Jrène Rahm

Multi-Sited Ethnography

Studies of science learning and identity development in out-of-school settings (OST) grounded in sociocultural historical theory attest to its important contribution to the development of science literacy in children and adolescents. Learning science takes many forms in quality OST settings and is typically initiated and directed by the youth themselves. Through interaction with authentic, rich environments, such as gardens or science laboratories, learning in OST settings is about connecting scientific knowledge with scientific practice. OST settings also offer opportunities to engage in scientific reasoning by observing, manipulating and questioning the surroundings. Engagement in science in OST settings also support new ways of understanding and relating to science. Youth may come to see themselves as knowledgeable of science through their engagement with it and through the opportunities that emerge that make agency possible (i.e., putting science to use). Youth may, for the first time, come to see themselves as capable of doing science and, therefore, as potential insiders of science. It is this kind of identity work, which is closely tied to learning, that I explore in this chapter, as I look at learning and becoming in OST settings (see also National Research Council, 2009; Rahm, 2010).

The role of multiple representations in the understanding of ideal gas problems

This study examined the representational competence of students as they solved problems dealing with the temperature-pressure relationship for ideal gases. Seven students enrolled in a first-semester general chemistry course and two advanced undergraduate science majors participated in the study. The written work and transcripts from videotaped think-aloud sessions were evaluated with a rubric designed to identify essential features of representational competence, as well as differences in student use of multiple representations. The data showed that both beginning and advanced chemistry students tend to prefer one type of representation. However, advanced students were more likely to use their preferred representations in a heuristic manner to establish meaning for other representations. Students were found to build conceptual understanding most easily when using familiar types of representations. Molecular-level sketches representing dynamic concepts not easily represented as static images, such as an increase in average molecular velocity, were the most difficult type of representation for students to interpret. These results suggest that students may benefit from instructional strategies that emphasize the heuristic use of multiple representations in chemistry problem solving.

A look at meaning making in science through school‐scientist‐museum partnerships

Partnerships with practising scientists and museums have become an indispensable tool for offering enriched and meaningful hands-on science-learning opportunities, particularly for impoverished urban youth. Yet few studies have examined science in the making in such unique contexts. In this paper, I use qualitative ethnographic case studies to investigate the mediated nature of learning and the ways in which science is co-constructed in three different school-scientist-museum partnerships. I begin with a partnership project in robotics and describe in what ways it was appropriated and transformed differently by two participating classrooms. I then examine a partnership project in astronautics to explore ways of talking and doing science among students and a scientist. In turn, I discuss how a visit to a museum and quarry, as well as actual interactions with artefacts of science, came to contextualize ways of knowing and doing science in a palaeontology project. I conclude with a discussion about the nature and potential of such partnerships for the development of scientific literacy.RésuméLes partenariats avec les scientifiques et les musées sont maintenant des outils indispensables lorsqu’il s’agit d’offrir des occasions riches et significatives pour un apprentissage pratique des sciences, surtout pour les jeunes des milieux urbains défavorisés. Pourtant, peu d’études se sont concentrées sur la pratique des sciences dans des contextes aussi particuliers. Dans cet article, je me sers d’études qualitatives de cas ethnographiques pour enquêter sur le caractère médiatisé de l’apprentissage et les façons dont les sciences sont coconstruites dans le cadre de trois partenariats entre l’école, les scientifiques et les musées. Le premier cas que j’analyse est celui d’un projet de partenariat en robotique, en particulier la façon dont il a été transformé grâce à la participation de deux classes. Je me penche ensuite sur un projet en astronautique pour explorer les différentes interactions scientifiques entre un groupe d’étudiants et un scientifique. Dans un autre cas, je montre comment une visite dans un musée et dans une carrière, unies à de réelles analyses d’artéfacts scientifiques, a pu contextualiser les façons de connaître et d’appliquer les sciences dans un projet paléontologique. Je termine par des considérations sur la nature de tels partenariats et le potentiel qu’ils représentent pour les progrès de l’alphabétisation scientifique.

