High School Students as Apprentices in University Research Laboratories. Robert E. Bleicher, Centre for Mathematics & Science Education, QUT, Locked Bag No 2, Red Hill, Qld 4059 ph: (07) 864-3344; fax: (07) 864-3985; email: r.bleicher@mist.qut.edu.au Abstract This study was designed to explore the learning potential for high school students working as apprentices in university solid state physics labs, as part of a summer science program. It examined the communication between scientists and students and how this constrained or supported learning. Video-taped laboratory instructional events and student public presentations of what they were learning in their labs were submitted to an interactional sociolinguistic analysis. Frequency tables compare concept coverage in lab to presentations. Discourse analytic link maps illustrate connections between talk in laboratory to talk in presentations. Students experienced the uncertainty of future directions of experimentation, the daily need to collect data, the frustration and urgency of repairing equipment, both the ups and downs of everyday life in the lab. Presentations were directly tied to what was learned in lab. From lab experiences, students took up particular vocabulary, a way of talking about it, and ways of representing it (particular charts, graphs, overhead transparencies). Examination of the learning opportunities made possible for high school students in authemtic research settings reveals the range of skills they ar capable of in resource rich learning enviornments. This has implications for future secondary science education curricular reform. The laboratory has always been a most distinctive feature of science instruction (Kyle, Penick, & Shymansky, 1979). The rationale behind the emphasis upon laboratory experience is that the "collection of data and analysis of real phenomena, is an essential component of the enquiring curriculum" (Schwab, 1969), in that it "gives students an appreciation of the spirit and methods of science, promoting problem-solving, analytic and generalizing ability" (Ausubel, 1966). The 1980's and 90's have seen a flurry of activity from the university and private industrial sectors aimed at involving secondary and undergraduate tertiary students in science programs at university or industrial research sites (for example: Queensland University of Technology Program of placing students in local research laboratories). One of the major strengths of such programs is that they embed the student learning experience in a bonafide science laboratory setting. Instead of doing experiments in school laboratories, designed for practice-to-learn activities, students work in laboratories in which scientists are conducting on-going research designed to lead to publications and inventions of new technologies and equipment. Little is known about how successful these programs have been since there has been little empirical educational research on them. Such research would provide new insights into the characteristics of teaching-learning processes in actual science laboratories. These insights could have significant implications for student learning in school science laboratories. students can learn in them. By recognising the range of skills and conceptual understandings of which high school students are capable in context-rich research laboratory environments, we can begin to expand the learning objectives for students in schools, given the constraints of the different cultural settings. Purpose The goal of this study was to begin to develop learning models in research laboratories. It examines the learning opportunities of high school students working with scientists involved in on-going research projects in university laboratories. This research concentrates on the social and cultural factors of the laboratory and how these affect student learning. It recognises discourse between scientist mentors and students as the primary means of achieving such learning. This paper focuses on one student and his three scientist mentors, examining discourse links between the student's presentation of science and his laboratory activities. More specifically, it attempts to answer the following question: How do the cultural and social aspects of everyday laboratory participation affect the student's learning opportunities? Theoretical Perspective This research was conducted from a social constructivist perspective that is concerned with how social, cultural, and institutional factors support and/or constrain what is learned and recognized by participants as science. From this perspective, the subject matter knowledge of a particular scientific discipline is not taken as a given object, but rather one that is socially constructed moment-by-moment by participants, and subject to change over time (Latour & Woolgar, 1986). Ways of discussing, presenting, and doing science can be viewed as constructed through the social interactions of participants (Green, 1983; Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, 1992; Bloome, in press). The way instruction engages students in science influences access to scientific knowledge (Lemke, 1990); the opportunities that students have to learn science (Cochran, 1990); the actions of teachers in familiar and unfamiliar content areas of science (Carlsen, 1992); and conceptual knowledge development (Roth & Roychoundhury, 1993). It is the circumstances of shared activity (Roschelle & Clancey, 1992) that is contingent upon what counts as scientific knowledge to the participants and the