UC Berkeley

Students bring a wealth of resources to science learning contexts, including knowledge of their everyday worlds. Yet within traditional approaches to K-12 science instruction, students typically are not given opportunities to draw upon this knowledge. In this dissertation, I examine the potential of place-based science curriculum and a digital mapping tool to support students’ conceptually rich science learning by leveraging their local knowledge.

Through design-based research, I developed an 18-lesson sequence and then analyzed 27 fifth graders’ participation within it to examine the potential of place-based science inquiry. Key features of the lesson sequence included (a) students’ use of a participatory geographic information system (GIS) mapping tool, Local Ground, to support investigating an ecological system - life underfoot on their schoolyard, and (b) students’ engagement in disciplinary practices of soil ecologists (e.g., observation at field sites, isolating and measuring variables, aggregating and visualizing data, and generating evidence-based arguments) to further support their understanding of both science knowledge-building practices and ecological systems.

Analyses of student dyads’ GIS map use in whole class presentations revealed that the map often afforded students opportunities to integrate their everyday knowledge with data collection experiences in sensemaking. Specifically, the map supported students as they drew upon data generated at different sites and different moments in time as they conjectured and contested arguments about relations between variables like soil moisture, earthworm counts, and shade, digging deep into student-generated data and reasoning about complex ecological relationships and processes.

Longitudinal analyses of two focal dyads over the 18 lessons revealed that student’s desires, their emergent affect-laden goals, shaped how they engaged in science disciplinary practices. Students’ desires sometimes led them deeper into reasoning about ecological systems and closer into alignment with ecologists’ sampling and representational practices, and sometimes led them further away. In contrasting the two pairs’ experiences within the same curriculum, this analysis offers insights into how science practices may become needed in formal science contexts.

This dissertation examines the potential of new forms and contexts to support conceptually rich science learning opportunities. This research contributes to the fields’ understanding of how we might engage students in science disciplinary practices, in ways that productively build on children’s extensive experiences, affect-laden goals, and varied perspectives