Tara O’Neill
Doctoral Candidate
Urban
Department of Math, Science & Technology
Angela Calabrese Barton
Associate Professor of Science Education
Urban
Department of Math, Science & Technology
At
As science educators with a primary interests in the education of high-poverty urban youth, we are concerned with the inequities in science education that such children face, and how it contributes to their lower levels of participation and interest in science. Children from high poverty backgrounds, and urban children in particular, drop out of science classes and school at rates significantly greater than middle and upper class children.
These numbers indicate that the science education community, as a whole, has not made lasting and valued science connections with urban students from high poverty and minority communities. In order to create lasting and valued science connections that will help engage high poverty urban students in science learning we must create learning communities where students have the opportunity to develop ownership in science – ownership of scientific ideas, science process, and the place of science in one’s life. In our own work, we have turned to informal science learning settings as a way to explore how youth engage in science when they are not confined by the traditional structure of school science. Indeed, as the youth in our opening vignette suggest, we have been “pushed” into informal settings by the youths themselves. Therefore we are interested in the following research questions:
Young people in traditional schools do have experiences… The trouble is not the absence of experiences, but they are defective and wrong character--wrong and defective from the standpoint of connection with future experiences (Dewey, 1938, p.27).
Informal science learning studies by and large share a common set of assumptions about student engagement in informal science learning settings. Rennie, Feher, Dierking and Falk (2003) report that out-of-school learning is “self-motivated, voluntary, and guided by learners’ needs and interests” (p. 113). Further, most informal science education research also agree that because informal learning settings advocate free choice, learners have some choice and control over what they learn and how they learn it leading to the likelihood that they will be more emotionally and intellectually connected to the science explored (Rennie, et al, 2003). Free choice of informal settings also allows participating individuals to more freely associate with those content topics and physical and social environments that are personally meaningful and relevant (Schauble, leinhardt, & Martin, 1997; Rennie & McClafferty, 1996; Semper, 1996). In other words, there is a shared understanding that students have greater ownership over the science to be learned in informal science and how that science is learned, appropriated and eventually used.
In our own work in informal learning environments, we have come to value the importance of ownership in science learning. Our own experiences deeply support the belief that the relationship between the informal place in which science is practiced and the individuals who come to practice that science allows the learner greater control over the process. However, our experiences in a multitude of different informal learning environments also suggest to us that how or for what reasons that relationship between the individual and place is formed has great consequence for what the learners believe they have choice and control over. We also believe it has consequence for what kinds of choices learners believe are worthwhile. Thus, we believe that the idea that students have greater ownership of science learning in informal learning environments needs to be unpacked.
Why unpack ownership
There are two bodies of literature we turn to in order to make sense of ownership in informal science learning: Studies of sociocultural learning theory and its importance in informal learning settings, and studies of ownership in student learning.
The conceptual framework of the video project relies heavily on the ideas of situated learning and situated cognition (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; and others). The functional definitions of situated learning and situated cognition are very similar and for the purpose of this manuscript will be used interchangeably. At their base, both situated learning and situated cognition are defined by the belief that learning takes place in social environments and as such learning of content cannot and should not be separated from the context in which it is learned (Rahm, 2001).
What is being said by Dewey in the opening quote and supported by proponents of situated cognition and social learning, is that an experience and/or discovery is educational when it is connected to the context and culture within which that experience accrued and can be built upon for future learning. Lave and Wenger (1991) support this idea with their introduction of the notion of the learner as an apprentice. In this design, the student learns through participation under the guidance of a “master” of the content being learned. Rahm (2001) connected this notion of student as apprentice to informal science learning through her investigation of urban students participating in an urban gardening program. However, before exploring the how this perspective on situated cognition is translated into informal science learning environments, it is important to understand what is recognized as informal science learning.
Though Rahm (2001) does not specifically define
informal science learning, her definition is made clear via the recognition of
the urban gardening program as an a space of informal
science learning and her comparison of how the approach to science learning in
this environment was different from that of traditional school science. Using Rahm’s (2001) description of the urban gardening
program six claims can be made as to what constitutes informal science
learning: 1) The science taught is not bound by a pre-designed curriculum but
emerges from students questions and interests surrounding some activity or
investigation. 2) Science knowledge is
not simply absorbed but comes into being through student’s interactions with
each other and the science. 3) Informal
science learning environments “value a science that is grounded in the
participants’ everyday experiences and activities, making possible the creation
of an educational environment centered on youth rather than science” (Rahm
2001, p. 168). 4) Informal science
supports divers learning opportunities some of which are embedded in the
structure of the activity and other which emerge from the students’ actions and
conversations. 5) Science becomes
accessible to the participants via observations, actions, talk, and connections
between the activities and the students’ prior knowledge. Lastly, the view of what is considered
science is broader than that of traditional science. It is important to note that whether an
activity is informal science learning is not bound by where the activity takes
place. As such, informal science learning can equally take place in a science
classroom and be affiliated with a school or in an urban garden plot that holds
no school affiliation.