learning opportunities available to students. Scientists generally describe their occupation as making sense of how something works or why it looks the way it does, rather than finding facts to support a preconceived theory (Kuhn, 1970; Lakatos, 1979). The process of coming to understand a particular phenomenon involves doing experiments, discussing research with fellow laboratory members, and communicating findings to other scientists in conference presentations and through responses to published articles in scholarly journals. In short, new scientific knowledge is created by the ways in which scientists do their work, including communication with other scientists. A number of studies in actual science research laboratories have been undertaken within the disciplines of the sociology of scientific knowledge (for example, Woolgar, 1988; Knorr-Cetina, 1981) and ethnomethodology (for example, Lynch, 1985; Goodfield, 1981). Collectively, these studies support the notion that scientific knowledge is not a given. Rather, it is socially constructed by groups of scientists as they go about their everyday activities within specific laboratories, and as they communicate the results of that work to other scientists. Based on this notion, the university science research laboratory, in which this present study was situated, was conceived in terms of social and cultural aspects that bear upon such knowledge construction. The methodology of Interactional Sociolinguistics was employed since it views learning situations as cultures and teaching/learning processes as socio-communicative in nature (Collins & Green, 1992; Gumperz, 1986). The essence of this perspective applied to this study's laboratory situation is that as the student and scientists work together in the laboratory over time, they develop patterned ways of doing things, common ways of talking about and conceptualizing activities, and shared perceptions of interpretation and evaluation of experimental results. Method Design The study design was a topic-oriented ethnography, which utilised an Interactional Sociolinguistic methodology. The topic orientation was that of characterizing student learning in the laboratory over time. This study was ethnographic in two senses (Erickson, 1984): 1) it explored issues of learning from the participant's point of view; 2) it characterized how members of the laboratory established ways of talking and doing science together in order to achieve common goals. Participants and Setting This study was carried out at The Center for Quantized Electronic Structures (QUEST) at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). QUEST is a Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation. Research at QUEST is focused on the physical phenomena of microscopically small quantum electronic structures, made primarily from semiconductor materials. Eventually the techniques and knowledge developed from this research will be used to create a new generation of electronic and optoelectronic devices. The Apprentice Researchers at QUEST (ARQ) program brought high school students and teachers into the laboratories at QUEST to participate in the process of scientific research and inquiry. The high school students and teachers worked as apprentice researchers in collaboration with graduate student mentors, under the supervision of QUEST faculty. As apprentices, they developed specific laboratory skills on sophisticated experimental equipment, as well as first-hand experience of how science research is conducted. One of the participants in this study was a 16 year-old male high school student, Tony, one of 12 (five females, 7 males), attending the ARQ summer program. The other three participants, Jon, Brian, and Yaz, were graduate student scientists who normally worked as a group in the laboratory in which Tony entered as an apprentice. Data Collection Data were collected daily over four months. The researcher established the role of active participant observer (Spindler, 1982) in the laboratory. Fieldnotes were written to document direct observations. Analysis involved domain and taxonomic analyses (Spradley, 1980) of these fieldnotes. Briefly, domain and taxonmonic analyses are reliable methods of coming to understand the cultural significance that objects, actions, and relationships between these two have for participants in a social group, such as a laboratory. Artifacts (student journal, laboratory book, experimental output data tables/graphs, student presentation overhead transparencies/notes), formal and informal interviews with the student and scientists, audio-visual recordings, and questionnaires were also gathered. Analysis identified key instructional events that took place in the laboratory and in other sites of the program. These key events were submitted to a three-stage discourse analysis: construction of Transcripts; identification of analytic units; construction of Structuration Maps. This procedure has been explained in more detail elsewhere (Bleicher, 1994). Link Maps were also constructed for this analysis. They represent transcripts from two different events side by side. There must be ethnographic evidence to support such linking. Link Maps make visible important links between key instructional events separated in time and/or physical site. The links involve identifiable parallels between topics and the ways these topics are developed in two different instructional situations. An example of a Link Map is shown below. A Link Map Presentation event Laboratory Event 100  t: and the heater