STUDENT CULTURAL AND SCIENCE ENGAGEMENT THROUGH PLACE-BASED TEACHING: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE ELWHA SCIENCE EDUCATION PROJECT

Place-based education is intended to support student engagement with content through connection with students’ physical and human environments. The Elwha Science Education Project (ESEP) engages Native American (and a small number of non-Native American) middle and high school students in Earth science and traditional Klallam cultural learning experiences in a week-long place-based education program. Students discover the geosciences in their own “backyards” on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula while learning history about their Klallam ancestors. They hear Klallam stories connected with their ancestors’ and their community’s lands, they hike, and they discover their outdoor environments both today and through learning about the past.

Successful place-based educational programs incorporate interests relevant to participants’ lives, among other “success” indicators. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of observations, interviews, and surveys combined with current research on “best practice” for place-based educational programs and an analysis of participating students’ interests are utilized to tell the story of the strengths and weaknesses of the ESEP as related to student engagement. The relationships between science and geosciences engagement, cultural knowledge engagement, engagement in program activities, and sustainability of engagement are explored.

Observational data indicate that students are highly engaged with both cultural and science activities during the program, but student interest in science and culture remain statistically unchanged from pre- to post-program. For cultural interest, this is not surprising. Students are “interested” or “very interested” both pre- and post-program. However, students are “a little interested” in both science and the geosciences in pre- and post-program questionnaires. Preliminary qualitative data analyses likewise support that students are more interested in their traditional culture than they are in science or the geosciences. Based on student interest in culture, we hypothesize that a clearer link between culture and science content would improve student science and geosciences interest.