Children Do Science

List of Tables

Table 1: Characterizing the Nature of Science

Table 2: Characterizing the Nature of Science: An Expanded FoSK Tool

Introduction

Do you remember mixing potions in your kitchen, bathroom, or backyard—goopy mixtures of everything in the kitchen cabinet or from under the bathroom sink? Or did you ever disassemble a toy, phone, or computer to see how it worked? I cherish those memories. I remember my dad, whose father was a carpenter, teaching me how the pinewood derby racer would move faster the more I sanded the surface to make it streamlined. Dad showed me how to sand and when to use each type of sandpaper. My 10-year-old self won the race that year, partially thanks to a grandpa I never met. Regardless of your current profession or interests, I hazard a guess that you may share similar memories of childhood observation, experimentation, curiosity, and creativity. You did science, and you did it in relationship to your kin, your peers, your teachers, and more. These memories make up your science story. We all have science stories, young and old. In this book, I invite you to listen to these stories and to recognize how every child does science, just as you did, even if you do not now consider yourself a scientist. The decision to identify with science is yours to make, but please consider this: I already know you to be a science person.

Given this opening and the title of the book, it may not come as a surprise that I assume that all children do science. And because science is a relational human endeavor, children do science in relation to others. Likewise, we do science in relation to children. Children observe and interpret the physical world around them; they curiously ask questions that lead to new understandings; they imagine untold possibilities and creatively design experiments to test out their ideas; and they innovate prototypes and solutions (e.g., see Siry & Kremer, 2011). Each child should be acknowledged for their ways of knowing which embody these most fundamental tenets of science.

To be perfectly candid, this asset-based assumption is relatively new to me. For a long time, I believed that most children do not do science (only adults do) and that, if a given child does do science in an adult-like way, not every child is doing it. I learned this position in school and accepted it without question. Assuming that all children do science may be, to you, somewhat of a revelation. But you may also be thinking as you read this: well of course children do science! If that’s your stance, I would love to hear more about how you came to this orientation and compare notes with you. Either way, this book tells the story of how I came to believe in children’s science expertise and the learning possibilities for children, educators, and researchers which follow.

Sometimes we discover a bit late in the game that we do things in problematic ways and for problematic reasons. This was the case for me when it came to teaching science. As a newly minted science teacher and doctoral student, I had grand ambitions: I wanted to teach in such a way that each student with whom I worked felt they could pursue science. Yet, I took for granted that I could create this idealistic vision of a science classroom on my own. I assumed that I knew how to nurture spaces of belonging for all children, without checking the implicit biases I held about children, their relationship to science, and science education. I thought that because I really love working with all children, even the ones who push hard against me, I was going to be a good science teacher. In my optimism, however, I was missing a few beats. Luckily, I had mentors in my life who were gracious enough to let me know that I didn’t exist outside the issues of inequity in science education. I was fully implicated in them.

It was these mentors who first shared with me scholarship identifying how children from lower-income backgrounds are less likely than those from higher-income backgrounds to have educators and researchers who expect or recognize them to be inclined toward science (e.g., see Archer et al., 2010; Ramos & Kiyama, 2021). Acknowledging this caused me to consider whether I was like the educators described in the literature. As this research shone a light on my preconceived biases around who does science, I realized that it would be gaslighting the children I taught to refute that I was. My complicity scared me as an educator entrusted with the well-being of children.

Carlone et al. (2014) similarly described how educators often reinforce the idea that there is higher cultural capital for “celebrated” science activities (e.g., robotics, coding, and chemistry), which children from higher-income backgrounds who have greater access to resources and informal learning opportunities are more likely to pursue. Correspondingly, when a child from a lower-income community is recognized as actively participating with science (either inside or outside of school), their science activities may be questioned by adults regardless of their potentially high learning value. For example, children making “potions” or playing with recycled materials may be regarded as doing “kitchen science” or “tinkering” in such a way that diminishes the vast deal of science which happens in the kitchen or the many inventions which arise from tinkering (e.g., see Civil et al., 2007; Dewitt et al., 2013; Gonsalves et al., 2013; Likely, 2020). This deficit mythos bolsters the construction of systemic obstacles which complicate how educators and researchers recognize and support children to do science on their own terms (Habig et al., 2021; Heredia, 2022).

