Science news stories as boundary objects affecting engagement with science

TLDR

The study investigates how a program linking an informal science institution with multiple schools engages youth with science in a novel way. Participants chose personal science topics, researched them, and wrote, revised, and published news stories through an authentic publication venue with an external editor. The resulting news stories act as boundary objects—mediated by broker adults—because they are mutable, shareable, genre‑flexible, and portable, thereby fostering youth identity and critical science thinking and underscoring the need for further research on personal connections and broker roles. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores how participating in a program spanning an informal science institution and multiple school sites engaged youth with science in a different way. In particular, teens in the program selected and researched science topics of personal interest, and then authored, revised, and published science news stories about those topics in an authentic publication venue with an outside editor. Through five case studies analyzed according to a sociocultural framework for engagement understood as involving actions, interests and identifications, the authors describe how the news story artifacts became “boundary objects” inhabiting several intersecting social worlds. These boundary objects are often mediated by adults acting as brokers spanning communities. The properties of the news stories that enable them to act as boundary objects include their mutability and shareability as electronic draft documents created in distributed learning environments and responded to by an editor based at a distance, their flexibility in terms of genres for expressing the meaning and importance of science, and their portability across space in the form of print‐ and web‐based publications that are valued by multiple communities. Implications for developing youth identities while fostering participation in critical thinking about science are discussed, along with further research needed on understanding the power of personal connections to health, and the role of brokers. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 315–341, 2014