Engaging Underrepresented High School Students in an Urban Environmental and Geoscience Place-Based Curriculum

ABSTRACT

High school students in a large urban area, undergraduate students, and geoscience faculty at a local college used a place-based pedagogical approach to engage in real geoscience problem-based inquiry in a local urban park. The overarching goals of this project were to learn the potential of place-based geoscience research experiences to: influence students' science identities and increase participation of urban youth in science. Student researchers participating in the activity (N = 22) completed Likert-scale pre- and post-surveys, which were analyzed using paired t-tests. Student journal reflections were analyzed. Survey and journal reflection results showed that students' science identities were enhanced and student interest in learning science outdoors increased through participation in the program. The evaluation of the project outcomes add to the body of knowledge describing how outdoor settings and place-based pedagogies can be used to increase urban students' interest in science, and demonstrates how students working with scientists who conduct research in students' communities can be a source of motivation for studying sciences and identity development.

Key words::

• place-based education
• outdoors education
• identity
• motivation
• underrepresented youth

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1007303. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

TABLE I: Student research activities for the week-long research experience.

Table II: Student findings and recommendations.