heats up the oil (p3) when you heat it up okay  101  and then the oil vapor like the oil vapor come up  102  rises to the top of becomes like a steam okay  103  this thing right there y: but it started as vapor not not oil okay?  104  and shoots out then it just shoot   The linked message units were chosen by careful consideration of the ethnographic context in which they occurred. This required triangulation of fieldnotes with the Transcripts and Structuration Maps for each linked event. Triangulation, in this instance, refers to the use of fieldnotes to support that a particular topic first appeared in an instructional event at a particular point in time. This is then correlated to similar evidence in other events later in time. The linguistic content and contextualization cues (to be explained later in this paper) must provide evidence of connections between the two. Link Maps provided a reliable means to construct interpretations about how the discourse in one situation was affected by discourse in another. Unit of Analysis The discourse analytic methods employed in interactional sociolinguistics are based on the assumption that, in instructional situations, the participants are actively cooperating in the discourse to try to understand one another's communicative signals (Grice, 1975). To maintain a sense of mutual understanding about what each is trying to communicate to the other, people are constantly attending to communicative signals from one another. Interpretations of the communicative messages of others involves inferring what the other person is trying to really communicate through a range of contextualization cues. Such cues are signals that speakers and listeners send or attend to in order to come to a common understanding of what is being talked about. Through tacit awareness of such cues, participants make sense of their interaction with others: this creates the potential for learning. The basic unit of analysis, based on face-to-face interactions, is the message unit, situationally characterized by contextualization cues. Results and Discussion Researchable Question: How do the cultural and social aspects of everyday laboratory participation affect the student's learning opportunities? The Nature of Laboratory and Laboratory Work Three findings from the study define the characteristics of what laboratory members considered to be at the heart of doing science in their laboratory: 1.Students learned firsthand that uncertainty operates at many levels in doing science. Disagreements among laboratory members over interpretation of data outputs were not always resolved (data outputs included such objects as graphs of output electrical signal intensity versus frequencies observed). 2.Laboratory procedures and methods were not followed like cook-book recipes, but were creatively adapted to local contingencies in order to "get results". 3.Equipment breakdown, the redesigning of equipment, interfacing computers with other equipment, and improving data output formats were all approached by participants with the single-minded motivation of obtaining "good data". Such data was highly valued and eventually became the basis for oral and written reports about the productive discoveries of the laboratory group. These findings support those from studies undertaken in other types of science laboratories (for example, Woolgar, 1988; Knorr-Cetina, 1981). Taken as a group they begin to define salient aspects of what doing science involved in this laboratory. Knorr-Cetina (1981) argues that scientific knowledge and more tangible products of science, such as various new techniques or pieces of equipment, are constructed by scientists through a process of selecting from different possible courses of action in the laboratory. Which selections the scientist makes is dependent upon a complex of local contingencies, including the historical context in which she/he is living. Since each laboratory will exhibit variations in local contextual variables, there is a general state of indeterminacy or uncertainty in predicting exactly which selections will be made. This uncertainty is perhaps one of the most important lessons to be learned about doing research. It was one of the main virtues of the ARQ program that students were immersed in the day-to-day activities of a science research laboratory. In this manner, they gained firsthand experience of the uncertainty involved in doing science. Since their mentors were responsible for continuing their experiments, concurrently with hosting the high school student in the laboratory, the pressures of making things work to collect good data were ever present and observable by the student. Production of voluminous amounts of data is characteristic of most science laboratories. There is a tension between the goal of selecting through all these data to find patterns, in order to make sense of them, and the urgent daily drive to create more and more data output. Woolgar's (1988) notion that scientific knowledge is constructed through a process of making order out of disorder is useful in understanding this need for data. Out of the disorder of seemingly unrelated pieces of data, the scientist constructs, through application of knowledge and beliefs gained in prior laboratory experiences, pockets of order. As new data comes in, these initial pockets of order are either discarded or grow larger as things begin to fit together. As above, there is uncertainty in how this process unfolds. The high school student in the QUEST laboratory had the opportunity