Working and Learning in a Field Excursion

Abstract

This study aimed to discern sociocultural processes through which students learn in field excursions. To achieve this aim, short-term ethnographic techniques were employed to examine how undergraduate students work and enact knowledge (or knowing) during a specific field excursion in biology. The students participated in a working practice that employed research methods and came to engage with various biological phenomena over the course of their work. A three-level analysis of the students’ experiences focused on three processes that emerged: participatory appropriation, guided participation, and apprenticeship. These processes derive from advances in practice-oriented theories of knowing. Through their work in the field, the students were able to enact science autonomously; they engaged with peers and teachers in specific ways and developed new understandings about research and epistemology founded on their experiences in the field. Further discussion about the use of “practice” and “work” as analytical concepts in science education is also included.

Impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on field instruction and remote teaching alternatives: Results from a survey of instructors

“…Other disciplines, such as the geosciences, similarly rely upon field activities in instruction (Whitmeyer & Mogk, 2009). Field activities, defined here as educational activities that occur outside and involve interaction with the natural or built environment (Fleischner et al., 2017), can provide unique and engaging instruction that is often vital to learning outcomes of postsecondary courses, even when they represent a relatively small portion of instruction (Harland, Spronken‐Smith, Dickinson, & Pickering, 2006; Hole, 2018). Potential impacts of reduction and elimination of field activities and natural history education from undergraduate curricula have been previously recognized (Tewksbury et al., 2014) as have potential solutions (Fleischner et al., 2017).…”

Taking practical learning in STEM education home: Examples from do‐it‐yourself experiments in plant biology

“…Practice and practical activities in education provide considerable positive influence on the learning and motivation of students (Brownell et al., 2012; Easton & Gilburn, 2012; Hole, 2017; Lave, 1996; White et al., 2002). Practical learning experiences provide opportunities to engage multiple senses as you touch, smell and observe a study object or phenomenon, which creates a new way of knowing the theory by increased sensory and cognitive activity (Nabors et al., 2009; Willis, 2007).…”

“…If students only follow a “cookbook recipe” without being engaged in the learning situation, they will not gain the same outputs as students who are more involved in the decision‐making of the learning activities (Brownell et al., 2012). On the other hand, in more student‐active practical work, activities can give the students skills and competencies related more to an authentic science experience and thus better prepare the students for work‐life (Hole, 2017). Practical learning can be active and authentic in many ways, from the process of critical thinking and generating hypotheses to designing the experiment and analyzing the collected data (Spell et al., 2014).…”

Enhancing the learning of evolutionary anthropology skills by combining student‐active teaching with actual and virtual immersion of Master's students in fieldwork, laboratory practice, and dissemination

“…This promotes the development of problem‐solving and thinking skills and typically involves a communal atmosphere, building student confidence and potentially reducing the release of stress hormones in their brains, which in turn removes a factor that can impede learning (Owens & Tanner, 2017 ). In addition, conducting real fieldwork and experiments enhances student engagement and the emergence of skills by offering them the possibility to participate as scientists and to conduct joint projects with instructors (Hole, 2017 ). Moreover, evolutionary anthropology is relatively unique in that it relies on heritage sites and materials (e.g., cave paintings, hominin fossils, unique archaeological artifacts), as well as on extant data (notably human biological data, rare animal taxa, unique reference collections) that are scattered across the globe and can only rarely be accessed or manipulated.…”