Page 98 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

6 Local Matters, EcoJustice, and Community 75

Fig. 13 At the open-house event: A water technician, who also works with the environmentalists,
explains a chart on which she records in a continuous manner the water levels in the creek, and
onto which she has mapped the daily rainfalls for an entire year (black spots on the top of the
chart) (© Roth 1998. With permission)

projects involved a tape recorder, used to record verbal descriptions of several sites
along the creek, and a camera for saliently depicting some issue identified by the
girls. Accordingly, their exhibit contained many photographs, exemplifying, for
example, the differences between the creek where it had been turned into a ditch
and where it was in a natural state. The work they had conducted in the field was
represented in narrative form.
In another situation, Jamie came to interact with one of the cofounders of the
Hagan Creek–Kennes Project (Fig. 14). Unbeknownst to Jamie, the cofounder
political scientist living in the community was interested in assisting local people
in empowering themselves concerning the environmental health of their commu-
nity. As Fig. 14 shows, the political scientist was very interested in the outcomes of
the students’ investigations and interacted with a number of them. In one instance,
he asked Jamie about an instrument on exhibition, the same type of instrument that
the summer work-study students had been using to conduct and produce water-
quality assessments. In the course of their interaction, knowledgeability relating to
a particular instrument and its operation was being produced.

Miles: What is this?
Jamie: A calori– meter. It measures the clarity of the water.
Miles: Ah! A calori– a colorimeter?
Jamie: You take the clear water and you put it in this glass and then here [puts it
into instrument] (Pushes a few buttons) and you take the standard which is like the
best there is. And then you switch this (takes different bottle) and put the one with