Teacher Learning and Informal Science Education - Expansivising Affordances for Diverse Science Learners

This book is situated in a study of learning to teach science, informal science education and identity. The study initially aimed to learn how teachers’ identities were influenced by teacher learning experiences in informal science institutions and sites. What emerged was how teachers transformed meanings, pedagogies and applications of informal science in ways that both resonated with their identities as teachers and social agents as well as the identities and needs of their students. This book emphasizes the teaching and learning of racialized students as well as highlight the experiences of similarly racialized teachers. However, what emerges are lessons for educators who are committed to authentically enacting equity in learning spaces; that is learning that is attentive to and affirming of students’ and teachers’ identities and desirings to utilize education as a tool to create imaginations of alternative futures. This is critical if we are to move towards planetary well-being. This book will highlight salient aspects of the research and offer examples of teacher enactments and frameworks for designing professional development and learning experiences that afford critical awareness, creativity and culturally affirming science education both in formal and informal contexts. Table of ContentChapter 1: Expansivising spaces and affordances for science learning Chapter 2: An Artifact of Settler Colonialism Chapter 3: Teacher agency and identity: Creating affordances in the expansivising space Chapter 4: Modifying resources: Adapting Museum display and investigation for the classroom Chapter 5: Expanded Agency through Modifying and Creating Affordances Chapter 6: Critically expansivising practices: Teachers as bricoleurs Chapter 7: Challenging "scientific" research paradigms through sociocultural lenses and dialogic methodologies Chapter 8: Youth practices as expansivising resources: DWL on WhatsApp. Biographical NoteJennifer D. Adams is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair of Creativity and Science and Associate Professor at The University of Calgary where she holds a dual appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Werklund School of Education. She is an NSF Early CAREER award winner and the PI of the Creativity, Equity and STEM Lab where she leads her team in research on equity in STEM teaching and learning environments with an emphasis on anti-deficit, learner-centred, and justice-oriented approaches.