of experiencing the tension in the laboratory of collecting data on a daily basis, while trying to make sense of it, and the uncertainty of just what future directions the scientists would take based on previous decisions. Once in the laboratory, the high school student was able to experience what it meant to do science in a research laboratory: the uncertainty of future directions of experimentation; the need to collect data; the frustration and urgency of repairing equipment; both the ups and downs of everyday life in the laboratory. Laboratory as a Cultural System Laboratory for Tony proved to be much more than a particular room with equipment in it. Laboratory turned out to be a multiplicity of sites for learning. Laboratory as a multiple site for learning. Findings support the concept of laboratory as a multiple site in two respects. First, laboratory contained several work stations that afforded different opportunities to engage in doing science. Second, due to the fact that Jon, Brian, and Yaz all took on the responsibility at various times to help mentor Tony, each in their own unique manner, there were at least three unique student-mentor dyadic social interactions each creating different opportunities for learning. From these two sources of multiplicity within the one room, the conception of laboratory as a potential site for learning can be extended to multiple potential sites for learning within the one. _______________________ Insert Figure 1 about here _______________________ Figure 1 illustrates this concept of laboratory as a multiplicity of potential sites for learning. Dotted circles representing the presence of Brian, Yaz, and Jon are placed near their respective desk work areas. Events that involved them as participants in key instructional events with Tony were located in several different sites within the laboratory. For example: Jon was involved in one key event at the mass spec, another at the electronics cabinet near the EELS (Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy is an acronym used to refer to a particular piece of laboratory equipment), and yet another on the lounge, pouring over Tony's overhead transparencies in one of the key instructional events of the EELS Episode; Brian delivered many paper and pencil explanations at his desk, coinciding with the dotted circle on the figure, other times, he demonstrated procedures at the EELS, FTIR, or workbench area to the right; Yaz used the whiteboard above the lounge to draw figures during one of the key instructional laboratory events of the Oil Pump Episode, as well as in instructing Tony in how to use the plotter at the workbench in the lower left of Figure 1. There was a range of learning opportunities at the various workstations in the laboratory. For example, the lounge and desk areas afforded paper and pencil explanation events from mentors, computer stations provided opportunities to practice graphic program skills, the mass spec and EELS created situations for more traditional direct use of tools and other examples of applying laboratory skills, while the books areas provided access to manuals and other reference materials for more individual learning events in which Tony participated. This characterizes the context in which opportunities to do and learn science could take place for the high school student. The laboratory already had an on-going cultural system before Tony entered. The next section discusses how findings inform just how the culture of the laboratory was transformed to allow for the purpose of a high school student doing and learning science. The Laboratory as a Site for Student Learning. Tony entered an on-going social and cultural system when he came to laboratory on that first day during the summer ARQ program. He had to learn to act appropriately in an environment that already had a complex system of roles/relationships, rights/obligations, and norms/expectations among laboratory members. There were patterned ways of doing science and interacting with laboratory participants as well as with others outside the laboratory. Tony was entering a strange place to do new things with unfamiliar people. A good deal of the work that Tony had to do was to learn how to talk like a scientist, as he saw it modeled by laboratory members. Additionally, he needed to learn to act like a scientist. At the end of the ARQ program, he was required to publicly present what he had learned and done in the laboratory. Thus, the final task for Tony was to display convincingly to others what science and doing science was in his laboratory. Jon, Brian, and Yaz were accustomed to having new adult, graduate school level members join their laboratory from time to time. They expected a minimal level of conceptual understanding in mathematics, basic physics, and chemistry, as well as entry level computing and mechanical skills. Tony, a high school student, was a strikingly non-traditional new member entering the laboratory. He entered this laboratory with the purpose of gaining more knowledge about science and learning how to work in the laboratory. While this purpose was the same as for a new graduate student entering the laboratory, the ultimate goal was very different: Tony's educational goals were more immediate and modest compared to a graduate student's three or four year down-the-track goal of completing dissertation research. The scientists were constantly made aware that Tony's level of science expertise was much lower than the usual graduate apprentice. The main work for Jon, Brian, and