Abstract
This paper uses the idea of “synergistic sciencing” to describe the co-learning processes of underrepresented elementary-level students and university-level preservice teachers and faculty program directors as they engage together in a two-week Mosquitoes & Me summer camp oriented to the theme of mosquitoes, public health, climate change, and sustainability. It details characteristics of the learning environment that facilitated the mutualization of movement construed by participants and their science practices through collective project-based inquiry. It uses microethnographic analysis of videotaped interactions of youth and adult participants to argue for the role played by particular coordinated action and attention features of the summer camp environment in comprising emotional energy generative of synergistic sciencing. These action and attention features served to integrate and thus blur the boundaries between the social (community building) and academic (content learning) dimensions of the camp experience creating relational fluidity among participants and processes. Quantitative data from the evaluation will support the impact of programming on the project’s youth science learning and preservice science teaching identities. The qualitative data will provide an explanation into the interactional exchanges that compel such outcomes. This focus, pursued through an interactionist approach to science education research, shifts emphasis away from attainment of teaching, learning, and identity goals to features of situational contexts that influence progress toward those goals. This has implications for conceptualizing sustainability education; instead of delivering curricula to communities, sustainability education must instead strategically nourish relationships among diverse community members on whose shoulders rests the responsibility for local coordinated stewardship.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Science education, Youth programming, Public health, Mosquitoes, Climate change, Sustainability
