Tracing our Methodological Steps

Abstract

The process of interpreting how collaborative groups make sense of science in informal learning and teaching contexts such as museums has been actively studied for the past few decades. Studies often focus on the science content that is learned or the ways in which content is taught. Such studies also largely focus on the typical European-American public that predominantly populate museums and other informal places of learning. The research we describe in this chapter disrupts these patterns; our research has actively explored scientific sense making from the point of view of the learners, who, in our study, were all ethnically diverse families with children in a nearby school serving culturally and linguistically diverse students. As in the other chapters in this volume, we focus here on the twists and changes of methods with time that made our research possible. We start with a short vignette, in order to introduce some of the themes we will advance.