In her analyses of the role “student as apprentice” played in supporting informal science learning in an urban gardening project, Rahm (2001) highlights three points which are vital to the to the concept of situated cognition in science learning. First, that by considering student participation in the gardening program as being an apprenticeship, “the embeddedness of the individual in the socialcultural world can be maintained” (Rahm, 2001, pg 166; Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). Secondly, the view of the student as an apprentice allows for the individual to be viewed as one who can actively organizes his or her own development (Rahm, 2001; Rogoff, 1993). Lastly, through participation in informal science learning, such as that of the gardening program, “what accumulates is not scientific facts but a way of acting, talking, and becoming a member” of such programs and projects (Rahm, 2001, pg 166; Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Over the past seven years
there have been a growing number of researchers who have used a sociocultural
lens to make sense of student engagement in informal learning settings. For example Rahm (2001) and Fusco (2001) have
explored the roles community gardening programs play in students identity
development.
Combined, these studies offer us two primary findings. First, there is the claim that science is a social, cultural and political practice and that if urban youth are to feel part of science, then all of these dimensions of science must be explored. Second, for students to have fair and just access to and experiences in science, the science must somehow be connected to their lives at the core.
Embedded within each of these studies is the assumption that if students owned the science they were to learn, either by connecting science to their lives or helping students feel a part of the culture of science, then they would be more motivated to learn science. Yet, none of these studies in informal education have taken up the question of ownership directly.
Science learning and
ownership
There are a few articles, published to date, which indicated that there is a relationship between science learning and student ownership. For example, Prain and Hand (1998) indicate that they found that students’ increased science of ownership over learning that was experienced via diversified writing seemed to be an important link between the students’ positive attitudes and science writing tasks. In their commentary on the National Science Standards, Wright and Wright (1998) argue that in order for the National Science Standards to achieve their goal of all students attaining scientific literacy, “[students] must be able to accept what [teachers] give them and make it their own. If students have control over learning, the ownership is very different because they discover ideas themselves” (p.4). Lastly, in an article written for secondary science teachers, DeGolier (2002) presents strategies for converting traditional “recipe-based” laboratory experiences into “student-governed” investigations. DeGolier (2002) argues that such a shift in science teaching is important because it will enable students to take more active ownership of their learning. These studies provide insight into the idea that there is a relationship between ownership and the science learning process. In addition, each of these studies also highlights the positive nature of this relationship. However, as student ownership is not the primary focus any of these articles, none of the studies take up the question of what ownership is or exactly how or why it is important in the science learning process.
To learn more about ownership in learning, we find
we need to look outside of science education circles. The idea of student
ownership has been studied primarily in the literature around school
architecture and use of space (
Given that the science education literature that begins to address the relationship between student ownership and the science learning process recognizes the development of student ownership as positively impacting science learning. And, as much of the literature in science education suggests that the science learning process is unique to that of other disciplines, though science is recognized as being connected to many disciplines (most commonly literacy and math). It is important for science education researchers and science educators to have a functional understanding of what student ownership is and what means for student to have ownership in the science learning process.
This study employed a qualitative method of research, specifically critical ethnography. We elected to do a critical ethnographic study for three primary reasons. First, critical ethnography provides us with a way of achieving an understanding of how the population we are working with thinks about themselves and the process of learning, using, and teaching science. Second, critical ethnography is framed through the agency and the corresponding responsibilities of the researcher and the researched. Third, critical ethnography is intrinsically political, and at its core is about documenting the nature of oppression and the process of empowerment, (Trueba, 1999). This orientation to research supports youth in creating the spaces they need to communicate their ideas and experiences to us on their own terms.
Drawing from a critical ethnographic framework, we have attempted to work with youth to create new modes for their participation in teaching and research which would be more responsive and open to their voices – their experiences (science and otherwise) and ideas as they have lived them and how they choose to have others understand them. Specifically, we have spent three school years (2001-2004) working closely with two groups of five sixth grade students who attended a School Under Registration Review [SURR] in a high poverty urban community in NYC, to design and produce two mini-documentary that expressed their ideas towards science in their lives (entitled, “What We Bring To Science” and “Survival”). By the nature of making a documentary, the students used multiple ways to express themselves and had the power to choose what they thought was important for people to know.
The advantage of doing the critical ethnography through media studies form is that it does not limit the students to any one form of expression. In this way, a more complete story can be told from the students’ perspectives than might be allowed by observations or interviews alone. In the making of this mini-documentary the students conceived the ideas, wrote the storyboards, selected the soundtrack, and directed all footage. In having primary control in making the video the students expressed the ideas/concepts they found relevant.
While the initial intent of this research was to examine how these students see and use science in their everyday lives, through the course of this project it became clear that the students were answering a number of questions. Throughout the making the mini-documentary and in the deconstruction of the video that followed, the students repeatedly addressed one main concept; a student’s need for ownership of both project and science information.
