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Uncovering Student Ownership in Science Learning: The Making of a Student Created Mini-Documentary

Posted on: Friday, 28 October 2005, 03:00 CDT

By O'Neill, Tara; Barton, Angela Calabrese

An important challenge in urban science education is finding ways to engage all students in the learning of science. However, research in this area has consistenly shown that around middle school student engagement in science wanes. Using critical ethnographic methods this study reveals how students cultivate a sense of ownership in an informal science video project. Student ownership of what they they learn plays an important role in how they engage in the learning environment. In this study ownership is characterized by five themes, and the notion of student ownership science is challenged as an outcome. Ownership is defined as a complex, multifaceted process that captures the relationships that students build between themselves, as youth and as learners, with science as the subject they aspire to participate in and with the context in which that participation takes place.

As science educators with a primary interest in the education of high-poverty urban youth, we (the authors) 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 do middle and upper class children. Black and Hispanic children in high-poverty environments have the largest dropout rates in the United States at 16.8% and 22.7%, respectively (U.S Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1999).

New York City Schools' Region 1 (the region in which the study takes place) eighth-grade state science test results revealed large discrepancy between the science achievement of Black and Hispanic students and their White counterparts, scoring passing rates of 29.4%, 28.9%, and 62.6%, respectively, in the 2001-2002 school year (New York City Board of Education, 2003). These numbers indicate that the science education community has not made lasting and valued science connections with urban students from high-poverty and minority communities. In order to create these science connections that will help engage high-poverty urban students in science learning, learning communities must be created where students have the opportunity to develop ownership in science -ownership of scientific ideas, science process, and the place of science in their lives.

In our own work, we have turned to informal science learning settings as a way to explore how youth engage in science when not confined by the traditional structure of school science. Indeed, as will become clear via the description of the video production process and the production participants presented in the Methods section of this paper, we have been "pushed" into informal settings by the youths themselves. Therefore, in this paper the following research questions are addressed:

* Why does student ownership in science matter among high poverty urban students?

* What qualities define student ownership in science learning in the context of an informal after school science/technology club?

Conceptual Framework: Situating Ownership

Why Unpack Ownership in Science and Informal Settings?

Informal science learning has been described as learning that takes place when the science taught is not bound by a predesigned curriculum but emerges from students' questions and interests surrounding some activity or investigation (Rahm, 2001). Important to this view is the idea 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.

A number of studies have examined science engagement in informal and urban settings. However, those studies of most interest to us are those drawing upon a sociocultural and social cognition approach to understanding student experience. These perspectives underscore 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 (Lave & Wagner 1991; Rahm, 2001). Proponents of situated cognition claim that an experience or discovery is educational when it is connected to the context and culture within which that experience occurred and can be built upon for future learning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wagner, 1991).

For example, Rahm (2001 ) and Fusco (2001) have explored the roles community gardening programs play in students' identity development. Davis (2001) has explored the social structures and forces facilitating and impeding the implementation of practices and the acquisition of capital in apprenticeship-like communities. Calabrese Barton and her colleagues (Barton, 2001, 2003 a, b; Fusco, 2001; Fusco & Barton, 2001) have explored how the sociocultural context of community-based afterschool programs and the resources students bring to bear in those communities relate to students' individual and group efforts to design new ways of using and producing science that is both with and for the community. In addition, these studies explored how the sociocultural context of such programs related to students' development of new ways to relate to science and to claim authority in science.

Combined, these studies offer us two primary claims. First, science is a social, cultural, and political practice, and 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 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 expected 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 the studies in informal education have directly addressed the question of what student ownership is.

