From the era of European empire to the global trades escalated after the World Wars, technologica... more From the era of European empire to the global trades escalated after the World Wars, technological advancement, one of the key underlying conditions of globalization, has been closely linked with the production and reproduction of the colonizer/colonized. The rhetoric of modernity characterized by “salvation,” “rationality,” “development,” and nature-society or nature-culture divides underlies dominant perspectives on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education that have historically positioned economic development and national security as its core values. Such rhetoric inevitably and implicitly generates the logic of oppression and exploitation. Against the backdrop of nationalist and militaristic discourse representing modernity or coloniality, counter-voices have also arisen to envision a future of STEM education that is more humane and socioecologically just. Such bodies of critiques have interrogated interlocking colonial domains that shape the realm of S...
Abstract Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psyc... more Abstract Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President at the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bang’s research focuses on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just learning environments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education. Ananda Marin (African American, Choctaw [non-enrolled], European American descent) is an Assistant Professor of Social Research Methodology in UCLA’s Department of Education and faculty in American Indian Studies. Her research explores questions about the cultural nature of teaching, learning, and development. This interview with two Indigenous scholars provides educators with a chance to explore the possibilities of Indigenous worldviews on their climate change praxis. The scholars ask educators to consider how white and human supremacy are perpetuated in current educational paradigms. They discuss the necessity of transformations between relationships between humans and the natural world in fighting climate change. Bang and Marin underline the importance of education that immerses children in learning with places, paying attention to embodied, relational, axiological, and world-building dimensions of storying with lands.
Building on recent efforts to center questions of power and politics within the learning sciences... more Building on recent efforts to center questions of power and politics within the learning sciences, this symposium brings together a set of papers that seek to analyze and surface the ethical dimensions of human learning. Collectively, the papers ask: What becomes visible, analytically, when we take learning to be politically and ethically laden? What do we miss when we don’t attend to these dimensions of learning? What does foregrounding ethics mean for how we design and study human learning and meaning-making? Each paper addresses these questions by providing key empirical examples drawn from ethnographic research on the activity, relationality and learning of 1) researchers; 2) teachers; and 3) students. Our analysis is aimed at constructing lenses that challenge the politics of neutrality in research on learning, and that deepen our analytic perception by helping us attune to intellectual and relational dimensions of learning that we may not otherwise see. [150]
This chapter reviews a body of research on cultural differences in framework theories for engagin... more This chapter reviews a body of research on cultural differences in framework theories for engaging with nature, focusing primary on Indigenous American and European-American comparisons. NativeAmerican samples reveal a pattern of converging observations that point to a relational epistemological orientation and a propensity for systems level thinking. In contrast, Non-Native samples show observations suggesting that humans are conceptualized as more psychologically distant from the rest of nature. Correlated with distance is a tendency for a taxonomic rather than an ecological orientation. We also suggest that the way that researchers think about and study culture may reflect their own cultural practices and we propose a more ecological analysis of culture itself.
Symposium Overview In this symposium we present four recent design studies with young people that... more Symposium Overview In this symposium we present four recent design studies with young people that leverage bodies-in-place as an opportunity for making sense of and taking place in practices. Our common aim in this session is to contribute to a more robust theory of embodied cognition by providing descriptive and comparative analyses of how young people make “body sense” (Cajete, 2000) of the places in which they are engaging. In a recent special issue of Journal of the Learning Sciences, researchers provided further evidence and arguments for the centrality of the corporeal for learning mathematics (Hall & Nemirovsky, 2012). While that work has most recently promoted embodied cognition as a viable theory of learning, educators and educational researchers still struggle against the tendency to fetishize abstracted, “pure knowledge” over the ways in which our moving, feeling bodies make sense of the world. Additionally, and as Stevens (2012) pointed out in his commentary to the “Moda...
