Learning Science in Informal Settings

Wolff-Michael Roth

Abstract
It is well known that there are gaps between the science students learn at school and what they do when
science knowledge is called for out of school; and this, too, is the case for students in those countries who
do well on international comparative tests. It is equally well known that many students leave school sci-
ence as soon as it is no longer a required subject. Despite many reforms in science education and sci-
ence teaching, little has changed. Yet we already know—at least intuitively—what it takes to bridge both
gaps. This knowledge exists in the old adage that states, “Practice makes perfect.” The adage might be
heard in the sense that one has to do something many times over before getting good at it. But one can
also hear it in the sense of “learning in practice gives us perfect knowledge.” In this paper, I am con-
cerned with learning in practice in the second sense, which also may imply acting according to the adage.
I theorize and describe a recent reform experiment in which science students were enabled to learn by
engaging in the real thing—students contribute to the environmental knowledge of their village community
and, in the process, learn science. I use a concrete case where the gap was addressed simultaneously
while I was teaching together with a new teacher (teaching intern) a unit on environmental science. I con-
clude by articulating why it makes sense to view middle and high school students as resources for knowl-
edge building in their community.

Toward a Different View of Learning and Knowing

A phenomenological perspective on learning has become important to my thinking, because it fo-
cuses on what is salient to people and therefore why they do what they do, therefore providing them with
a ground and reason for marking out and remarking sense in the situations in which they find themselves.
In a phenomenological approach, all knowing is developed by living and sensing human beings and al-
ways tied to our material bodies. The body, which in each case (i.e., for each person) is mine, is the
common texture of all objects and therefore the general instrument that mediates my comprehension. My
body, endowed with senses, is the very reason for sense to exist not only with respect to natural objects
but also with respect to the language I use. Thus, even recent neuroscientific research confirms that I
know the roundness of balls not by attaching the attribute “round” to some objects but because, in seeing
balls, I know how my perceptions would change if I were to glide my hands over or walk around the ball.
Knowing therefore always implies a position and associated perspectives and intentionality. Knowing
means having and taking position in a world, itself associated with emotional valence, not some stuff I
keep in my memory to be called up by some mini-me, my me-homunculus. (Even constructivist talk about
learning has the ring of a homunculus theory. One might ask more frequently, “Who is it that constructs
new scientific knowledge?” “Who is building something?” and “What are the materials that is knowledge
being built with?”)

This first person perspective, however, does not lead to solipsism, because, though I am singular,
I only know about my singularity and me because I have taken the perspective on myself as through the
eyes of the other. Only because I see myself doing—for example, shout at another person—what others
also do who denote this doing to be an expression of anger do I know what it means to be and feel angry.
My understanding of myself fundamentally is mediated by my understanding of another. All subjective
knowing and understanding inherently is intersubjective knowing and understanding.

The bodily experience of a sensible world is involved in this way not only when it comes to ob-
jects but also when it comes to words, which, as sound wave or letter on the page, are as material in na-
ture as the ball. Before a ball is a sign for a concept it is an event that seizes my body—through the
senses—and its involvement of my body circumscribes the level of signification on which it draws for sup-
port. Because concepts are multiplicities in the sense that they consist of many irreducible but connected

16
experiences—the connection being my body that has interacted with a range of objects across a multiplic-
ity of situations—the presentation of one such experience (potentially) activates the traces all other forms
and instances of experience have left in my body—such as when the word “humid” or the color blue can
give us a sense of moistness and coolness but our hole bodily schema are reorganized as if oriented to-
ward these conditions and what we do and act when they occur.

When I learn about titrations, the actions of turning the tap, watching the acid flow into the base,
and observing its color eventually change are part of my understanding of acid–base relations. That is,
the concept of acid–base titration consists of a complex of bodily movements that are invoked every time I
hear the term “acid–base titration.” Unlike becoming abstracted in the way Piaget proposed, scientific
knowledge becomes more concrete and is deeply integrated with our bodily knowing of how the world
works—something I could ascertain in multi-year ethnographies of scientists at work. In the way my hear-
ing of “ball” invokes my bodily senses of what it feels like seeing, touching, throwing, kicking, and even
smelling a (leather) ball, in the same way knowledge about acids and bases, animals, plants, and forces
is tied to the physical experiences in the contexts of which I have heard the sound that we recognize as
“ball.” Hearing and understanding sounds (i.e., words) involves the same (mirror) neurons as in the situa-
tions that the sounds are normally used.