More closely honing in on the idea of ownership, Rennie, Feher, Dierking, and FaIk (2003) reported 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 agrees that because informal learning settings advocate free choice, learners have some choice and control over what and how they learn, leading to the likelihood that they will become more emotionally and intellectually connected to the science explored (Rennie et al., 2003 ). Free choice in informal settings also allows participating individuals to associate more freely with content topics and physical and social environments that are meaningful and relevant (Rennie &McClafferty, 1996;Schauble & Bartel, 1997). In other words, there is an assumed understanding that students in informal science settings have greater ownership over the science learned and how the science learned is appropriated and eventually used, as compared to those in traditional school science settings.

In our work in informal learning environments, we have come to value ownership in science learning. Our own experiences support the belief that the relationship between the informal place in which science is practiced and the individuals who practice that science allows for the learner to have greater control over the process. However, these experiences also suggest that how and why the relationship between the individual and place is formed has great consequence for what the learners think they have choice and control over. We also believe that ownership has consequence for the kinds of choices learners deem worthwhile. Thus, the idea of students having greater ownership of science learning in informal learning environments needs to be unpacked, especially if science teachers and science education researchers want to create new ways of cultivating student ownership in school science settings.

A few articles have indicated that there is a positive relationship between science learning and student ownership. For example, Prain and Hand (1998) suggested that students' increased sense of ownership of 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 Education Standards, Wright (1998) argued that, in order for the standards to achieve their goal of 100% 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) presented strategies for converting traditional "recipe-based" laboratory experiences into "student-governed" investigations. DeGolier (2002) argued that such a shift from "recipe-based" to "student-governed" laboratory experiments in science teaching is important because it will enable students to take more active ownership of theirlearning. However, as student ownership is not the primary focus of these articles, none address the question of what ownership is.

To deepen our understanding of ownership in learning, we found that we needed to look outside of science education circles. The idea of student ownership has been studied primarily in the literature concerning school architecture and use of space (Killeen, Evans, andDanko, 2003; Rydeen 2003) and in relation to literacy and social studies (Ediger, 2001). In these studies, student ownership has been characterized through four elements: Having control over the learning environment, connecting with and personalizing the learning process, expressing territoriality, and being involved or invested in one ' s learning. Although there is some disagreement among school architectural and literacy studies about whether "control" over the learning environment or a connection with and personalization of the learning environment is more important, there is consensus that student ownership should lead to greater active participation and engagement in the learning process (Bandura, 1997).

Methodology

This study employed a qualitative method of research, specifically critical ethnography, for three primary reasons. First, critical ethnography provides 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 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. Specifically, we 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 New York City (NYC), to design and produce two mini-documentaries in an after school science/ technology club that expressed their ideas about science in their lives (entitled, "What We Bring To Science" and "Survival"). By the nature of making a documentary, the students used multiple forms of expression and had the power to choose what they thought was important for people to know.

In the making of this mini-documentary, the students conceived the ideas, wrote the storyboards, selected the soundtrack, and directed all footage. By having primary control in making the video, the students expressed the ideas/concepts they found relevant and investigated science content that was of particular interest to them. For example, the first video, "What We Bring to Science," focused primarily on physical and life science content with the investigation of bouncing basketballs, double dutch, and why sweating is beneficial to people. The second video, "Survival," focused primarily on environmental science content (i.e., how pollution effects the survival of animals and what animals need to survive).

Various forms of data were collected through the course of the video project (see Table 1 ), including the completed mini- documentaries, 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 collection of student work from the video process (i.e., story boards, etc.).

Data were analyzed using a grounded processes approach. When we first began the analysis we were not seeking to define or characterize ownership. Instead, we worked to elucidate how the youth involved were defining science in their project and how they viewed their roles in the proj ect. From this analysis we began to see trends in the ways students viewed science and themselves in relation to science, the ways they leveraged their resources in support of the project, and the ways students used the project to make significant changes in their lives, both in and out of school. In fact, these three trends served as the primary coding trees in our data.