Various forms of data were collected through the course of the video project. In addition to using the completed mini-documentaries, I (Tara O’Neill) also conducted semi-structured interviews with all student participants (focused on their experiences in and views of science and the process of making the video), participant observations in their science class, teacher reflection notes, and collect of student work from the video process (i.e., story boards, etc.). Data was analyzed using a grounded processes approach. Emergent themes were tested against multiple forms of data (group semi-structured interviews, individual interviews, video footage, project field notes, and participatory observations) and brought back to the student participants for their feedback and clarification.
The video project has taken place over the last three years. In this time, the project has included two groups of students making three different mini-documentaries. While much of the process of making the mini-documentaries was consistent across the two groups, there is variation among the group participants. Thus, in an effort to recognize the individuality of each of the groups it is important that they be introduced separately. For the purposes of identification, each of the two groups will, from this point forward, be referred to by their specific groups names. These names are the Fabulous Five and Survival. It is important to note that the participants selected all group names presented.
This group is credited with founding the video project. The group was started by a sixth grader, Star, who asked if he could help edit some video footage I had taken while working on another project with his class. I told Star that it sounded like a great idea but that it might be more fun for him if he asked some friends if they also wanted to help. Star asked four sixth grade friends, all of which thought the project sounded fun but only two, Melanie and Cindy, were willing to give up their lunchtime (the students’ only free time during the school day). However, when asking his friends another student, Adiola, overheard and asked Star if she could be part of the project. Star agreed and we had our first meeting during a school lunch period. This first meeting included Star, Adiola, Melanie and Cindy. By the second meeting, a week later, the group changed again with Cindy dropping out and Jasmine, a friend of Adiola’s joining. Our second meeting took place in the sixth grade science classroom where another student, Jose, spent his lunchtime feeding the classroom animals. Jose grew very interested in the project from what he overheard from the meeting and asked if he could take part. The group agreed so by the third meeting the group was made up of Star, Melanie, Jose, Jasmine, and Adiola. They would later come to call themselves the Fabulous Five.
In the first meeting I explained that I wanted this activity to be fun for everyone so they should not feel the need to do what I say just because I am the teacher. All ideas were valuable and important. Then I shared my idea for what to do with the video footage that I had already taken. During the second of our lunch meetings we (the group and I) talked a bit more about what we might do with the pre-existing footage. By the third meeting the Fabulous Five told me that they were not excited about my idea and would really like to make a movie of their own about science.
Fabulous Five was made up of five
sixth grade students from the
The group decided that they wanted to make a movie about how they (the group and their classmates) see and use science in their everyday lives. To make this movie they decided that they would need to have interviews of their classmates and lots of video footage both in and outside of their school. Interestingly, they consciously selected to not have adults (such as teachers or parents) in their movie as experts on science. In their movie, the Fabulous Five and select members of their sixth grade class where the science experts. It is also important to note that most of the video footage that made the editing cut was footage taken in and around their neighborhood and not within the school. The Fabulous Five thought that an important part of explaining the way they see and use science was explaining where they live and showing the science they see outside of school.
In September of the 2002-2003
school year I returned to the
Survival group took part in the
video project starting in January of 2003.
The group consisted of four sixth grade students also from the
Though Survival was provided assistance from members of the Fabulous Five, the students of the Survival group were very conscious of making their own movie and not something that could be perceived as “copying” the Fabulous Five. Perhaps as a result, Survival’s mini-documentary looks markedly different then that of the Fabulous Five. Most notably, unlike the Fabulous Five, Survival relied primarily on adults to be the experts on the information presented. However, for all steps in the process of creating their movie the members of Survival preferred to view themselves as the experts as apposed to the project instructor or any of the members of Fabulous Five.
The first mini-documentary created by Fabulous Five Productions during the 2001-2002 school year was titled, “What We Bring To Science.” The video was a student creation and was limited by only one focus question, “how do you see and use science in your everyday lives?” Students of the video project were then instructed in the production process and given a video camera.
In its first year, Fabulous Five met, for approximately 35 minutes, twice a week for five months, during the school’s lunch and recess time. These meetings initially took place in their science classroom but for convenience (the science classroom was sometimes locked or other students had come to the room because they did not want to go out to recess) and to lower the level of distraction, meetings were moved to the library.
At the first meetings the Fabulous Five explored and developed their theme for the mini-documentary and determined who would do which of the production jobs. There were to be two music directors, one director, one producer, and one production manager. It was decided that no member of the production team would be directly responsible for filming so that all of the members would have the opportunity to film.
Once the theme and production roles were determined the focus of the meetings turned to the structure of the movie. In these meetings it was determined what types of footage the production crew wanted to include in their movie and a little about why they wanted to include or not include particular, concepts, ideas, and images. In general these conversations revolved around determining what they considered to be science and how they wanted to express this information.
After three weeks of meetings the Fabulous Five had determined the theme for their mini-documentary, the role each member was going to play, and had a vague description of what footage was going to be filmed. This list included, images from around the neighborhood around the school, footage of the school both inside and out, children working in classrooms during school (in the end this footage was cut), and children at play.
