High School Students’ Emergent Positions from Science Internships

Abstract

Learning science in authentic settings, such as science internships in university laboratories, has been suggested as an effective way to enhance students’ scientific knowledge and skills, expand their views on the nature of science inquiry, and inspire them to pursue science careers. However, little research has been done to study how high school students position themselves in science internships while working at the elbows of scientists. According to positioning theory, how students view and position themselves may greatly shape how they participate in educational activities. Thus, the purpose of this ethnographic study was to investigate high school students’ emergent positions from their interactions with scientists in science internships. By analyzing students’ cogenerative dialogues about their internship experiences, we identified ten categories of high school students’ positions that emerged in science internships. Moreover, how each science laboratory team made unique contributions to high school students’ positionalities and how these students positioned themselves during follow-up interviews eight months after their internships were further discussed. Science educators may model classroom environments that can promote and support the positions identified in this study as students learn how to research and experiment to answer scientific questions in an authentic science learning environment.