As the process unfolded, we began to notice that the patterns emerging in our data were pointing toward a lager theme - that of ownership. Once we hit upon this idea, we began to read more about ownership in the literature and began to examine the data for relationships within and across these patterns we detected, based both on out data and what we read. From this generative coding process we settled on the importance of ownership as the overarching theme in the data and used the emergent patterns in support of this theme. As we worked through the larger theme of ownership and patterns we detected in support of the larger theme, we tested them against multiple forms of data (group semi structured interviews, individual interviews, video footage, project field notes, and participatory observations) and brought them back to the student participants for their feedback and clarification.

The video project has taken place over the 2001-2003 school years. During this time, the project included two groups of students making two different mini-documentaries (see Table 2). Although much of the process of making the mini-documentaries was consistent across the two groups, there was 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, "Fabulous Five" and "Survival." All students in the following text are referred to by their self-selected pseudonym.

Table 1

Summary Data Table

Fabulous Five is credited with founding the video project in the 2001 -2002 school year. It started when a sixth grader boy, Star, volunteered to help edit some video footage Tara O'Neill (one of the authors of this paper) had shot while working on another project with his class. In the first meeting with the group, consisting of Star and four other sixth graders, MeI, Jose, Janice, and Adel, Tara explained that all ideas were valuable and important and shared her ideas for the existing video footage. By the third meeting, the Fabulous Five told Tara that they were not excited about her ideas and would really like to make a science movie of their own.

In September of the 2002-2003 school year, Tara returned to the Broken Hill School to conduct informal debriefing interviews with the Fabulous Five. In one of these interviews, they stated that they wanted to be part of making a second movie but instead of making the movie themselves, they wanted to teach a new group of sixth graders how to make their own movie. Worried that there might be an overwhelming amount of interest from the sixth grade, they developed an application process. In order to participate in the project, each member of this new group submitted a one-page explanation of the reasons they wanted to be part of the video project and the role they wanted (i.e., producer, director, music director, etc.), along with a written recommendation from a sixth grade teacher. In addition, each applicant had to attend an informational meeting in which the Fabulous Five explained the video project.

Table 2

Study Participants

In its first year, Fabulous Five met for approximately 3 5 minutes, twice a week over 5 months, during the school's lunch and recess time. These meetings initially took place in their science classroom, but for convenience meetings were moved to the library. During the first 3 weeks Fabulous Five explored and developed their theme for the mini-documentary, determined who would do which of the production jobs (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), and developed a vague description of the footage to be collected. Fabulous Five spent from March to May collecting video footage and selecting songs for the movie. The production crew continued to meet after May for the editing phase of the process. By June, the Fabulous Five had produced a 23 minute mini-documentary to answer the guiding question, "How do you see and use science in your everyday lives?" through interviews, music selections, and varied film footage.

In September of the 2002-2003 school year, four of the five students were brought together to deconstruct the video and the production process. As a result of schedule conflicts it was difficult for Janice to be part of the group meetings, which took place, two days a week, during lunch. Each of the debriefing meetings was approximately 30 minutes and took place in the school's library during lunch. The foci of the 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.

As a result of these meetings, the second video group was formed in January 2003. As with Fabulous Five, Survival had the freedom to select any theme as long as they could explain what it had to do with science. They chose to make a mini-documentary about the things people and animals need in order to survive. The methods employed for the creation of the second minidocumentary were much the same as the first. However, by the time we began the production process with Survival, the Broken Hill School had granted the video project afterschool program stat\us and provided a space to meet every Tuesday afternoon.

Unpacking Ownership

Analysis of the data revealed five key themes (see Table 3) that apply to all studentparticipants ofthe video project. These themes are the following:

1. Positive and empowering perceptions of self in relation to science and the video project.

2. Purposeful expenditure of human, social, and material capital.

3. Expressions of pride in science, self, school, work, andneighbrohood.

4. Agency through personal and community change.

5. Positive and realistic personal and community changes.

In the following sections each of these themes is discussed. In addition, though each theme is student driven, underlying each of these themes is the socal emvrionment in which the video project took place. Therefore, in discussing the themes the role of the instrcutor and the design of the video project as each relates to the theme is also discussed.