The Fabulous Five spent the next several meetings collecting their video footage and the music directors spent much of this time selecting songs for the movie. Collection of footage for the mini-documentary started in March and ended in the middle of May. The production crew continued to meet after the collection of footage had ended. The focus of these meetings was the editing process. Due to the lack of availability of editing equipment (a computer with a large enough memory to hold the footage and imovie), the actual editing of the first video was done by the video project instructors (this was corrected over the next two years of the project and the students took over all editing responsibilities). However, no edit was made without approval from the Fabulous Five and the majority of edits were made per the group’s instructions. In all cases, edits that were made without direct student consent were done due to use of language and/or inappropriate reference made about people as they were being filmed. For example, “that is the girl I really hate” being said while focusing on a group of girls in the schoolyard.
By June, the Fabulous Five had produced a twenty-three minute mini-documentary. To answer the guiding question of, “how do you see and use science in your everyday lives” the production crew used interviews, music selections and varied film footage. The most important aspect of the film however, is that it was completely designed and filmed by the students.
In September 2002, three months after the mini-documentary was completed, four of the five students were brought back together to deconstruct the video. The original intent was to have all five students return for the debriefing process however, one of the five had not moved on to the seventh grade. As a result of schedule conflicts between the sixth and seventh grade students, it was difficult for the sixth grade student to be part of the group meetings which took place, two days a week, during the seventh grade lunch period.
Each of the debriefing meetings was approximately 30 minutes and took place in the school’s library. The primary interest of the lunch time meetings were to deconstruct the video made during the last school year, reflect on the process of making the video, and determine what the process of making a second video would look like. This process came in three parts.
In the first debriefing meeting the production crew shared their ideas for the making of a second mini-documentary. In the two following meetings the students viewed the video made the previous year. For the first of the two viewing days the production crew was asked to just watch the video with no particular question in mind. In the second viewing, the production crew was asked to note what they liked, disliked, and what changes they would make in making a second video. The remainder of the meetings were structured around an informal conversation with the students. During these conversations the Fabulous Five discussed why they wanted to make a second video, what they gained from making the first video, and what the process of making the second video would look like.
During these deconstruction meetings members of the Fabulous Five explained that they would like to make a second mini-documentary but this time they would like to teach a new group of sixth grade students to make their own mini-documentary. The students of the Fabulous Five created an application process which included the sixth grade students writing a one page letter explain why they wanted to be part of the video project, submission of a recommendation from one of their sixth grade teachers and an interview to be conducted by members of the Fabulous Five.
As a result of
this process, in January of the 2003-2004 school year
a second video group was formed. This group
consisted of four sixth grade students who later came to all themselves group
Survival. The members of Survival
controlled the creation of the second mini-documentary with support provided by
members of the Fabulous Five. Like with
the Fabulous Five, group Survival was free to select any theme as long as they
could explain what it had to do with science.
Group two chose to make a mini-documentary about the things people and
animals need to survive. The methods
employed for the creation of the second mini-documentary were much the same as
the first. However, by the time we began
the creation process with group Survival the
Analysis of the data revealed six key themes that hold across all student participants of the video project. These themes are the following:
1, the students of the video project view themselves in relation to science (when connected to the project) and to the video project in ways that are positive, empowering, and full of self-awareness.
2, the students actively and purposefully chose to expend their human, social, and material capital to engage in and sometimes to expand or extend their participation in the video project.
3, the students expressed pride around the multiple contexts that make up their participation in science, such as pride in self, in their school, in their work, and in their neighborhood.
4, that students used the video project to affect positive changes in their lives at both the personal and social level.
5, students expressed positive and realistic vision for the role that science played in their lives.
In addition, it was found that though each of these themes is student driven, potentially presenting the picture of student ownership being fully of the student, it is important to note that blanketing each of these themes is the social environment in which the video project takes place. As such, the role of the instructor and the design of the video project must also be considered.
Understanding Ownership
Views of self in relation
to science and the video project: Positive, Empowering and Self awareness
Throughout the video production process and in each of their completed mini-documentaries, students from both the Fabulous Five and Survival expressed how they saw themselves in general, in relation to science, with respect to school, and to the video project in a number of implicit and explicit ways. The students sent these messages by using three media forms within their mini-documentaries -- direct speech, images and music selections, individual actions during the process of making each of their movies, and statements from their group and individual interviews. For the students in our investigation, we noted five different ways in which students consistently expressed these positive views of themselves: by viewing themselves as teachers, problems solvers, people who know science, people who will need science to achieve their future professional goals.
Viewing oneself as a teacher and openly expressing that view was perhaps the most common theme that emerged in how the students re-presented themselves. In fact, both groups believed that a fundamental goal of their mini-documentaries was to create a video to teach other students and teachers about science in their lives and/or in their community. For example, in the opening scene of their movie the Fabulous Five explicitly express their desire to teach information to others with an introduction from one of the production crew members, Adeola, speaking to the audience and explaining the main focus of the film. In the monologue Adeola states:
“The main focus of this video is to make people that know very little about science, for them to understand. Instead of giving them the science textbook which would take years form them to finally understand it, we are taking the textbook, breaking it down into pieces for them and then when they see our video they will understand it easier.”