Such a deficit narrative—one that suggests that children are “lacking” in something or “at risk”—must be interrupted and rewritten both individually and collectively (Valencia, 2010). Educators and researchers alike should seek to learn from children, particularly those who are often marginalized in science education. For people with a relatively privileged positionality—and as a white, higher-income woman working in science education and education research, I include myself—doing so can help to disrupt systemic barriers. To accomplish this, however, we must redefine our understanding of and appreciation for children’s science know-how.

This book stems from my doctoral thesis, which was further informed by my experiences as an informal educator in an aquarium and museums, a middle school science teacher, a substitute teacher, and a science education researcher. While I will share more about my career trajectory later on, it may also be interesting to know that I am three years into teaching arts integration in the context of STEAM (science, educational technology, arts, and mathematics) education in the Bachelor of Education program at Mount Royal University, a mid-size public university in Western Canada. Perhaps we share one or more of these things in common and perhaps not. Either way, I hope the following stories and musings resonate whatever your own context may be.

Before you read further, let’s consider if this is the right book for you. I wrote it for teachers, teacher educators, and informal educators (all of which I will collectively refer to as “educators” from this point on), as well as educational researchers, who want to know how to embrace asset-based frameworks and critically reflective practices. It’s useful if you’re into science or science education, but not necessary. (If you’ve picked up this book and happen to be an art teacher, all the better!) This book is not about how to navel gaze, which can be easy to do when inquiring into one’s practice. Rather, my assumption is that we can all be more responsible with the power we wield and embody an ethic for lifelong curiosity and learning.

This book is meant to disrupt and transform how you teach by sharing how I disrupted, transformed, and continue to transform how I teach. Through personal narrative, this book explores how both informal and formal educators and scholars can attend to the politics of recognition in science education (Avraamidou, 2021). I situate these lessons in the context of my dominant positionality to attend to the politics of representation. Although white, higher-income educators, like myself, are not in a position to immediately increase representation in science education, we can contribute to redistributing power and increasing proportional representation over time by disinvesting from deficit-based narratives, turning toward strength-based narratives (e.g., see Yosso, 2005; Rahm & Moore, 2016; Valencia, 2010; Esteban-Guitart, 2023), and acknowledging that children, regardless of who they are, already do science (Siry et al., 2012). We also know, thanks to the work of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogues such as Gloria Ladson-Billings and Django Paris, that white, higher-income educators can do much to better represent intersectional diversity through affirmative content and pedagogy, by showing up and walking the talk (e.g., bell hooks).

However, there is more work to be done! Those who inhabit culturally dominant positions and structures can and ought to question their relationship to science, their personal investments in bordering and unbordering the field, and the systems of recognition which affect intersectional diversity, representation, and legibility in science education. Through this book, I seek to shine a light on the value of interrogating one’s own politics of recognition as an instrument to shift the institutional politics of recognition and representation, such that children can claim and sustain, if they so desire, their rightful presence in science (e.g., see Avraamidou, 2021; Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2020; Worsley, 2022).

I work in a field (teacher education) where my outward positional identity as a higher-income, white woman is commonplace. I care deeply about cultivating more just and equitable possibilities in education, particularly in science education, and seek to generatively disrupt the ways by which white supremacy, racism, and economic inequality continue to inscribe injustice. While those who are similarly positioned to me may feel resonance with the ideas and experiences I express, I hope this book speaks to all who are invested in teaching and doing science differently.

At this point, maybe you’re asking yourself the following questions:

• What do I currently believe children’s science to look, feel, and sound like?
• Are there children I am more likely to recognize as science doers and knowers? Which children?
• Am I ready to think about my teaching and research practices even though it may be uncomfortable and without a fixed outcome?
  • Am I ready to question what I think I know about science know-how?
  • Am I ready to embrace cultural humility?
  • Am I ready to find joy in critical reflection?
  • How can I stay curious and open to new ways of knowing and doing science?

If these questions strike something within you, I suggest you keep reading.