From a phenomenological perspective, therefore, my bodily experience of the material world is

the very ground for our understanding of this world—I am not a computer-like brain encased in a fleshy
body that constructs abstract knowledge but a living teacher who knows classrooms and students through
the many hours in classrooms spent with real students. I personally have come to know many classrooms
and have been acting there in the same way that I have come to know gardening or bicycling; all three
engage me with my body–mind as a whole. I am becoming as a teacher through being in science class-
rooms, taking positions, and navigating their material and social contingencies.

This bodily (practical) understanding also underpins my understanding of words, which are but
signs among other material signs that I perceive and process as part of my being in the world. Being in
the world, I also find myself in relationships with other human beings, which, on one level, are and have
material bodies similar to my own. Knowing to teach is not something abstracted and constructed in an
individual mind. I learn to be a teacher by being in the classroom populated by students, desks, chalk-
boards, and other equipment; and I am (continuously and lifelong) becoming as a teacher in the same
way as well. I am a teacher because I know what it feels to be a teacher. Others—students in the class-
room and teachers in the staffroom—constitute my essential counterparts, a changing social environment,
which I experience in a structured and structuring way by interacting with them as I interact with the mate-
rial world. That is, I experience the social environment not as something different from the material envi-
ronment but as another aspect of my environment—my lifeworld—in which I find myself with my material
body, and which I come to know with and through this material inclusion in the world generally and my
familiar settings such as classrooms in particular. I am subject to a process of socialization precisely be-
cause my body has the biological property of being open to the (social, material) world, fashioned by the
material and cultural conditions of my existence; in fact, my individuation and individualization themselves
are product of this socialization where the singularity of my personal Self is forged in and through the re-
ports with others.

Therefore, if I teach science, the students, classroom, and I together constitute a world. I come to
know this world of the science classroom, patterned in the many ways they are, through this bodily inclu-
sion: Using test tubes, walking between the laboratory benches, or interacting with students as they en-
gage in some laboratory task all involve me in a bodily way—including the feeling of emotional highs,
when I am carried away in my teaching, or the disappointment that comes with the feeling that I could
have done better. What I know is intimately tied to these students, this classroom, and my own history of
being there. As I know both from personal experience and through my research, even the best and most
experienced teachers have to rebuild the knowledgeable relations with the students and material setting
when they move to a new setting, school, classroom, students, administration, and colleagues. My learn-
ing and knowing are fundamentally connected to these experiences.

17
 In these examples, we see that for phenomenological philosophers and sociologists, there is no
separation of the contents and processes of knowing. The advances phenomenological studies have
made lie in showing us how to refuse the distinction between content and container that makes the psy-
che a specific location—the brain in its case between the ears and underneath the skull. Because my
mind is not a substance in a container and because my knowing only exists in my actions, how to teach
me science (rather than some anonymous other) is the big question science educators have to ask. Be-
cause every me is different, only those forms of science teaching that address themselves to each me
ever will be able to be a science education for all as the familiar slogan goes in recent reform policies.

If I were to stop here with my epistemological considerations, I would not have made a lot of pro-
gress because fundamentally, I would not have dealt with the individual as the center and origin of know-
ing. There needs to be an aspect in my actions that always transcends my being, directed to the world, an
intentionality toward the other, an intentionality which I recognize in turn in the actions of others. All ac-
tions, therefore, are characterized by an interlocking set of relations that constitute a primordial totality:
With the philosopher Martin Heidegger I might say that the for-the-sake-of-which denotes an in-order-to,
the in-order-to denotes a what-for, the what-for denotes a what-in of letting something be relevant, and
the latter denotes a what-with of relevance. These relations form an irreducible unit that marks out the
sense available for each me in any situation. These relations and intentions we only learn by participating
in social interactions with others. In fact, the emergence of these relations and my participation in socie-
tally legitimized activity is coextensive. These relations can also be found to lie at the hard of an orienta-
tion to knowing that has very different historical roots and cultural-historical development—dialectical
theories as realized in the psychological and epistemological studies of Lev Vygotsky, Alexei Leont’ev,
Klaus Holzkamp, and Evald Il’enkov. The works of these authors constituted the second major influence
on my praxis and theory of science teaching.