We find this example particularly compelling because it shows the students casting themselves as teachers, as people who know science, and as people who are able to make the science more understandable and relevant to their peers than the textbook can.
There were many examples of when students represented themselves as teachers, problem solvers, people who know science, and people who will need science to achieve their future professional goals throughout the video project. When they talked about who they wanted to show the video to (i.e., fifth grade students “so that they could learn some science”), what they wanted to make their video of (i.e., survival because their classmates needed to learn about survival), where their video should take place (i.e., the neighborhood and the school because they needed to teach others both about science and about themselves), and why they find science to be important to their lives (i.e., “because I want to be a doctor when I grow-up”).
In another example, the Fabulous Five crew eagerly wanted to participate in a pre-NARST session so that they could share their movies with science education researchers. During this session the crew was asked if they felt they had achieve their goal of teaching science to others. The crew answered that they thought they had achieved the goal of teaching science to their pears and those younger then themselves, but that they also thought they taught their teachers. What they felt they had taught their teachers was not about science but about themselves and what they, as students, can do, and the value of teachers teaching in more informal ways.
Audience participant: “Did you show this [the movie] to teachers at your school?”
Fabulous Five: “yes”
Audience participant: “Did it change any of their ways of teaching?”
Fabulous Five (Jasmine): “Yea, some of them.”
Fabulous Five (Star): “Mostly science teachers. Like Ms. P, she don’t teach with textbooks no more.”
Fabulous Five (Adiola): “Like Mr. M, after he saw the movie it changed his may of teaching a lot…I’m not in his class anymore but I go to visit I see that he don’t have that many notes anymore. Now, he uses the real thing, he uses examples.”
Students actively and purposefully chose to expend their capital
In the video project, the students purposefully and actively chose to expend their material, social, and human capital on creating and sustaining the video project. There are several examples of how students chose to expend their capital on this project, but there are three examples that we believe capture quite broadly the means and modes that the youth chose to do so.
First, students devoted coveted personal time to the project. Two of the most valuable times in a middle school students day are lunch time and the hour between the time school ends and the time they need to be home helping their families. These are two of the most valuable times of the day because they are two of the only times that the students of either video crew could claim as their own. As such, to actively elect to use this time to take part in the video project is an enormous expense of the students’ social, and material capital. Furthermore, the fact that both groups independently elected to make a second mini-documentary also reflects a major time commitment. When Fabulous Five was asked in a video production-debriefing interview, why they wanted to make a second video, the group representative, Star, simply stated, “Because we’re not done”. With three weeks left in the 2001-2002 school year (the first year of the video project) the Fabulous Five were told that there was no more time to collect video footage. When it was explained that there was no time and we (the production crew) would have to create the best out of what we had, the students became very upset. They explained that this movie represented them and as such needed to be of a particular quality and though they had worked two days a week for six month they were not ready to be finished.
Second, students invested their home- and community-based knowledge to support making their video “teachable.” Throughout the video production process, students invested their human capital with the use of their “out of school” language when explaining concepts they recognized as being scientific or being related to how science is used in their community. Students also elected to use only the footage of the science they saw in their lives outside of school in the final version of their videos, though they had collected footage of school science.
Third, students drew upon their peer networks to support new students in creating a video. For example, when brainstorming ideas for their second movie Fabulous Five decided what they really wanted to do was to teach a new group of sixth grade students to make a movie. Their vision being that the sixth graders they taught would in turn teach another group of sixth graders the following year. In so doing, Fabulous Five would both guide a new group of students through the video project and would be the creators of a school tradition.
Because students used so much of
their own capital in creating the video documentaries, their identities became
a vibrant part of the actual documentaries. Indeed, one of the most powerful
aspects of each of the mini-documentaries is that they are obvious extensions
of the students who created them. To
illustrate this point, when talking with one of the Fabulous Five’s teachers after
viewing the video for the first time at the end of the sixth grade year, she
remarked that while she had taught those students all year she felt like she
had been introduced to them for the first time as people while watching their
video documentary. Starting with the moment that the members of Fabulous Five
and Survival gave up their lunch and after school time respectively, they
choose to expend their human, social and material capital.
Students
expressed pride around the multiple contexts that make up their participation
One of the most impressive and moving expressions of their individual and collective identities was the overwhelming extent to which the students of both video groups showed pride for their school, neighborhood, work, and most importantly, themselves. Within both videos there are numerous moments in which the students express their pride in these multiple contexts.
