LOST Opportunities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. What Counts as Math and Science?

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

3. PART1

   1. Introduction: What Counts as Math and Science?

      • Reed Stevens

      Pages 3-6

   2. Math I Am: What We Learn from Stories That People Tell About Math in Their Lives

      • Indigo Esmonde, Kristen Pilner Blair, Shelley Goldman, Lee Martin, Osvaldo Jimenez, Roy Pea

      Pages 7-27

   3. What Counts as Science in Everyday and Family Interactions?

      • Maureen Callanan, Megan Luce, Lara Triona, Jennifer Rigney, Deborah Siegel, Jennifer Jipson

      Pages 29-48

   4. What Counts as Mathematics When “We All Use Math Every Day”? A Look at NUMB3RS

      • Indigo Esmonde

      Pages 49-63

   5. What Counts Too Much and Too Little as Math

      • Reed Stevens

      Pages 65-83

   6. When Is Mathematics, and Who Says So?: A Commentary on Part I

      • Ray McDermott

      Pages 85-91

4. Understanding How and Why People Learn Across Settings as an Educational Equity Strategy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93

      PDF

5. PART2

   1. Introduction: Understanding How and Why People Learn Across Settings as an Educational Equity Strategy

      • Philip Bell

      Pages 95-98

   2. Creating Within and Across Life Spaces: The Role of a Computer Clubhouse in a Child’s Learning Ecology

      • Brigid Barron, Susie Wise, Caitlin K. Martin

      Pages 99-118

   3. Discovering and Supporting Successful Learning Pathways of Youth In and Out of School: Accounting for the Development of Everyday Expertise Across Settings

      • Philip Bell, Leah Bricker, Suzanne Reeve, Heather Toomey Zimmerman, Carrie Tzou

      Pages 119-140

   4. Doing Science with Others at Preschool and at Home: A Comparison of Contextually Situated Interactional Configurations and Their Implications for Learning

      • Siri Mehus, Reed Stevens, Linda Grigholm

      Pages 141-165

   5. Shifting Languages, Spaces, and Learner Identities: Learning Mathematics After School

      • Aria Razfar

      Pages 167-186

   6. Expanding Methodologies to Account for Expansive Views of Learning: A Commentary on Part II

      • Kris D. Gutiérrez

      Pages 187-191

6. STEM in the Organized Out-of-School Time Setting

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 193-193

      PDF

7. PART3

   1. Introduction: STEM in the Organized Out-of-School Time Setting

      • Bronwyn Bevan

      Pages 195-200

   2. Out-of-School Time STEM: It’s Not What You Think

      • Bronwyn Bevan, Vera Michalchik

      Pages 201-217

   3. Examining Youth’s Mathematics Practices in an After-School Robotics Team

      • John Y. Baker, Janine T. Remillard, Vivian Lim

      Pages 219-231

   4. After-School: An Innovative Model to Better Understand the Mathematics Learning of Latinas/os

      • Lena Licón Khisty, Craig Joseph Willey

      Pages 233-249

Learning in informal settings is attracting growing attention from policymakers and researchers, yet there remains, at the moment, a dearth of literature on the topic. Thus this volume, which examines how science and mathematics are experienced in everyday and out-of-school-time (OST) settings, makes an important contribution to the field of the learning sciences. Conducting research on OST learning requires us to broaden and deepen our conceptions of learning as well as to better identify the unique and common qualities of different learning settings. We must also find better ways to analyze the interplay between OST and school-based learning. In this volume, scholars develop theoretical structures that are useful not only for understanding learning processes, but also for helping to create and support new opportunities for learning, whether they are in or out of school, or bridging a range of settings. The chapters in this volume include studies of everyday and ‘situated’ processes that facilitate science and mathematics learning. They also feature new theoretical and empirical frameworks for studying learning pathways that span both in- and out-of-school time and settings. Contributors also examine structured OST programs in which everyday and situated modes of learning are leveraged in support of more disciplined practices and conceptions of science and mathematics. Fortifying much of this work is a leading focus on educational equity—a desire to foster more socially supportive and intellectually engaging science and mathematics learning opportunities for youth from historically non-dominant communities. Full of compelling examples and revealing analysis, this book is a vital addition to the literature on a subject with a fast-rising profile.

• OST
• STEM
• afterschool activities
• afterschool organizations
• everyday learning
• everyday mathematics
• everyday science
• informal learning
• informal science
• mathematics education
• mathematics learning
• non-school settings
• out-of-school time
• out-of-school-time
• science education
• science learning
• situated learning
• learning and instruction

From the reviews:

“LOST Opportunities is a volume of work focusing on the learning of mathematics and science that takes place outside of school. … the book offers some exciting agendas for future work. … the main themes of the book comprise the nature of mathematics in school and outside of school, the ‘un-naturalness’ of classrooms for learning, and issues of equity in mathematics (and more widely, STEM) education. … this book is a valuable addition to the literature.” (Tim Jay, Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 15 (3), 2013)

"[This volume] challenges notions of communities and their practices as bounded and, instead, takes care to attend to the flow and diffusion of youth across settings.[The studies] illustrate the conceptual and methodological shifts required when a dynamic view of culture and more expansive forms of learning are employed, I believe that the studies represented in this volume will move our work forward as we seek to understand better which social ecologies support -- indeed, ratchet up -- learning and give meaning for youth, especially those from non-dominant communities." (Kris Gutiérrez, University of Colorado Boulder) 

"Conventions for applying the term mathematics (or science) to certain activities have been more institutional than functional, more political than pedagogical. ... [These] conventions lead to a loss of many students whose everyday mathematical reasoning goes unrecognized, unappreciated, and unused. Treated as an absence, its presence goes untapped by future development, and local, on-call, situation specific mathematical reasoning can go untapped as a source of everyone's visible and institutionalized identity. This collection of papers examines the nature, importance, and possibilities of these forms of reasoning." (Ray McDermott, Stanford University) 

"For someone who has long been interested in afterschool educational activities as a promising supplement to formal, in-school education, [LOST Learning] provides rich opportunities to think about the promise and the problems that such programs offer to those concerned with the infusion of science into the learning and development of their participants. ... [What] stands out as a common thread among these papers is their shared concern to contrast the kind of educational environment that afterschool settings routinely offer with those found in standard schools. These contrasts become the starting point for specifying ways to take advantage of the fact that the activitiesare not occurring in school in order to enrich and deepen young people’s engagement with, understanding of, and appreciation for science." (Mike Cole, University of California San Diego)

• Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA

  Bronwyn Bevan

• College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

  Philip Bell

• Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

  Reed Stevens

• College of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago, Chicago, USA

  Aria Razfar

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