Science Learning as Participation with and in a Place

Abstract

In this chapter we take up the questions: (1) How do youth work to transform their science learning as participation through the dialectical, hybrid practices as they engage in community-based participatory research projects in a youth-based afterschool program called Green Energy Technologies in the City (GET City)?; and (2) How do youth expand their identities through the dialectical, hybrid practices? Drawing upon critically oriented frameworks for understanding the relationships among place and learning, this 2-year longitudinal study of youth in an afterschool program shows how place facilitates and constrains participatory learning by the contextual scaffolds it gives rise to. We explore how place shapes the process by which youth worked to transform their participation, and how youth hybrid practices are layered into their identity development with and in a place.