Table 3

Summary of Themes

Theme 1: Positive and Empowering Perceptions of Self in Relation to Science and the Video Project

Throughout the video production process and in each of their completed mini-documentaries, students from both Fabulous Five and Survival expressed how they viewed themselves, in general, in relation to science, with respect to school, and to the video project, using three media forms within their mini-documentaries - direct speech (statements in movie and/or individual interviews), images they selected for the movie and those they discarded, and music selections. We noted four different ways in which students consistently expressed positive views of themselves: By viewing themselves as teachers, problems solvers, people who know science, and people who will need science to achieve their future professional goals.

Viewing oneself as a teacher and openly expressing that view was the most common theme that emerged in how the students represented themselves. Both groups believed that a fundamental goal of their minidocumentaries was to create a video to teach other students and teachers about science in their lives and 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. In the monologue Adel stated,

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 for 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.

This example is 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 furture professional goals throughout the video proj ect, such as when the students talked about to whom they wanted to show the video (i.e., fifth grade students, "so that they could learn some science"), what they wanted to make their videos about (i.e., survival, because their classmates needed to learn about survival), where their video should take place (i.e., the neighbrohood 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 preconference workshop at the 2002 National Association of Research in Science Teaching annual meeting so they could share their movie with science educationresearchers. During this session students were asked if they felt they had achieved their goal of teaching science to others. The students answered that they thought they had achieved the goal of teaching science to their peers and those younger then themselves, but they also thought they had taught their teachers. However, 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 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 (Janice): Yeah, some of them.

Fabulous Five (Star): Mostly science teachers. Like Ms. P, she don't teach with textbooks no more.

Fabulous Five (Adel): Like Mr M, after he saw the movie in changed his way of teaching a lot... .I'm not in his class anymore but when I go to vi sit I see that he don't have that many notes anymore. Now, he uses the real thing. He used examples.

Theme 2: Purposeful Expenditure of Human, Social and Material Capital

In the video project, the students purposefully and actively chose to expend their material, social, and human capital. Although numerous examples of students' expense of capital exist, there are three that capture broadly the means and modes by which the youth expended their capital.

First, students devoted coveted personal time to the project. Two of the most valuable times in these middle school students' days were lunch time and the hour between the time school ended and when they need to be home helping their families. As such, to elect to use this time to take part in the video proj ect is an enormous expense of the students' social and material capital.

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 ways 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 was that the second group would in turn teach students 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.

Theme 3: Expressions of Pride in Science, in Self, School, Work, and Neighborhood

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. For example, just after the opening monologue 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 is 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.

Among the most powerful messages from the video production process for both groups was 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 of what they produced (made evident by wanting to show their movie to their peers and teachers), neither felt they had done all they could and, thus, took the opportunity to create a second video.

Maybe most importantly, however, is the fact the both groups went to such lengths to show themselves in a positive light. Both groups used the video project as a means for representing 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.

Theme 4: Agency Through Personal and Community Change

The fourth theme 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 (a) the use of the video project for access to material resources and (b) the use of the video project to build social capital.

Although 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, laptop 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 created a film t\hat their classmates would enjoy. 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 peers 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' standing within the social order. For example, in a videoproduction debriefing meeting three months after the members of Fabulous Five had premiered their movie to the sixth-grade class, one of the researchers asked them what they thought they gained from taking part in the project. One of the participants answered, "It made me popular."

Theme 5: Expressed Positive and Realistic Visions for the Role of Science in Their Lives

Through the video-production process and the videos themselves, both production crews expressed positive views of science and highlighted the ways in which science was important to them. The theme of Survival's video was that science is needed to help provide humans and other animals with the bare necessities needed 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.