Thus far, I developed the idea of knowing as residing in my taking up a position in the world and
participating in reproducing knowing at the very moment they it is produced. With my position also are de-
fined my dispositions, suppositions, and presuppositions; and these characterize my propositions that
lead to the exposition of sense and my Self (identity). Knowing does not exist somewhere as a product in
my head but lies in the continued participation in societally relevant activity; because nobody, not even a
doctor with a brain scanner, has access to my mind, others do not know me other than through what I do
and say. It is therefore through my participation that I learn and expose what I know: participation is coex-
tensive with learning and knowing. When I work with others, for example, in coteaching science lessons, I
not only get the job done collectively but I also learn with the other.

To me, these ideas about knowing and learning have not come through theory; I first involved stu-
dents in activities that they controlled, for example, in environmental action, and then theorized their
learning in terms of participation in existing activities and forms of life. I first taught together in the same
classroom with other teachers before I understood and theorized the processes of being and becoming as
a teacher in terms of a reflexive, dialectical phenomenology. That is, my theorizing—talking about prac-
tice—always followed my classroom practice.

The classroom practice I evolved while teaching with others, researched, and theorized involves,
on the student side, their active participation in some lifeform, that is, societally relevant activity. Environ-
mentalism is the one form that I have studied most closely and extensively. Here, students define them-
selves how they contribute to environmental concerns that already exist in their city, municipality, or vil-
lage and what they need to do so (e.g., tools, instruments, books, etc.). Students learn by participating in
relevant activity, and in this, simultaneously produce and reproduce the form of activity in their commu-
nity. In the following section, I describe one of these experiments in greater detail focusing on learning
science by participating in and contributing to environmentalism in one village community.

18
Learning Science in and for the Community
My design of new and innovative learning environments increasingly has focused on the condi-
tions that constitute and mark sense in any situation. These conditions include the orientation of acting
human beings toward the five moments of relevance in useful activity: for-the-sake-of-which, in-order-to,
what-for, what-in, and what-with. These moments are realized when we participate in and therefore con-
tribute to constituting societally motivated activity, such as gardening, farming, taking care of others, or
enacting environmental stewardship. In this section, I describe one of my projects conducted in the village
community where I live and where I taught an environment-oriented science unit. Throughout this section,
readers should keep in mind this fivefold orientation the described activity allowed students to mark and
remark sense.

Nadely Boyd, a teaching intern at my university, and I taught together as part of a project de-
signed to study knowing and learning in heterogeneous communities. After having come to understand
that students’ control over the motive of activity is central to motivation and emotion, I had increasingly
designed learning environment where students learned science by designing their own projects and arti-
facts. As part of these initial studies during the early 1990s, I realized that there was a fundamental prob-
lem with school tasks in that they did not have their place in the larger scheme of society other than
re/producing schooling. I began to think/argue that science educators needed to de-institutionalize sci-
ence education so that students learn science by contributing to society at large.

It was at this point that I met Nadely Boyd, who was a teaching intern at a middle school near my
home. I suggested that we teach primarily focusing on environmentalism both as everyday activity and as
context for school science and that I would teach with her. She agreed. In the early part of the project, Mi-
chael Bowen, my doctoral student who also held a graduate degree in ecology, assisted us. My doctoral
student Stuart Lee, a trained biochemist, later joined us and became a practicing member of an activist
group that attempts to change policy and peoples’ practices pertaining to the environmental health of
Hagan Creek within the community of Central Saanich, where I am also a resident.