Yaz was to decide how to teach Tony both the theory behind the research they were doing in the laboratory, as well as instruct him in using the equipment to do science. As this was not their only task for the summer, they had to integrate this instruction with their everyday research program. Each of the three scientist-mentors approached this problem in his unique manner. Also, each spent different amounts of time directly working with Tony. But laboratory was not the only site (or multiplicity of sites within the one) of learning available to students in the ARQ program. The next section discusses findings that link learning in the laboratory to other program sites. Relationship of Laboratory to Other Sites of Learning. In addition to laboratory, other sites of potential learning included Friday sessions, electricity class, semiconductor class, Monday intern seminars, student public presentations, interactions with scientists from laboratories near the assigned laboratory, and research group meetings. While the model of dyadic instruction holds well in the laboratory and the classes, mentoring in other sites needs further explanation. This refers to an image of mentoring as a group process in which fellow students or groups of scientists helped by either direct comments during these activities, questions during the presentation, criticisms after, or in providing a sounding board and/or audience for students in displays, or practice displays of their learning. _______________________ Insert Figure 2 about here _______________________ Figure 2 is a visual representation of the interrelationships of various ARQ program sites for learning. There were eight sites in the ARQ program that were established to help students learn about the science practiced at QUEST. Laboratory has already been described. "Scientists other laboratories" refers to the social interactions possible between Tony and laboratories near his assigned laboratory. This included scientists from within the West research group, and occasionally some from other groups. They included graduate students, post-docs, and faculty members, as well as specialist support staff that floated throughout all the engineering laboratories providing expert consultation in electronics, optics, or computer operations. Additionally, ARQ apprentices occasionally visited one another to catch up on what they were doing in laboratory. Research group meetings took place at the end of each week. Their purpose was to get all members of the West research group (there were four laboratories involved in this group, of which Tony was placed in one) together to trade notes and exchange information. These meetings were an opportunity for Tony to get the bigger picture of how activities in his laboratory were integrated into a larger research project; it was also an opportunity to observe graduate students and postdocs giving private research group presentations of science. Electricity and semiconductor classes were special group instructional events provided for the ARQ apprentices. This is the more traditional arrangement found in most summer programs for high school students. Friday sessions were weekly meetings that provided apprentices with opportunities to practice presentations and discuss problems with the whole group. Intern seminars were given once a week by undergraduate researchers who presented their work to the ARQ apprentice group; this was an opportunity for students to experience variations of how science can be presented publicly. The main point about the various sites of learning in the ARQ program is that they had the potential for learning. They provided the opportunity for learning, but students took it up to different degrees at different times in different sites. Linking discourse strategies in Laboratory instruction to student presentations. Public presentations were scheduled to take place outside the laboratory with non-laboratory members as audience. They had the effect of focusing the pace and quantity of instructional activities in the laboratory. The public nature and group orientation of these events served to motivate scientist and student to co-construct learning objectives with a shared purpose of helping the student do the best possible job in the presentation. The relationship between laboratory instructional events and student public presentations provided a rich source of comparative analytic evidence to support a model of learning as a progressive process on several levels: conceptual knowledge; laboratory skills; socio-communicative competence. Figure 3 gives a visual image of the components within the laboratory site that can be linked to possible displays outside the laboratory. _______________________ Insert Figure 3 about here _______________________ The figure illustrates the five participants in Tony's laboratory, as well as some of equipment, tools, and methods employed to show him how to do and understand the research in the laboratory. The figure indicates three measures of Tony's prior knowledge before entering laboratory (journal article, interview, public presentation), and relates these six weeks down the track to post measures. Tony had many opportunities to display what he had learned and done in his laboratory during the program. These took the form of writing in his journal, giving laboratory visitors a tour of his laboratory, and the more public display of giving a formal presentation in the middle and at the end of the program. Public presentations were taken by ARQ program participants