Activity Theory as a Lens to Examine Project-Based Museum Partnerships in Robotics

What an amazing project! How proud we were to contemplate the results and to present them to the visitors. It’s a project that got my students actively involved from the beginning given its inclusionary nature. To work with robots immediately got their attention. To work with aibo was tempting too. The assembling and programming of the robots posed a real challenge and appeared to entail the kind of problem solving typically reserved for technology experts only. Those with less affinity in technology had the opportunity to be involved in the construction of a city making the project meaningful to all.

Youths’ navigations of botanical gardens: bids for recognition, ways to desettle practice

Abstract How can we ‘desettle’ the colonial discourse and worldview of botanical gardens and its practices in teaching about plants? How can we move towards engaging deeply with who we are and think we are in relation to place, land, and the world, grounded in an intricate sense of harmony? How can we move our work in botanic gardens beyond regarding land, plants, and nature as commodities for causal consumption, or as places to rapidly observe but typically not touch? I explore these three questions in this paper through a weaving together of some of the literature on education and informal learning in botanical gardens and narratives from my research with urban youth of color in the Botanical Garden of Montreal. In doing so, I make evident youths’ navigations of botanical gardens and their bids for recognition as other than detached from nature. Together, these narratives help to rethink taken for granted practices of education about plants in gardens grounded in Western views of science and lack of a more serious engagement with holistic perspectives of humans in and with nature.

Reimagining Science Education in Neoliberal Global Contexts: Sociocultural Accounts of Science Learning in Underserved Communities

This special issue brings together researchers grappling with the production of sociocultural and anthropological accounts of science education in an era marked by complex and contradictory policy frameworks for science education and the divergent ways these policies are informed by neoliberalism. The special issue engages with and aims to “desettle” the current focus on canonical science grounded in a market-driven educational system with high academic standards, predetermined outcomes, and continuous high-stakes assessments. This issue also questions state control of science education, driven by a convenient uniformity that narrowly defines science for a successful few while legitimizing the exclusion of difference (Ambrosio, 2013; Bencze & Carter, 2011; Calabrese Barton, 2001; Smith, 2011; Tan & Calabrese-Barton, 2012). The market-driven education system, grounded in global economies, has led to the misrepresentation of professional science—as a science that contributes to markets, but not to the wellbeing of individuals, societies, and the environment—and a discourse that centers on the individualization of learning in ways that limit students’ sense of contribution (Bencze & Carter, 2011). This market-driven science is “shaped by” the invisible hand of neoliberal ideology, which is complex and uncertain; it sneaks up on us, and education as a whole, in ways hard to pin down and name. Yet seriously engaging in, moving away from, and resisting the market-driven privatization of education, the disposability of youth, and the “nearpathological disdain for community, public values, and the public good” (Giroux, 2012, p. 46; see also Ambrosio, 2013; Harvey, 2005; McGregor, 2009) is crucial to reforming science education. Education has been transformed radically in the last 10 years to reflect a corporate model of market competition. In this model, evaluation is measured through tests in the form of quantitative assessments to evaluate the performance of students, teachers, schools, and entire districts. Hursh (2015) argued that the alignment among government programs to reform education is not an accidental development: “Educators cannot leave economic theories, policies, and practices to economists, but must understand economic theory and policies so as to demystify them and the role they play in creating the world in which we live” (p. 3). Similarly, Smith (2011) contended that increasingly, the justification for teaching science continues to serve the needs of industry in science and technology. We continually hear about the need for a diverse workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and the demand for scientists with the creativity and the ability to innovate solutions to social and environmental problems. Although this call seems to focus on community and social welfare, it nevertheless is driven by corporate agendas. As Smith (2011) pointed out, these arguments for reform in science education highlight the tensions between the relationships of the individual to their communities whereby “marketization has come to be seen as the natural order of things” (p. 1276).

Diverse Urban Youth’s Learning of Science Outside School in University Outreach and Community Science Programs

In this chapter, I explore the role of university outreach and community science programs in the lives of diverse urban youth. Grounded in sociocultural theory, I take for granted that scientific literacy development entails an understanding of the range, or repertoires, of cultural practices the youth engage in, including such settings besides family and school. While most studies report on the product of participation in such practices, I focus on the process of learning and articulate the relationship among forms of participation and identities in science in such practices that are part of youth’s scientific literacy development.