Research in the field of learning sciences demonstrates that various forms of knowledge are creat... more Research in the field of learning sciences demonstrates that various forms of knowledge are created through participation in diverse but often undervalued community practices (Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, & Lee, 2006). However, knowledge created in practice is not traditionally explored in research about complex systems thinking (Duarte Olson, Forthcoming). This session seeks to recognize and capitalize on the wealth of complex systems knowledge learned through everyday practices in informal contexts. We present arguments that are grounded in research taking place in four different communities—with Brazilian samba schools, triathletes, Native Americans, and environmental educators. The goal of the symposium is to discuss (1) how complex systems thinking can be developed through different practices in informal environments, and (2) how an under-representation of diverse samples and phenomena may eschew our understanding of complex systems thinking.
This paper discusses findings from 40 ethnographically inspired interviews with 21 Native science... more This paper discusses findings from 40 ethnographically inspired interviews with 21 Native science professionals conducted in two iterative phases (21 in Phase I and 19 in Phase II), and a structured dialogue workgroup session with a six-member subset of the interviewees. Interview and group questions were open-ended to allow the participants to drive the conversation. We approached our interpretation of the data as an opportunity for deriving insights into the nature and meanings of participant narratives and experiences, why they present their stories in a particular way, and what this can tell us about the Lead Editor: M. Mueller.
This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy repre... more This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy representations of plants and animals. To examine the potential role of culture and expertise in diorama play, children from 3 samples participated: rural Native American, urban Native American, and urban non-Native American. Children's playtime was divided into time segments, which were coded for types of actions and for types of talk. Children from all 3 samples actively engaged with the diorama in both realistic and imaginative play. Furthermore, children from all samples were sensitive to ecological relations. In addition, Native American children talked at least as much as the non-Native American children, a finding that challenges widespread characterizations of Native American children as less talkative and possessing smaller vocabularies. The most striking finding was that Native American children (both urban and rural) were more than twice as likely as non-Native American children to take the perspective of an animal in their play. These results demonstrate the value of dioramas for assessing young children's biological cognition.
Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 2017
Community engagement and participation in academic research is growing in popularity and acceptan... more Community engagement and participation in academic research is growing in popularity and acceptance. Communities are now routinely engaged and participate in academic research design, implementation and interpretation, but the capacity of communities to conduct their own research is not always a product of these engagement initiatives. This article describes a collaboration between an organisation that supports Native American participation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and university researchers to expand the organisation’s capacity to conduct research by creating a searchable database from their organisational records. We discuss how strategic design of a research collaboration can result in infrastructure development that contributes to community capacity.
Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational re... more Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational research community. However, within Native American communities, language revitalization is pushing education beyond former iterations of culturally relevant curriculum and has the potential to radically alter how we understand culture and language in education. Situated within this gap, Mary Hermes, Megan Bang, and Ananda Marin consider the role of education for Indigenous languages and frame specific questions of Ojibwe revitalization as a part of the wider understanding of the context of community, language, and Indigenous knowledge production. Through a retrospective analysis of an interactive multimedia materials project, the authors present ways in which design research, retooled to fit the need of communities, may inform language revitalization efforts and assist with the evolution of community-based research design. Broadly aimed at educators, the praxis described in this article d...
Indigenous people are significantly underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engine... more Indigenous people are significantly underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The solution to this problem requires a more robust lens than representation or access alone. Specifically, it will require careful consideration of the ecological contexts of Indigenous school age youth, of which more than 70% live in urban communities (National Urban Indian Family Coalition, 2008). This article reports emergent design principles derived from a community-based design research project. These emergent principles focus on the conceptualization and uses of technology in science learning environments designed for urban Indigenous youth. In order to strengthen learning environments for urban Indigenous youth, it is necessary, we argue, that scholars and educators take seriously the ways in which culture mediates relationships with, conceptions of, and innovations in technology and technologically related disciplines. Recognizing these relationships will...
