Abstract
This paper represents an ethnographic study of youth engaged in research-informed and negotiated actions around socio-scientific issues (SSI ) through the STEPWISE framework from the perspective of sustainability education. Through facilitated action research, a food justice-oriented community-based organization and the STEPWISE team collaborated on two consecutive eight-month after-school programs for teenage girls. Curriculum topics included food preparation and health along with social and environmental justice. A key aim of this study was to engage participants in actions, personal and social, based on skill development, acquired content knowledge, and youth-led research relevant to the topics of the program and in line with STEPWISE pedagogy. The study found many positive outcomes for program participants, including increased self-efficacy and outcome expectancy related to their agency as researchers and food justice advocates. Deeper analysis of program goals versus outcomes yielded some challenges to overall expectation achievement. These challenges may be attributed to resource limitations, divergent pedagogical practices and facilitator comfort with student-led research and multimedia technologies. The authors used constant-comparative methods to understand challenges to a community-university SSI-based partnership, and how in future they may be negotiated and overcome, toward more socially-just youth programs, especially for those with a goal of sustainability.
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This project was funded through a generous grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada).
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Sperling, E., Bencze, L. (2017). Teaching Girls to Fish?: A Case of a Co-Curricular Food Justice Education Program for Youth. In: Bencze, L. (eds) Science and Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies and Environments. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55505-8_19
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