Speculative Science Education toward Socioecological Care: An Exploration of Youth’s Engagement in a Critical Place-Based Science Camp

Abstract

This dissertation explores youth’s socioecological care and hope in a critical place-based science camp. Drawing on feminist and Indigenous theories of entanglement and care in a more-than-human world, I conceptualize socioecological care as the interplay between recognizing interdependence and assuming responsibility for our roles within larger entangled webs. I offer a framework for speculative science education toward socioecological care, comprising three processes—paying attention, recognizing, and envisioning—and study an implementation of this framework in a camp centered around socioecological issues in a local watershed. Through video analysis, I explore what human/more-than-human relations and care-related tensions emerge as youth pay attention to the more-than-human world through science practices. Then, through a qualitative analysis of camper artifacts, interviews, and discourse, I investigate the nature of youth’s hope and how this connects to their engagement in recognizing and envisioning. Findings point to ways of engaging in science practices toward care, but also reveal pitfalls to avoid. Furthermore, my analysis suggests the inevitability of care-related tensions and the need for thoughtful deliberation when interacting with the more-than-human world through science. This study further reveals that youth follow different pathways toward critical hope. This dissertation contributes to theorizations of care in a more-than-human world and has implications for cultivating critical hope and envisioning sustainable futures through STEM.