“What comes to mind when you think of science? The perfumery!”: Documenting science‐related cultural learning pathways across contexts and timescales

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we explore the details of one youth's science‐related learning in‐ and out‐of‐school at the time of her participation in an ethnography of youth science and technology learning across contexts and over time. We use the Cultural Learning Pathways Framework to analyze the youth's interests, and the related sociocultural, historical, material, and affect‐laden practices in which she and her family participated. The following question guided our analysis: How do everyday moments—experienced across settings, pursuits, social groups, and time—result in scientific learning, expertise development, and identification? We found that this youth's interest in various aspects of the sciences was years in the making, embedded in situated events that were part of a space–time continuum bound by passion for the practices involved, influenced by specific cultural practices, and explored with the help of close family collaborators. We also found that school science activity in which the youth in question participated both supported and could have potentially constrained her science‐related cultural learning pathways. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 260–285, 2014