Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Science in the Making Outside of School: A Synthesis of Possibilities and Challenges -- Theoretical Points of Reference -- Marginal Sites of Science in the Making -- Science in the Making in Les Scientifines -- Science in the Making in Jardins-Jeunes -- Science in the Making in Cosmos -- Look Beyond the Science: What Matters to Youth in These Programs -- What Does it Mean to Engage in Science Outside of School? A Synthesis of Doing and Making Science -- Motives for Participation in Les Scientifines -- Motives for Participation in Jardins-Jeunes -- Motives for Participation in Cosmos -- Motives, Learning and Becoming: Is it About Fun or Science? -- Engagement in Science Over Time and its Implications for Learning and Becoming -- Engagement in Science Across Space: Learning and Becoming in Les Scientifines and Jardins-Jeunes -- Learning and Becoming Across Time and Space: Trajectories of Youth in and Beyond Les Scientifines and Jardins-Jeunes -- Did the Program Prepare Me for the Science Pipeline? Case Studies of Cosmos Students’ Trajectories to College -- Motives, Learning and Becoming Across Time and Space -- Science in the Making at the Margin -- References -- Index.

We know little about diverse youths’ engagement in science outside of school, the form such engagement takes and its impact on science literacy development and identity as a potential insider to science. We need to know more about why, how, and for whom out-of-school settings make a difference. Science in the Making at the Margin offers some answers through an in-depth and theoretically well-grounded multisited ethnography of three very different out-of-school settings: an afterschool program for girls only, a youth garden program, and a Math and Science Upward Bound Program. Grounded in sociocultural-historical theory, this book explores, youths’ meaning making of science and co-constructions of new levels of understandings of science, as well as how they come to position themselves in relation to science through participation in science practices at the margin. The author highlights the multiplicity of learning, becoming and hybridity that constitute the learning of science in the three sites studied. Her analysis suggests that most youth position themselves as science users, as youth who are creating with and learning through science with others in textually rich environments and situations, and in ways that are meaningful to them. Their identity as users of science is grounded in the forms of engagement supported by the three science practices. The challenge is then to leverage such literacy beyond the practices themselves.

Description based on print version record.