Nadely and I organized the curriculum around the ideas that students would learn science as they
generated societally relevant knowledge, which they would contributed to the village community through
exhibits at an open-house event organized by environmentalists already operating within the village.
Based on previous research, I was convinced that students would learn much more than that the curricu-
lum for that grade level prescribed. In fact, by participating in community-based environmentalism (a so-
cietally motivated activity and practice), both environmentalists and students learn science by focusing on
stream and watershed health and its sometimes-severe problems with quantity and quality of water that is
threatening Central Saanich.
Village Context

Part of Central Saanich is located in the Hagan Creek watershed. In Central Saanich and the wa-
tershed as a whole, water has been a problem for many years. Despite being located on the West Coast
of Canada, Central Saanich has a relatively dry climate (about 850 millimeters of precipitation per year)
with hot dry summers and moderately wet winters. Concomitant with the climate, recent developments
have exacerbated the water problem. Farmers have straightened the local creeks (Figure 1.a) thereby
decreasing the amount of water retained in the soil available for filtering into and supplying the aquifer.

At the same time, the farmers draw on the creek and groundwater during the dry summer
months, further increasing the pressure on the valuable resource. Other residents in the watershed have
individual wells that draw on the aquifers. Their water is biologically and chemically contaminated during
the dry period of the year so that they drive five kilometers to the next gas stations to get useable water, a
situation that, among others, has led to a long and acrimonious public debate, where science became
both tool and contested terrain. Urbanization and the related increase in impervious surfaces (pavement),
losses of forest cover throughout the watershed and along the stream banks (e.g., Figure 1.a, b), losses

19
 of wetlands and recharge ar-
eas (the areas near Figure 1.a
were wetland prior to the arri-
val of the settlers), and the
loss of natural stream condi-
tions further worsened the wa-
ter problem.
In addition to the decreas-
ing amounts, the water has
been affected by human activ-
ity in qualitative ways as well.
Storm drains and ditches
conduct rainwater into Hagan
Creek and its tributaries and
away from these newly devel-
oped areas—along with the
pollutants of suburbia, lawn
chemicals and car leakage.
The community of Central
Saanich introduced an indus-
trial park to the watershed,
Figure 1. What has been a creek before the first settlers came has been turned into a which is carefully contained
drainage channel (a) and ditch for the wastes of an industrial area (b). (© Wolff-Michael within a four-block boundary
Roth, used with permission) (at the top end of Figure 1.b).
The drains of its machine
shops and biotechnology labs
(Figure 2) empty into “stinky ditch” (Figure 1.b), which, in turn, empties into Hagan Creek. To increase its
potential to carry away water in a rapid manner, the creek itself has been straightened and deepened in
some areas (e.g., Figure 1.a), and much of the covering vegetation has been removed, thereby increas-
ing erosion and pollution from the surrounding farmers’ fields. These physical changes have led to in-
creased erosion and silt load in the wet winter months, and are responsible for low water levels and high
water temperatures during the dry summer months when (legal and illegal) pumping for irrigation pur-
poses taxes the creek. These water woes of the community are periodic and repeated features in the lo-
cal news papers, community pamphlets, and fliers.

The Hagan Creek~ ennes Watershed Project, an environmental group, arose from the concerns
about water quality and was “fishing for community support,” as one of the articles stated. The actions of
the group include monitoring water quantity and quality or contributing the rewriting of community policies
related to Hagan Creek, the watershed, and the quality and quantity of water. The group created and ac-
tively promotes a stewardship program, builds riffle structures in the stream to increase cutthroat trout
habitat, builds fences designed to protect the riparian areas, and monitors the number of cutthroat trout in
different parts of the creek. Other activities include replanting riparian areas for increased shading to re-
sult in a lowering of water temperature more suitable for fish. The environmentalists engage in educa-
tional activities, which includes giving presentations throughout the community or assisting children in
their Hagan Creek-related investigations. Every now and then, a newspaper article features the work of
this group. It is with such newspaper articles that I have been beginning the science units at the middle
school; Nadely and I, for example, used an article that called on citizens in the community to contribute to
the currently available knowledge and direct actions to understand and change the health of the Hagan
Creek watershed.