For example, just
after the opening monolog of Fabulous Five’s movie, they cut to an image of the
five crew members in front of their school and Star (the director) talking into
the camera saying, “This is our school, this where we do all our work. I like
this school. This school is fun. And,
whoever is seeing this video I hope they like it. This is our territory.” As the camera pans
away from the school and into the neighborhood a steady urban music beat fades
in. Every so often a student voice
speaks over the music explaining what the camera is focused on. For example, when a shot of a subway train is
in the frame, Star’s voice is in the background saying, “Train, number four, that leads all over
Among the most powerful messages from the video production process for both groups is the amount of pride they showed for themselves as individuals and as a group. For example, both groups held such pride in their work that they wanted to expand the time made available for them to work on the project requesting to have production meeting on weekends and over school vacations. At the end of the process, while both groups were proud (made evident by wanting to show their movie to their peers and teachers) of what they produced, neither felt they had done all they could and thus took up the opportunity to create a second video.
Maybe most importantly however, is the fact the both groups went to such lengths to show themselves is a positive light. Both groups took the opportunity of the video project as a means for re-presenting themselves to their classmates, teachers, administrators, and all others who will view their videos, as people who know science and know where to get scientific information in addition to being smiling playful urban kids.
The fourth major theme that describes student’s participation in the video project is agency. During the video production process each of the students, both individually and collectively, used the video project to affect some positive change in their lives on both a personal and social level. Two examples of this that spanned across the activities of both groups are: 1) the use of the video project for access to material resources and 2) the use of the video project to build social capital.
While both production crews showed interest in making a movie related to their views of science, one of the primary reason for continued participation in the project was for access to material resources such as the video camera, lab top computer, and movie editing programs they may not have otherwise had access to. Additionally, as the project participants were the primary decision makers as to what video footage was collected and from where, both production crews utilized this opportunity as a means of gaining access to coveted activities such as fieldtrips to the zoo by creating the need for animal footage outside of that which could be found in their neighborhood.
One of the main
concerns of both the Fabulous Five and Survival was that they create a film
that their classmates would enjoy. When
asked during a production meeting, who they were making their movie for, one of
the members of Survival explained that while it was important to them that
their teachers and parents enjoyed their film, it was most important that their
classmates like the mini-documentary. For this reason the film had to be a
careful entanglement of popular music, moments that were educational, and
moments of humor. The students knew that
if their pears liked the movie then they (the
production crew) stood to gain a great amount of social capital among their
classmates. If even just for one day,
creating a video that was liked by their classmates would propel the students
sanding within the social order. As
evident to this fact, in a video-production debriefing meeting three months
after the members of Fabulous Five had premiered their movie to their sixth
grade class,
Through the video-production process and their videos themselves both production crews expressed positive views of science and highlighted the ways in which science was important to them. The over arching theme of Survivals video being that science is needed to help provided humans and other animals the bare necessities to survive, this being food, water, and shelter. Survival continued their message of the usefulness of science by providing examples of how science has allowed for the invention of modern necessities such as the car and subway trains. Both of these were seen as being useful because they make it easier for people to get to school and work and make it easier to get a job because people can work farther away from home then if they had to walk everyday.
The over arching theme of Fabulous Five’s video was that science is everywhere and that everyone does science even if they do not know they are doing it. For example, a student interviewed in their video stated, “ I think anybody knows science. Because lets say you’re a little little kid and your picking up flowers and you notice that after a while the flowers start to die. You know science because you know if you take them out of the ground and put them in some water they’re gonna die. You don’t know why but you know they’re gonna die so you kind of know science.”
This thinking is both positive and interesting because it presents science as something anyone can do as apposed to a study designed only for the “smart” as science is so often perceived. The result of this being that the Fabulous Five made a video that makes science accessible to a population (minority and elementary students) who often do not feel a connection to science.
One of the major ways Fabulous Five created a level of science accessibility was to use their movie as a space to explain how they thought science is used in their everyday lives and why science is important to them. For example, Star explains in the video, that, “science to me is my life” and the reason science hold such importance is because “its about me, like what I got inside of me. Like how food digests”.
Table 1: Summary of Themes
|
Theme |
Qualities |
|
Views of self |
· Teachers · Problem solvers · Knowers, users and creators of science · Future professionals |
|
Investment of capital |
· Time · Home- and community-based knowledge · Peer networks |
|
Pride |
· In self and one’s work · In school and neighborhood · What else? |
|
Making changes |
· Creating access to material resources · Building social capital |
|
Views of science |
· Science helps create for a better life · Everyone knows and does science · Science is important because it tells us information about ourselves. |
Thus far we have reported on those themes that have emerged from our data that give us insight into how it is that student express ownership in the video project. They demonstrate a positive sense of self through the science activity by presenting themselves as knowledgeable, capable, and professional. They also describe a level of comfort and engagement with a science that is helpful, important, and relevant to “everyone”. Additionally, they demonstrate a keen sense of pride in the work that they produce within their peer groups and within their larger sociocultural community. Finally, they invest themselves deeply in process, including investing those forms of capital not always valued in more traditional science learning experiences, and they do so in order to try to affect some sort of positive change.
We believe, however, that it is just as important to understand what qualities frame ownership, as it is to understand what ownership looks like among urban youth participating in informal learning. If we look across these five themes, we see that ownership exists within three dialectics: the dialectic between process and outcome; the dialectic between the social and the individual; and the dialectic between identity and agency.