The 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 let's 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 opposed to a study designed only for "smart" students, as science is so often perceived. The Fabulous Five made a video that makes science accessible to a population (minority and elementary students) that often does not feel a connection to science, evidenced by these students' lack of participation in their science classes (as observed during classroom observations).

Discussion

This paper characterizes what ownership looks like in the science video project. Looking across the five themes indicates that ownership exists within two dialects: the dialectic between process and outcome and the dialectic between the social and individual.

Process and Outcome

In the research literature, ownership is discussed as a product or an outcome - as something desirable for students to achieve and, once achieved, that will help students engage more readily in the learning process. Yet, when examining ownership in our own study as an outcome, we noticed that ownership varies from student to student and also within the same student from moment to moment. Thus, we propose that ownership is a dynamic and generative process that exists in tension with ownership as an outcome.

The students in the video project began the project with certain ideas about what they wanted to make a movie about. As the movie project progressed, students worked to include their views of themselves or of science, making the project something that more closely approximated their lives. For example, tracing the students ' investment of their capital in the proj ect over time reveals that as students began to invest more time and more personal experience in the project, they began challenging and questioning how achievable their goals were and what resources they needed to accomplish their goals. Fabulous Five quickly moved from working with footage gathered by one of the researchers to gathering their own footage and from filming in school-based terms to including ideas and footage from the neighborhood. Survival moved from defining survival in school-based terms to including ideas and footage from the neighborhood and the zoo. Both groups transformed from being students making a video to teachers of other students.

The generative nature of ownership plays out across the five themes presented earlier and has clear implications for science learning. For example, students expressed ownership by having positive views of themselves as science users and producers and by leveraging their resources in support of the project. However, students leveraged resources to focus the video project on topics they already felt comfortable with, thereby increasing the likelihood that they would view themselves favorably with respect to the content of the video. Likewise, when they were successful in pushing the topic toward areas of science they felt comfortable with, they created more and new opportunities to inegrate a diversity of personal (not always science related) resources into the project.

The Individual and the Social Aspect of Ownership

Each of the themes presented in this paper also reveals how student ownership depends upon both the student and the context in which that student is working. At the personal level, students each have their own sets of experiences and cultural beliefs that form their individual identities. As such, the aspects of an experience that encourage students to express ownership of their learning and the way they experience this ownership will differ based on the individual and the context. 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 expression of pride in themselves, their work, and the group, purposeful use of capital, and positive views of themselves in relation to science. Thus, the context in which the learning takes place is critical.

When students wanted to expand the time made available for them to work on the proj ect requesting to have production meetings 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 shows just how much students ' ability 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 nontraditional view of science, the project instructor had listed any number ofreasons why what was being presented was not "real" science, the students may have developed an alternate, less positive, self-image in relation to science and the video project.

Implications

Supporting students in developing ownership can be a powerful way to encourage students to participate in science learning opportunities. The themes presented in this manuscript point out that students express ownership in science 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 effect 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 the individual and the social space.

Urban science educators have been challenged with declining interest, attitudes, and achievement among all learners in the middle school years and, in particular, among students from low- income and African American and Latino communities. Many solutions have been offered in the effort to reverse these trends, from building curriculum out of student experiences to incorporating mentoring androle models. What this study on ownership reveals is that undergirding these kinds of solutions ought to be a learning environment that supports students in building a sense of ownership in science - a sense of control and mastery within the domain of science. This sense of ownership can be cultivated when the curricular or pedagogical approaches supports students in constantly developing, in community with others, positive views of self and science, in leveraging their personal resources toward science activity (even when those resources seem only remotely connected to the science at hand) and having the space to exhibit pride in themselves, their schools, and their communities.

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Tara O'Neill and Angela Calabrese Barton

Teachers College, Columbia University

Author Note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tara O'Neill, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.

Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to tbo2001@columbia.edu

Copyright School Science and Mathematics Association, Incorporated Oct 2005

Source: School Science and Mathematics

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