Fostering the Voices of all Stakeholders: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Implementation of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in a Community-Based Informal Learning Site Through the Student Experience

Abstract Information: The MathExplorer project partners with sites in students’ communities and asks participants to create math “walk stops” based on their interests. This research-practitioner partnership involves informal learning sites located in a large urban area serving economically, racially, and ethnically diverse students. Learners explore nature centers, museums, and other community spaces to learn about and discuss math connections to everyday objects they find. They create and share their own “walk stops” based on mathematical questions they pose and answer. The program helps students see math in everyday objects, increasing their math interest and self-efficacy. The project was designed within the framework of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), with a goal of addressing students' specific interests, perspectives, and educational needs. CSP views students’ cultural, ethnic, and community characteristics as assets, seeking to sustain them through the educational process. The implementation of the project through informal learning sites is highly relevant to its context in a state that has recently enacted “anti-CRT” legislation that leaves public school teachers reluctant to veer away from standardized curriculum to respond to the cultural composition of their classes. There has been broad concern among educators about the impact of “anti-CRT” legislation on students of non-dominant racial and ethnic groups, and the impact on classrooms is an established topic of investigation. Meanwhile, there has been little research into the ways that informal learning sites can address student needs by utilizing CSP. This study works to understand how CSP is reflected in student responses and products to better understand how these outcomes are obtained in informal leaning contexts. Better understanding the processes that lead to these responses can fill the gap in understanding how to best implement these practices in informal learning sites that serve diverse populations. The main questions the study seeks to answer are: What are the characteristics of the informal learning site that students identify as fostering their expression? In what ways does student voice show up in the questions and answers students pose and answer in the MathExplorer activities? How do student responses reflect the goals of CSP to sustain cultural and ethnic identity? Utilizing data collected at a summer camp at a city art museum, this paper utilizes inductive coding of student projects and photographs, and transcripts of video-recorded conversations of participants engaged in camp-related activities throughout the museum and during a semi-structured focus group at the end of the camp. Through an iterative process, how participants express their own perspectives, interests, and educational needs, reflecting the tenets of culturally sustaining pedagogy, were identified. The data analysis process identified three main themes: opinions, personal connections, and wonderings. We found that the MathExplorer camp at the informal learning site fostered a sense of student “voice”; that the informal learning site and MathExplorer activities offered opportunities for students to become creators of knowledge, fostering a sense of pride; and that the process of creating their own questions helped the students engage in their communities to create personal connections to their learning.