20
 My description so far
shows that there are environ-
mental concerns that exist in
the village community and
that they are publicly avail-
able, both through the news-
paper articles and the partici-
pation of the
environmentalists in a variety
of activities including town hall
meetings, signs that sprout up
in the watershed marking the
creek and its fish habitat,
through the public talks, and
so on. This situation, there-
fore, constitutes environmen-
talism as a legitimate societal
activity. It exists in the com-
munity, continuously being
re/produced in and through
every action on the part of the
environmentalists and others Figure 2. This industrial park produces toxic wastes that are washed into a local creek
who do something about the through a channel affectionately denoted by stinky ditch. (© Wolff-Michael Roth, used
sorry state of the watershed. It with permission)
is motive-laden activity, for it
contributes to the long-term
health of watershed and the people inhabiting it. Participating in such an activity, students not only con-
tribute to the community but also re/produce environmentalism as a legitimate form of societal activity,
and thereby change their own forms of participation—i.e., students learn.
Learning Science by Producing Environmental Knowledge for the Community

Given the urgency and importance of the water problems in Central Saanich, it does not surprise
that I easily convinced Nadely, the principal, and a few other teachers at the middle school to participate
in a project where students would learn science by investigating the Hagan Creek watershed. I had of-
fered interested teachers to coteach a unit with them, which means that we take collective responsibility
for planning, enacting, and evaluating the curriculum. In the school, Nadely was assigned to teach,
among others, science in a seventh-grade class.

Once introduced to the newspaper articles featuring the problems of the region in general and the
Hagan Creek watershed in particular, and feeling addressed by the environmentalists’ invitation to the
community, the children’s interests was sparked by their desire to help. This desire was further fueled
when the leader of the environmentalists came to class to talk in person about the salient issues. Stu-
dents immediately volunteered to clean up the creek and to investigate its various facets. Introduced by
the environmentalists to a variety of tools and techniques, students designed and conducted their own in-
vestigations at different parts of Hagan Creek, which they ultimately would report, upon my suggestion, to
the community during the annual open-house event organized by the environmentalists. Underlying these
lessons was the idea of putting students in a situation where they are active citizens contributing to com-
munity life.

Nadely, too, learned not only to teach at my elbow but also how to do research, how to engage in
environmental action, and how to draw on community support for teaching in this way. Some of this learn-
ing occurred not at my elbow but at that of environmentalists, water technicians, and local farmers. For
example, one day, Nadely and I took our class, divided into groups, to various parts of the creek. Nadely,

21
 an environmentalist, and a
group of four students went to
a sidearm of Hagan Creek,
where the environmentalist
showed students and Nadely
how to take measurements on
the amount of water, how to
sample microorganisms, and
how to record data (Figure
3.a). The environmentalist
then left and Nadely and I su-
Figure 3. a. An environmentalist (right) instructs how to take measurements in a sidearm pervised students on our own
of Hagan Creek. b. Nadely supervises and teaches on her own once the environmentalist (Figure 3.b). Nadely, too, who
has left. (© Wolff-Michael Roth, used with permission) in her training to become an
elementary school teacher did
not receive substantive train-
ing in science, also learned
both environmentalism and
teaching environmentalism
through engaging in the prac-
tice of teaching environmen-
talism in collectivity.
This way of organizing the
Figure 4. a. Students learn how fish traps function and where and how to set them. b. science lesson makes it inter-
They capture microorganisms, which they, after investigating them in the science labora- esting for other members of
tory, return to the creek. c. They collect data, here recorded by a biologist to be entered
the community to participate
in his data base. (© Wolff-Michael Roth, used with permission)
in various ways. That is, stu-
dents produce knowledge in
the context of a community that is much larger than “classroom community” characteristic of most educa-
tional practice and theory. School science and village life began to interpenetrate and, in the process,
supported one another. Thus, members of the Hagan Creek~ ennes Watershed Project not only as-
sisted in getting us started with the work in the field, but also came to the class to give talks, participate
with students in setting fish traps (Figure 4.a), collect microorganism specimens (Figure 4.b) and measure
and record physical parameters (Figure 4.c). They assisted students in learning to use such instruments
as dissolved-oxygen meters or Serber samplers. On subsequent days, they came to the school to ana-
lyze data with students, taught students how to pick up organism with turkey basters, identify organisms
under the microscope with the help of a field guide, separate the organisms into the different boxes of a
ice-cube trays, and count them (Figure 5). Here, the students learned environmentalism by engaging in
the practice of environmentalism together with others who are already legitimate environmentalists.