Process and outcome
The literature that does exist on student ownership describes ownership as an outcome – it is something that we desire for students to achieve and that once achieved will help students engage more readily in the learning process. Yet, when we have looked at ownership in our own study as an outcome, we can see that ownership varies from student to student and also within the same student from moment to moment. This suggests to us that while ownership may be an outcome, it is also a dynamic and generative process that exists in tension with ownership as an outcome. By understanding ownership as a dynamic process, we have a way to make sense of how ownership differs from student to student, even when those qualities that define what ownership looks like among students (i.e. views of self, investment of capital, etc.) remain constant.
When we write about ownership as a dynamic and
generative process we mean to suggest that ownership is always “in
development.” The students in the video project began the project with certain
ideas about what they wanted to do (i.e., make a movie). As the movie project progressed students worked to include their views of themselves
or of science in their project, making the project something that more closely
approximated their lives, in both form and content. We see this point in each of the five themes
described earlier. If we trace the students’ investment of their capital in the
project over time, we can see that as students began to invest more time and
more personal experience in the project, new questions and venues, challenging
and questioning just how much this could be done, were opened. For example, the
Fabulous Five quickly moved from working with footage gathered by
Processes are, by definition, dynamic. What we see
as important in understanding ownership as a dynamic process is not so much
that ownership is not a static quality (although this is important) but that
ownership that a given student expresses changes depending on the student and
their relationship to the context. The recognition of this quality to student
ownership is critical in developing an understanding of what student ownership
is, how it can impact science learning, and how it relates to the context in
which the learning takes place.
Understanding ownership as a dynamic process serves to both complicate
and clarify the picture of what student ownership is. As ownership is dynamic, the level to which a
student feels ownership of a project or the science be learned differs among
students, activities and even moments within the same activities. The result being that in any given activity
it is unlikely that all students involved will express the same level of
ownership of the science involved in the activity or of the activity itself, at
the same time. Connected to this, what
cultivates ownership for one student will not likely be the same for another.
Additionally, cultivating student ownership is not an all or nothing
event. There are degrees to which
students may feel ownership within an activity or a body of learning and those
degrees may shift. Such that, because a
student felt ownership of their learning one day dose not mean they will feel
it the next even if studying the same topic in the same fashion.
The dialectic between outcome and process creates the possibility for examining student ownership from the perspective of its commonalities shared by all students thus allowing for the generation of one functional understanding of student ownership to be used among a diverse body of students.
The individual and the social
Each of the themes presented in this paper reveals how student ownership depends upon both the student and the context in which that student is working. At the personal level, each student has their own set of lived experiences and cultural beliefs that have developed their individual identities. As such, the aspects of an experience that encourage students to express ownership of their learning and how they feel this ownership will differ based on what an individual know or believes about themselves, about science, or about the context in which they are working. However, student ownership is developed, particularly in informal science learning environments such as the video project, via the interactions with and among other individuals. For example, students outwardly expressed ownership to other members of their learning environment by changes in behavior such as personal expectations, group expectations, ways of communicating and body language. Thus, the context in which the learning takes place is critical. For example, when students wanted to expand the time made available for them to work on the project requesting to have production meeting on weekends and over school vacations, they had to learn how to negotiate these desires with each other and with the teacher. Furthermore, by using the video project to generate better access to material resources and to build social capital the students needed to engage in a complex process involving the evaluation of the interactions between the material resources they desired (i.e. going to the zoo), the social capital they hoped to build (i.e. popularity among their peers), and the actions required to achieve both.
This relationship between the individual and the social context is important for two reasons. First, it shows how ideas like pride or making changes are both individual and group expressions. Second, it show just how much students are able to build upon the process of expressing ownership is framed by the actual social context in which the activity is taking place. That is to say, though we claim that one construct of student ownership is that students view themselves in relation to science and the video project in ways that are positive, empowering, and full of self-awareness, it is important to note that this view will only be maintained in an environment in which it is valued. For example, if upon presenting their non-traditional view of science, the project instructor had listed any number of reason why what was being presented was not truly science, the students may develop an alternate, less positive, self-image in relation to science and the video project. Similarly, if the students ideas for mini-documentary themes, video footage to be collected or music selections had been consistently disregarded due to the instructors beliefs or vision for the video, the students would have likely come to see themselves in less positive and empowering ways though may have still enjoyed participating in the project.
Agency and identity
Student ownership in informal science learning environments that draw upon technology is partly about what students know and believe about science and the science activity itself, as well as how they view themselves in relationship to science and the activity, or in other words, identity. However, as each of the examples in this paper suggests, ownership is also about what students do with that knowledge in support of their engagement in the activity, or in other words agency.