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content")... more Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content") contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This case study focuses on a Native American family's experience on a walk in an urban forest pre... more This case study focuses on a Native American family's experience on a walk in an urban forest preserve. Drawing on interaction analysis traditions, we analyze video data and transcript data to characterize how learning unfolds in place, in this case an urban forest. We build on this analysis, as well as the work of Indigenous scholars, to theoretically develop walking, reading, and storying land as a methodology for making sense of physical and biological worlds. How do young people learn about the natural world? What is the role of land and motion in teaching, learning, and cognitive development? How might better understandings of these questions support more rigorous and equitable science education? In this article, we explore how knowledge about the natural world arises through joint activity that is situated in place. We aim to expand on theory about observational practices by centering relationality and land as relevant semiotic resources for learning. Building on previous work (e.g. Bang & Marin, 2015; Bang, Marin, Medin, & Washinawatok, 2015; Marin, 2013), we argue that walking, reading, and storying land are each important human and intergenerational cultural practices. Assembled together toward variable goals, these practices serve as a methodology that shapes lived human-nature relations. That is, walking, reading, and storying land cultivates learning about the natural world and coming to know one's place in the world. It is important to us that readers acknowledge walking, reading, and storying land as a methodology that has been embedded within Indigenous ways of knowing for generations (Cajete, 2000; Kawagley, 2006). We also recognize that this is a methodology that has evolved over socio-historic time and varies in importance and influence on action across cultural communities. For example, Magntorn and Helldén (2005) proposed the concept of reading nature or the "ability to go out into an ecosystem and recognize organisms, understand processes taking place and to see the human impact in the particular ecosystem is complex" (p. 1230) as way of developing knowledge about the environment. Although aligned with this view, we suggest that walking, reading, and storying land reflects different ontological premises about the capacities of more-than-human (MTH) life, as well as axiological premises about how to be in relations with land and the MTH world. These orientations have significant impacts on how practices of walking, reading, and storying land can unfold. In this article, in the context of a familial walk through a nature preserve in an urban center, we work to uncover the ways in which land and the MTH world are semiotic resources, shaping relations, as well as conceptual and epistemic ecologies of human sense-making. We understand semiotic resources to be those material artifacts, ideas, and actions people both perceive and create to engage in interaction. The layering of semiotic resources (talk, gesture, movement, environmental features, etc.) provide
From the era of European empire to the global trades escalated after the World Wars, technologica... more From the era of European empire to the global trades escalated after the World Wars, technological advancement, one of the key underlying conditions of globalization, has been closely linked with the production and reproduction of the colonizer/colonized. The rhetoric of modernity characterized by “salvation,” “rationality,” “development,” and nature-society or nature-culture divides underlies dominant perspectives on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education that have historically positioned economic development and national security as its core values. Such rhetoric inevitably and implicitly generates the logic of oppression and exploitation. Against the backdrop of nationalist and militaristic discourse representing modernity or coloniality, counter-voices have also arisen to envision a future of STEM education that is more humane and socioecologically just. Such bodies of critiques have interrogated interlocking colonial domains that shape the realm of S...
Abstract Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psyc... more Abstract Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President at the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bang’s research focuses on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just learning environments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education. Ananda Marin (African American, Choctaw [non-enrolled], European American descent) is an Assistant Professor of Social Research Methodology in UCLA’s Department of Education and faculty in American Indian Studies. Her research explores questions about the cultural nature of teaching, learning, and development. This interview with two Indigenous scholars provides educators with a chance to explore the possibilities of Indigenous worldviews on their climate change praxis. The scholars ask educators to consider how white and human supremacy are perpetuated in current educational paradigms. They discuss the necessity of transformations between relationships between humans and the natural world in fighting climate change. Bang and Marin underline the importance of education that immerses children in learning with places, paying attention to embodied, relational, axiological, and world-building dimensions of storying with lands.