Parents also assisted us in our teaching. Some drove children to one of the different research
sites and others provided assistance to student investigators. Aboriginal elders gave presentations, mid-
dle and high school students who had already gained research experience assisted us in teaching, and
several graduate students of mine assisted the children in framing research and collecting data. This par-
ticipation of community members also changed the traditional division of labor, which leaves schooling to
teachers and school administrators and excludes others who validly and competently could contribute to
such an enterprise. We enacted environmentalism together, each contributing a legitimate part. Our indi-
vidual contributions presupposed the activity of environmentalism, but at the same time, environmental-
ism in this community presupposed actions such as ours. Through our participation, environmentalism in
this community was re/produced as well.

Consistent with my belief that emancipation comes with control over the means of production, the
students in these classes framed their own investigations and choose the tools (e.g., instruments, com-
puters, or camera) with which to represent the creek and its current state. It comes hardly as a surprise

22
that within each class, stu-
dents produced different rep-
resentations of Hagan Creek
and its surroundings, all le-
gitimate, but contributing in
different ways to understand-
ing the creek and its prob-
lems. Because they were in
control of much of the activity
system, the concrete realiza-
tion of environmentalism in
the village community, includ- Figure 5. Back at school, using a variety of tools (a), the students classify and count the
ing the objective for a particu- different organisms under the guidance of an environmentalist-biologist (b). (© Wolff-
lar investigation and the Michael Roth, used with permission)
means of production (tools),
they were generally motivated by their work and the need to overcome problems to achieve their goal
(rather than by the teacher) and designed an increasing number of investigations. That is, the motive-
laden character of real activity (environmentalism) inherently is motivates students to expand their action-
oriented room to maneuver, that is, to learn.
New Forms of Participation
When students pursue investigations of their own design, their eyes and minds are fully engaged,
productive, and absorbed by their interest—which is not unlike what can be observed everyday in facto-
ries when workers have the opportunity to contribute to the shaping of their workplace. Some of the stu-
dents are interested in producing scientific representations in the forms of graphs, bar graphs, charts, and
tables. Other students are not so inclined, opting instead, for example, to conduct classifications of animal
or plant species, construct photo series accompanied by audiotaped reports, conduct interviews, or use a
video camera to report on other students’ research activities. Nadely and I supported these students by
allowing them to learn the use of new tools on a just-in-time and as-needed basis—we found that this is
the best and most highly motivating way for students to conduct very interesting and very competent in-
vestigations. Thus, when the students in a group decided that they wanted to look at the relationship be-
tween the frequency of different invertebrates and stream speed, we made sure that they used the stop-
watches in an appropriate way. We also asked students how they want to measure stream speed. When
they suggested measuring how long it takes for a floating object to move a certain distance, we asked
them whether they think that there are differences between floating objects of different materials (e.g., a
stick, a piece of Styrofoam, or an orange). Although they might have started with wild guesses, they
learned in the course of their investigations that a piece of styrofoam may be pushed by the wind, or an
orange may get stuck in shallow parts of the creek. That is, in the process of their inquiry, the students
learned a great deal about how to make an investigation work despite the continuous and unforeseen
problems that arise in the process.

