Mediated Pedagogy in a Blended Environment: Impact of Processes and Settings During Environmental Monitoring of Dam Removal

Abstract

Previous attempts by other investigators (Young and Kinner 2008) who focused on middle school students’ performance on tasks that were associated with knowledge in the outdoors, found it difficult to demonstrate strong results of any learning measures. Their efforts, and earlier results from a pilot study that this author carried out in the same vicinity (O’Mahony 2008), helped refine ways to test the effects of different kinds of “expert mediation” for linking school–based and experiential learning methods and to test the effects of these methods on students’ thinking and motivation. A philosophical framework that encompassed ecojustice ideals and sustainability of environmental habitats served as a backdrop to the study. A quasi-experimental two-group design was used to test whether different mediating tools would affect student-learning outcomes. Quantitative and qualitative tools were used in a mixed methods approach to collect and interpret data during a pedagogical intervention that posited better learning outcomes for students where mediation tools aligned teaching processes and settings in a purposeful way. We discuss how tools and contextual artifacts help learners notice key dimensions of their experiences (in the natural world) that “make visible” entrenched preconceptions; enable a process of conceptual change, and foster an emergent comprehension of everyday knowledge. Further, this study demonstrates how intentional alignment of instructional “processes” with “settings” facilitates student learning by linking counterintuitive concepts in the natural world to very real aspects of their culture and lives. But, more importantly, through energizing a sense of students personal agency and deep-seated engagement around their sense of place, the outdoor learning experience appeared to activate not only joy in learning in situ, it went a long way to enhancing a preparation for future learning.