Building on recent efforts to center questions of power and politics within the learning sciences... more Building on recent efforts to center questions of power and politics within the learning sciences, this symposium brings together a set of papers that seek to analyze and surface the ethical dimensions of human learning. Collectively, the papers ask: What becomes visible, analytically, when we take learning to be politically and ethically laden? What do we miss when we don’t attend to these dimensions of learning? What does foregrounding ethics mean for how we design and study human learning and meaning-making? Each paper addresses these questions by providing key empirical examples drawn from ethnographic research on the activity, relationality and learning of 1) researchers; 2) teachers; and 3) students. Our analysis is aimed at constructing lenses that challenge the politics of neutrality in research on learning, and that deepen our analytic perception by helping us attune to intellectual and relational dimensions of learning that we may not otherwise see. [150]
This chapter reviews a body of research on cultural differences in framework theories for engagin... more This chapter reviews a body of research on cultural differences in framework theories for engaging with nature, focusing primary on Indigenous American and European-American comparisons. NativeAmerican samples reveal a pattern of converging observations that point to a relational epistemological orientation and a propensity for systems level thinking. In contrast, Non-Native samples show observations suggesting that humans are conceptualized as more psychologically distant from the rest of nature. Correlated with distance is a tendency for a taxonomic rather than an ecological orientation. We also suggest that the way that researchers think about and study culture may reflect their own cultural practices and we propose a more ecological analysis of culture itself.
Symposium Overview In this symposium we present four recent design studies with young people that... more Symposium Overview In this symposium we present four recent design studies with young people that leverage bodies-in-place as an opportunity for making sense of and taking place in practices. Our common aim in this session is to contribute to a more robust theory of embodied cognition by providing descriptive and comparative analyses of how young people make “body sense” (Cajete, 2000) of the places in which they are engaging. In a recent special issue of Journal of the Learning Sciences, researchers provided further evidence and arguments for the centrality of the corporeal for learning mathematics (Hall & Nemirovsky, 2012). While that work has most recently promoted embodied cognition as a viable theory of learning, educators and educational researchers still struggle against the tendency to fetishize abstracted, “pure knowledge” over the ways in which our moving, feeling bodies make sense of the world. Additionally, and as Stevens (2012) pointed out in his commentary to the “Moda...
Research in the field of learning sciences demonstrates that various forms of knowledge are creat... more Research in the field of learning sciences demonstrates that various forms of knowledge are created through participation in diverse but often undervalued community practices (Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, & Lee, 2006). However, knowledge created in practice is not traditionally explored in research about complex systems thinking (Duarte Olson, Forthcoming). This session seeks to recognize and capitalize on the wealth of complex systems knowledge learned through everyday practices in informal contexts. We present arguments that are grounded in research taking place in four different communities—with Brazilian samba schools, triathletes, Native Americans, and environmental educators. The goal of the symposium is to discuss (1) how complex systems thinking can be developed through different practices in informal environments, and (2) how an under-representation of diverse samples and phenomena may eschew our understanding of complex systems thinking.
This paper discusses findings from 40 ethnographically inspired interviews with 21 Native science... more This paper discusses findings from 40 ethnographically inspired interviews with 21 Native science professionals conducted in two iterative phases (21 in Phase I and 19 in Phase II), and a structured dialogue workgroup session with a six-member subset of the interviewees. Interview and group questions were open-ended to allow the participants to drive the conversation. We approached our interpretation of the data as an opportunity for deriving insights into the nature and meanings of participant narratives and experiences, why they present their stories in a particular way, and what this can tell us about the Lead Editor: M. Mueller.
This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy repre... more This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy representations of plants and animals. To examine the potential role of culture and expertise in diorama play, children from 3 samples participated: rural Native American, urban Native American, and urban non-Native American. Children's playtime was divided into time segments, which were coded for types of actions and for types of talk. Children from all 3 samples actively engaged with the diorama in both realistic and imaginative play. Furthermore, children from all samples were sensitive to ecological relations. In addition, Native American children talked at least as much as the non-Native American children, a finding that challenges widespread characterizations of Native American children as less talkative and possessing smaller vocabularies. The most striking finding was that Native American children (both urban and rural) were more than twice as likely as non-Native American children to take the perspective of an animal in their play. These results demonstrate the value of dioramas for assessing young children's biological cognition.
Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 2017
Community engagement and participation in academic research is growing in popularity and acceptan... more Community engagement and participation in academic research is growing in popularity and acceptance. Communities are now routinely engaged and participate in academic research design, implementation and interpretation, but the capacity of communities to conduct their own research is not always a product of these engagement initiatives. This article describes a collaboration between an organisation that supports Native American participation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and university researchers to expand the organisation’s capacity to conduct research by creating a searchable database from their organisational records. We discuss how strategic design of a research collaboration can result in infrastructure development that contributes to community capacity.
Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational re... more Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational research community. However, within Native American communities, language revitalization is pushing education beyond former iterations of culturally relevant curriculum and has the potential to radically alter how we understand culture and language in education. Situated within this gap, Mary Hermes, Megan Bang, and Ananda Marin consider the role of education for Indigenous languages and frame specific questions of Ojibwe revitalization as a part of the wider understanding of the context of community, language, and Indigenous knowledge production. Through a retrospective analysis of an interactive multimedia materials project, the authors present ways in which design research, retooled to fit the need of communities, may inform language revitalization efforts and assist with the evolution of community-based research design. Broadly aimed at educators, the praxis described in this article d...
Indigenous people are significantly underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engine... more Indigenous people are significantly underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The solution to this problem requires a more robust lens than representation or access alone. Specifically, it will require careful consideration of the ecological contexts of Indigenous school age youth, of which more than 70% live in urban communities (National Urban Indian Family Coalition, 2008). This article reports emergent design principles derived from a community-based design research project. These emergent principles focus on the conceptualization and uses of technology in science learning environments designed for urban Indigenous youth. In order to strengthen learning environments for urban Indigenous youth, it is necessary, we argue, that scholars and educators take seriously the ways in which culture mediates relationships with, conceptions of, and innovations in technology and technologically related disciplines. Recognizing these relationships will...
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content")... more Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the "Content") contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This case study focuses on a Native American family's experience on a walk in an urban forest pre... more This case study focuses on a Native American family's experience on a walk in an urban forest preserve. Drawing on interaction analysis traditions, we analyze video data and transcript data to characterize how learning unfolds in place, in this case an urban forest. We build on this analysis, as well as the work of Indigenous scholars, to theoretically develop walking, reading, and storying land as a methodology for making sense of physical and biological worlds. How do young people learn about the natural world? What is the role of land and motion in teaching, learning, and cognitive development? How might better understandings of these questions support more rigorous and equitable science education? In this article, we explore how knowledge about the natural world arises through joint activity that is situated in place. We aim to expand on theory about observational practices by centering relationality and land as relevant semiotic resources for learning. Building on previous work (e.g. Bang & Marin, 2015; Bang, Marin, Medin, & Washinawatok, 2015; Marin, 2013), we argue that walking, reading, and storying land are each important human and intergenerational cultural practices. Assembled together toward variable goals, these practices serve as a methodology that shapes lived human-nature relations. That is, walking, reading, and storying land cultivates learning about the natural world and coming to know one's place in the world. It is important to us that readers acknowledge walking, reading, and storying land as a methodology that has been embedded within Indigenous ways of knowing for generations (Cajete, 2000; Kawagley, 2006). We also recognize that this is a methodology that has evolved over socio-historic time and varies in importance and influence on action across cultural communities. For example, Magntorn and Helldén (2005) proposed the concept of reading nature or the "ability to go out into an ecosystem and recognize organisms, understand processes taking place and to see the human impact in the particular ecosystem is complex" (p. 1230) as way of developing knowledge about the environment. Although aligned with this view, we suggest that walking, reading, and storying land reflects different ontological premises about the capacities of more-than-human (MTH) life, as well as axiological premises about how to be in relations with land and the MTH world. These orientations have significant impacts on how practices of walking, reading, and storying land can unfold. In this article, in the context of a familial walk through a nature preserve in an urban center, we work to uncover the ways in which land and the MTH world are semiotic resources, shaping relations, as well as conceptual and epistemic ecologies of human sense-making. We understand semiotic resources to be those material artifacts, ideas, and actions people both perceive and create to engage in interaction. The layering of semiotic resources (talk, gesture, movement, environmental features, etc.) provide
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