Throughout the fieldwork sessions, Nadely was working either with a Michael Bowen, a biologist
and experienced science teacher, or me. In this way, there was always someone around from whom she
could learn about asking productive questions, mediating students’ inquiry rather than directing it, and so
forth. For example, in one situation students used a side-view drawing of an amphipod, which, together
with other drawings of other organisms, assisted them in classifying and sorting the invertebrates and to
count each incidence. These were later entered in data tables and subsequently plotted. In both in-
stances, both students and Nadely learned from those of us who had science degrees. Thus, I assisted
students in interpreting their results, sometimes by helping them to think of their data points in terms of
trends, and asking them to draw trend lines; Nadely might follow me around as I worked in this way with
one group, then struck out on her own asking the same and similar questions of another group (see de-
scription in previous section). Sometimes, students made interpretations that differ from those that one of
the adult scientists may have made. These scientists (Bowen, environmentalists, I) then engaged stu-

23
 dents in an exchange, often
involving the concept of “out-
lier.” Students ended up draw-
ing conclusions such as
“There are more anthropods
where the water runs faster”
or “There are fewer amphi-
pods when the creek goes
faster.”
Back into the Village Commu-
nity
Figure 6. Nadely, the students, and I presented the result of our work to the community
during an open-house event organized by the environmentalists. Here, the students medi-
Ultimately, the children pre-
ated the learning of other students, adult, and younger children and thereby contributed
sented the results of their
to scientific literacy as a collective process. The results were also featured in local news-
work at a yearly open-house
papers and on a website. (© Wolff-Michael Roth, used with permission) event organized by the activ-
ists focusing on environmental
health in the Hagan Creek watershed. They mounted posters that engaged adults and other children
alike, who had come because of the exhibit generally rather than the students’ work in particular (Figures
6, 7). Our class presented descriptions and photographs in the form of a website, which the visitors could
peruse at the event because the children had brought a computer.

After the unit came to an official end with the open-house event, the result of the students’ work
was published in the local newspaper and on the website of the environmental activists. Thus, both
through their exhibits during the open-house event and the subsequent publication of their findings, the
outcomes of the students’ production re-entered the community in a process of knowledge distribution
and consumption. The open-house event and the subsequent publications were key points in the unit be-
cause students’ work became legitimated and legitimate as the village community members accepted
what they had done. The following comment by a student was rather typical.

I worked hard in helping my group members out with the model, the home page, and presenting
the picture board. In this project I learned that there are invertebrates in the creek, I also learned where
Hagan Creek is located. I never knew that the creek through Community Park was connected to Hagan
Creek. I noticed that since the Hagan Creek article was published in the Peninsula News Review that the
public has noticed the creek. (Brandon)

To the children, the science unit was successful not because they received high grades but be-
cause the unit was useful and contributed to community life. They began to notice the creek and its prob-
lems; they also remarked that
the community (their parents
and relatives) began to notice
it as a result of their own ac-
tions. Students’ actions had
further impact in the commu-
nity, as the environmental ac-
tivists told me, because their
presence in and contributions
to the open house brought a
greater proportion of commu-
nity members (parents, family,
neighbors) to the events.
Figure 7. a. A seventh-grade student (right) explains the functioning of a watershed using
a model he built to a much younger child. . A student presents her poster about the health
of the creek based on photographs, audiotaped descriptions, and interviews she has con-
ducted. (© Wolff-Michael Roth, used with permission)

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Learning in and as Participation in Collective Praxis
I had begun this work with some sense that science education, both in terms of its re/production
through teachers and through its re/production of scientific literate students had to occur by means of in-
volvement in practical activity. Participation in environmentalism constituted a context in which project
contributed to both forms science learning for seventh-grade students and science teacher induction. In
both instances, the gaps between theory and practice were closed. Nadely learned to teach science and
environmental studies by teaching at my elbow and by participating in environmentalism; the students
learned science and environmental studies by participating in environmentalism. Consistent with the
framework outlined, their knowing is irremediably tied to praxis; whenever terms such as pollution, envi-
ronmental degradation, or watershed health are used in conversation, their understanding of what is be-
ing said includes the bodily schema that has developed during their work in and around the creek.

