Youth Disciplinary Identification During Participation in Contemporary Project-Based Science Investigations in School

Abstract

Recent science educational policy reform efforts call for a shift toward practice-focused instruction in kindergarten–Grade 12 science education. We argue that this focus on engaging students in epistemic practices of science opens up new possibilities for the design of learning environments that support the stabilization of learners’ science-linked identities. Learning environments often assume that youth come to them without relevant identity resources to contribute or that the learning environment has no bearing on the disciplinary identification of individuals. We conducted this research while developing a year-long course to teach high school biology by engaging youth in interest-driven projects focused on contemporary topics. We explored how engaging youth in the epistemic practices of science in culturally expansive ways supported their science-linked identification. We propose a model grounded in social practice theory that describes aspects of students’ stabilization of disciplinary identities. We found that (a) deepening participation in scientific practices is linked to whether or not youth have opportunities to coordinate their engagement with their existing identities; and (b) material, relational, and ideational identity resources and qualities of the learning environment mediate how youth stabilize disciplinary identities in interactional moments.

Acknowledgments

This article was made possible by the many hours of design, coteaching, data collection, and partnership of Dr. Leah Bricker. Her commitment to working with and learning from teachers and students is unparalleled. Thank you, Leah. Thank you to the teachers and students who were willing to try out new things, teach us about technology, and figure out how to investigate real science problems with challenging tools. We are grateful for the feedback and recommendations from the reviewers, who worked hard with us to improve the article.

Funding

The project was supported in part through the Educurious project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as through the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Research Center funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SBE 0835854.

Notes

¹ All school, student, and teacher names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

The project was supported in part through the Educurious project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as through the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Research Center funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SBE 0835854.