relevance. Exploration of community self-definitions appeared in all meetings and persisted even after decision-making was complete. Nonlinear processes were evident in the final meeting when thematic integration strategies spontaneously appeared among group members, resulting in dilemma resolution through a new understanding of the group’s action possibilities and a new action step: theme articulation. Consensus for “Common Ground” was reached through board members’ explicit alignment of this theme with collective self-definitions, values, beliefs, purposes and goals, and the sociocultural context.

Significance
This study is unique in its application of the DSMRI and PRESS models at the collective rather than individual unit-of-analysis. It applies motivation and identity constructs to provide insights into how advisory groups can steer community-based educational initiatives, while offering a particular case to the greater literature on situated motivation and identity exploration in educational contexts.

Authors

• Joanna K. Garner, The Center for Educational Partnerships

• Stephanie J. Hathcock, Oklahoma State University

• Sheri Vasinda, Oklahoma State University - Stillwater

• Rebecca Brienen, Oklahoma State University