The primary mode of learning in both instances was conceptualized and realized as participation
in a societally relevant activity. Nadely and I participated at one another’s elbow in the teaching of sev-
enth-grade students. Nadely learned to teach science not by doing mock tasks teaching something to her
peers in a university class but by teaching students. Our students, concretely realizing a response to the
environmentalists’ call in the community newspaper, learned science by contributing to a real activity in
their municipality. By involving environmentalists, parents, elders, and biologists, Nadely also learned
about community concerns and science itself, and together with and from me, how to assist students in
using science for generating knowledge about Hagan Creek and the watershed. In the end, our class
presented the results of its work in a public forum, returning knowledge to the community that both moti-
vated our activity and then consumed its results (i.e., the knowledge we produced). In this, we all partici-
pated in environmentalism and thereby contributed to reproducing this form of life, which, as collective
form, only exists through the concrete realization by (groups of) individuals. But as a generalized socie-
tally motivated form of life, it also provided for a set of action possibilities, some of which were realized in
concrete form through what we had done.

Our learning (the students’, Nadely’s, and mine) was available to any observer through the in-
creased competence of doing environmentalism, which arose from our participation in environmentalism.
That is, participation not only led to (future) learning but also already was learning. As we were learning,
not only our understanding of the watershed changed—see, e.g., Brandon’s quote—but also the possibili-
ties and constraints to our perceptions of and actions toward the watershed; we changed as the world we
perceived and acted toward. In other words, our learning was available as a changing participation in a
changing world—after the unit, those who did not already care for Hagan Creek and the watershed acted
in new ways, for example, through other environmental actions—students subsequently participated in
the streamkeepers program and were less insouciant concerning waste and pollution. And they knew that
they had contributed to the community at large when they realized that “the public noticed the creek”
(Brandon).

Coda: Toward a Practice Approach in Science Education

I began this paper by noting the double gap that currently exists between knowledge about teach-
ing and knowing to teach, on the one hand, and knowing about science and knowing to do science, on
the other. Focusing on teaching and science as forms of activity, each with their defining motivations, I
designed a context that addressed the double gap in the same project. When, how and where do we al-
low people to become competent in these terms? The received approach is to expose them to the images
of scientists’ science and competent teaching and telling them what to learn. After they have reproduced
talk about science and science teaching in the formal learning environment, they are asked to apply what
they know. Science educators think little about the fact that participating in schools and university repro-
duces practices suitable for surviving in these settings. As we have seen, however, everyday activities
outside formal learning institutions have very different motives, leading to a very different structure of in-
terrelated concerns. The for-the-sake-of-which, in-order-to, what-for, what-in, and what-with of formal
schooling are different from those activities that schooling is supposedly preparing for.

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 Rather than preparing students for life in a technological world, I propose to create opportunities
for participating in this world and to learn science and science teaching in the process of contributing to
the everyday life in their community. Sample contexts are environmental activism, salmon enhancement,
farming, or traditional food gathering ceremonies among aboriginal peoples. Early participation in com-
munity-relevant practices provides for continuous (legitimate peripheral) participation and a greater rele-
vance of schooling to the everyday life of its main constituents.

Using real, ongoing, societally relevant activities as learning environments for science comes with
tremendous advantages. These advantages rest on the fact that learners already participate in real activ-
ity. As such, they constitute part of the community that engages in the activity, a community in and
through the action of which the activity is continuously both produced anew and reproduced. That is, in
participating in science teaching or environmentalism or any other societally relevant activity, students
contribute in productive and legitimate ways. They are resources to society whose potential has thus far
not been realized. Our seventh-grade class in general and the students in particular can be considered a
resource to the community of Central Saanich in this teaching experiment. These students contributed to
an environmental database; others found out key pollution spots such as those caused by particular
chicken or cattle farms. The knowledge created through the participation of students is actually valuable
to society at large; it is not a form of knowledge (participation) for the sole purpose of reproducing schools
and social injustice that many students currently experience at home and reproduce through their own tra-
jectories of participation. In my perspective and practice, only inclusion of students in activities that have
the potential of changing the world for the better is a desirable goal for science education practice.

Notes

This chapter was made possible in part by several grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada. My thanks go to Nadely Boyd, who was such a great person to
work with, to all the students who participated, and to Misty MacDuffee for her continued assistance. Sylvie Boutonné, G. Mi-
chael Bowen, and Stuart Lee assisted in the collection and transcription of data and contributed to making this curriculum unit
possible.

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