In the limited science education literature that addresses student ownership, projects and/or particular teaching practices are recognized for being “good”, in part, because students taking part in such projects can gain ownership of their learning. It is argued that the students can gain this ownership because the said projects allow them to take control over their learning. While we support the notion of ownership being an important aspect in student learning, we are argue that the cultivation of student ownership involves students taking control of something that they want and that has power and importance in their lives. As such, a major part of student ownership is this dialectic between the identity of each student and their agency.
An example of this can be seen when examining Survival’s video production process. Early in the process of creating their mini-documentary, members of Survival decided that one of the things they wanted to be able to do while making their movie was to go on fieldtrips. Specifically, they wanted to take a fieldtrip to the zoo. As such, Survival selected to make a movie that was, in part, about what animals (other than humans) need to survive.
The quote that opens this paper paints the picture of student as consumer of science information. The argument that Brickhouse (1994) was making with these words is that in traditional science classrooms the cascade of knowledge is ultimately uni-directional. Scientists discover scientific information, teachers pass this information onto their students, and students are expected to show understanding of this information by restating it. In this cascade of knowledge there is no room for students to make their own meaning of this information. Thus, when functioning under this structure, while students may be consumers of the science information being taught, they will never be able to take that next step to ownership. This is problematic as it is within this next step that students are able to develop the skills to critically evaluate and develop a functional understanding of the scientific process, scientific ideas and how science relates to their lives.
As discussed previously in this paper, there is a significant body of science education research that argues in order for students to feel a part of science; science must be connected to their lives in very real ways. We believe a fundamental way of providing students connections to science is to guide them in cultivating an ownership of the science they learn. It has been additionally argued by Praint & Hand (1999) and others that science projects which allowed students to take ownership of their own learning reported greater student enjoyment of and involvement in science learning.
Given that student ownership has been recognized as a powerful tool for supporting science learning it is important for the science education community to develop and understanding for how to design learning environments that take into account what ownership is and what it looks like when students are able to express it. As illustrated in the finding section of this paper, student ownership is constructed of multiple themes whose explanations provide a richer understanding of student ownership with relation to science learning. Using the construct of ownership in informal science learning presented in this paper, we have a way of beginning to determine when and how ownership exists in science learning environments. Taken together these themes point out that we can recognize ownership among students when: they express positive views of themselves, invest their capital beyond what is traditionally expected, show pride in their work, use their participation in the science event to affect positive change, and talk about science as something important and useful to them. These themes, however, also point out that ownership is a dynamic and generative process that exists in tension with ownership as an outcome or end goal, and that ownership exists within the dialectic between agency and identity, and the individual and the social.
The findings presented in this paper also indicate that the cultivation of student ownership does not have to be an accidental outcome as it has been presented in the science education literature to date. Student ownership can be facilitated by being responsive to moments, such as those highlighted by the themes presented in the finding section of this paper, when students show pride (i.e. in their work, school, neighborhood and themselves), students view themselves as knowledgeable, students want to affect positive change in their personal and social lives, students are willing to give of themselves and expend their capital, and moments when students recognize that science has a place in the future. It is important to note however, that we do not equate being responsive to these moments with supporting every idea the students present. We recognize be responsive as being aware of when moments, such as those mentioned above, occur and using students’ ideas as important starting points to scaffold learning.
Much of the literature around informal science learning argues that students are more engaged and enthusiastic about their learning in informal learning environments because of the nature of such environments to provided students free choice. While we believe this to be true, we also believe it is important to understand why students make the choices they do, when given free choice. Using the description of what student ownership looks like, as represented by the five themes, may provide this insight into how and why students make their free choices. Understanding why and how students make the choices they do in such environments allow science educators to construct learning experiences with greater intent of building student ownership. If we (science educators) have a unified understanding of what student ownership looks like we can actively design learning environments to support its cultivation.
Additionally, one trend in informal science education is to make exhibits, such as those at museums and zoos, more interactive between the exhibit and the student participant. We believe our findings suggest that these interactions may be strengthened if they are based on the themes presented here that identify ownership in addition to the content of the exhibit.
Finally, we believe that
while our study takes place in an informal learning environment, it has
implications for how we understand ownership in formal science learning spaces.
Despite the fact that classroom learning, especially in high poverty urban
communities, is often marked by limitations of resources, time, space and
curriculum, we believe that if we begin to understand ownership as a process
that is driven both by the student and the environment then we can begin to
design learning experiences that attend to these qualities. We can start to
think about how we might begin to develop pedagogical practices and learning
environment designs that foster student ownership (as apposed to student
ownership being a coincidental bonus) and thus more meaningful science
learning.
While we support the notion, presented in many fields of education literature, that the cultivation of student ownership has positive impacts on student learning, we feel the conversation needs to be taken a step further. As such, we present this paper as a beginning to the process of understanding student ownership with the hope of furthering this conversation. The first step, as presented here, has been to identify qualities that define ownership. What would now be of great value is for future research to use these identifying qualities to construct a definition of student ownership that can be used across formal and informal science education environments. Using the identifying qualities and the definition, the attention of the conversation can then be turned to teaching strategies and design science learning environments with the intent of cultivating student ownership.
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