Page 96 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

6 Local Matters, EcoJustice, and Community 73

in the French village of Moussac that often served me as an example. First, the village
community came to the school, assisting students and teachers in their activities.
Second, the student activities were concerned with a pressing issue of the community;
the science lessons took children out of the school and into the community. That is,
the children’s activities were motivated by the same concerns that drove the activities
of other community members. In terms of the activity theoretic model (Fig. 5), there
is, therefore, legitimate (peripheral) participation because the motivation that drives
3
the activity system shares many moments. It is this overlap with the activity system
characterizing everyday life in the community (motivation, subjects community, and
tools) that makes the children’s work “authentic.” Rather than preparing for a life after
school or for future science courses, children participated in and contributed to social
life in the community. It is in the process that learning – belonging to the various
conversations of which individual persons are – was occurring.
Although the activity–system-defining object was the same in most instances for
all student groups, Hagan Creek and the watershed it drains, different tools and
rules mediated the relations in different ways leading to very different outcomes
(Table 1). Nevertheless, the various outcomes ultimately contributed in their own
ways to the totality of the findings generated by one or more classes. Here I under-
stand the students’ activities authentic in the sense that their activities were motivated
in the same way and by the same concerns that other activities in the community
were motivated. Table 1 also shows how different members of the community in
general and the activist group in particular participated in the activity system that
describes the students’ activity. Other similarities with the activity systems in the
community (Table 1) are some of the tools (colorimeter, rules). Not surprisingly,
some of the outcomes of the student-centered activity system were, therefore, similar
to those in the activity systems in the community. For example, the use of colorim-
eter, pH meter, or dissolved-oxygen meter all led to numeric representations of
stream health. Similarly, middle-school students and students working on the
Hagan Creek–Kennes Project as a summer job produced very similar graphical
representations – such as stream cross sections. In addition, forms designed by
scientists (water-quality assessment, physical assessment) assisted students in their
summer job and middle-school students in producing representations (outcomes)
that could be used by the environmental activists to pursue other goals (e.g., getting
grants, proposing restoration work).
The unit ended with a presentation of students’ work as part of the open-house
event that the Hagan Creek–Kennes Project organized every year. At the open
house, the children were not away in some corner designed to present “kiddies’
stuff,” but rather they were central participants of the event and, according to the
environmentalists, a reason for the great success of it. Thus, the students’ exhibits

3 In activity theory, a moment is a part that cannot be understood independent of the other parts
because each enters the definition of the other. Thus, a subject is a subject only in relation to a
specific object, and the object exists only with respect to the particular subject engaged in the
production of something in which the object constitutes the material resource.