“GodMode is his video game name”: situating learning and identity in structures of social practice

“What comes to mind when you think of science? The perfumery!”: Documenting science‐related cultural learning pathways across contexts and timescales

“…While all of the youth enrolled in the study possessed learning narratives tied to activity, affiliated others, identities, and so on, for this analysis, we chose to highlight Brenda's learning narrative because it is directly related to science. Several other participants had rich technology and engineering‐related learning narratives, for example (see Bricker & Bell, for a technology‐related case), and still others had rich learning narratives specific to other types of activity (e.g., learning narratives related to the development of sporting expertise). It is an empirical question, but uncovering these narratives and then actively and thoughtfully leveraging them as part of science education in schools could have enormous learning implications.…”

“…For example, a youth's interest in gaming can serve as a driving force for long‐term STEM‐related learning—and also an outcome of participation in different gaming genres (cf. Barron, ; Bricker & Bell, ; Hidi & Renninger, ). In addition, we identify forms of participation in (cf., Ito et al, ), relationships with others (cf.…”

“…We have discussed elsewhere (Bricker & Bell, ) that certain contexts, school being chief among them for many youth, are sites of disruption and frustration in relation to otherwise sophisticated STEM‐related learning and expertise that youth are developing in a plethora of other settings. Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, and Lee () describe this phenomenon as such:

Often, people can competently perform complex cognitive tasks outside of school, but may not display these skills on school‐type tasks.

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“…Yet, we argue that these accounts are exactly what are needed in order to better understand aspects of youths' STEM‐related learning (e.g., Bell et al, ; Bricker & Bell, ; Nasir, ; Warren, Ballenger, Ogonowski, Rosebery, & Hudicourt‐Barnes, ), as well as to leverage the details and nuances of these learning pathways in the design of school science related learning environments (e.g., Bang, Medin, Washinawatok, & Chapman, ; Calabrese Barton, ; Rosebery, Warren, Ballenger, & Ogonowski, ; Tzou, Bricker, & Bell, ). Assuming that the science education community considers youths' experiences, interests, cultural practices, and linguistic patterns, for example, as part of their prior knowledge (see Bricker, Reeve, & Bell, in ), and that the field values building on learners' prior knowledge during school science instruction (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, ), how do we, as science educators, learn about and characterize youths' STEM‐related trajectories across contexts and timescales so that we can help build better STEM‐related learning bridges?…”

Future Learning in Primary Schools

“…Participation by the learner can be voluntary, and learning can be selfdirected. Bricker and Bell ( 2012 ) examined a boy's interest in playing video games over a period of 4 years to understand the development of expertise across settings and time. Bell and his team ( 2013 ) conducted ethnographic studies in the US context to examine the learning pathways of a group of youths across settings, social groups, and pursuits.…”