to be a demonstration of what the student had learned about science in the laboratory. In order to make visible the implicit assumption on the part of participants that what was shown in presentations accurately reflected what the student had learned in laboratory, the construct of display was developed. Calling the student's journal entries or final presentation a display of learning highlights the notion that what is shown in display represents what was learned in laboratory to varying degrees of accuracy and completness. There is a part-whole relationship between the student's presentation and his activities in the laboratory. To understand the presentation, it is necessary to know what was learned in the laboratory. What Tony learned in laboratory was affected by knowledge that he would have to speak about that learning in a future public presentation. There was a complex link between laboratory and presentation. If we consider what Tony learns in the laboratory as the whole, then the whole is related to three parts: an instructional event in the laboratory, the presentation event, and linkages between the two events. The nature of the part-whole relationship requires that we look beyond the local moment in the one site to other sites over time, and examine the linkages between sites and moments. Because of the consequential links between laboratory instructional events and the public presentation events, close examination of the communicative strategies employed between student-scientist and student-audience provided important insights into factors that support/constrain what was learned in the laboratory. Upon working through the entire corpus of collected data, four sets of events were found that could be distinctly linked through the analytic procedures outlined above. These sets of events are similar to what Mehan (1982) called episodes, chunks of instructional discourse that group together to form a cohesive topic development unit. Examples from one of these episodes will be given to illustrate interpretations made possible by bringing ethnographic data to bear upon the discourse at hand. Representative findings consistent across all four episodes will then be outlined indicating implications to theory and practice. The EELS Episode Background EELS is an instrument used extensively in surface science research. It's job was to take pictures of how molecules are bonding to metallic surfaces. These pictures are called spectra, and look similar to EKG graphs with peaks stretching out across the page. Interpretation of what these peaks mean is the main task of the scientists in this laboratory. Tony, worked in an EELS laboratory with three graduate student scientists, Brian, Jon, and Yaz. The EELS Episode links Tony's public Presentation (15 minutes in duration) of what he had learned about the EELS to three prior key laboratory instructional events, two with Brian of 55 and 41 minutes duration each (Event 1, Event 2), and one with Jon of 60 minutes duration (Event 3). The three laboratory events took place on the two days preceding the presentation day. Presentation In his Presentation, Tony read verbatim from overhead projector (OHP) transparencies for 170 message unit lines out of a total of the 387 message units that composed the main body of his talk (excluding his acknowledgments and questions & answers sections). This represents 44% of the total delivered presentation in terms of message units of talk. Talk based on the OHP transparencies, but not read verbatim, made up about 10% of the talk. The remaining 46% of the talk was directly related to "point to and describe" tours of two transparencies of schematics. Event 1 The first linked Laboratory Event (Event 1) took place two days before the presentation: participants were Brian and Tony. One of the most notable features of Brian's instructional talk with Tony was the extensive use of schematic diagrams, drawn freehand on notebook paper, to help illustrate his explanations of theoretical concepts behind the EELS; ninety-five percent of the talk was directly supported by Brian's illustrative drawings. The predominant proxemic during the entire event was Brian and Tony seated at Brian's desk, side by side, bent over paper and pencil supported discussion. Event 2 The second Laboratory Event (Event 2) took place the next day involving the same participants. The talk took place primarily (95%) at Brian's desk, with Tony seated beside him, while he read over Tony's computer printed notes for his presentation, made written comments on them, and sometimes elaborate theoretical points using hand-drawn schematics on notebook paper or in the margins of the note sheets to help support them. Event 3 The third Laboratory Event (Event 3) involved Jon and Tony. Talk was mostly built around Tony's proposed Presentation slides and notes. This event was intended by both Jon and Tony to be a rehearsal of Tony's Presentation. Tony ended up rehearsing about 25% of the time, while Jon further elaborate/clarified/ extended various conceptual points to be covered in it. Ninety percent of the talk was directly supported by OHP slides or paper & pencil diagrams and/or notes of explanations. The 10% of the talk not so supported were pointers from Jon on how to relax and deliver the Presentation from a psychological point of view. Perceived Purpose of Events 1, 2, 3 Brian's mentoring was initiated by the expressed purpose of helping Tony learn more about how to interpret an EELS spectrum, how electrons actually gave up energy to surface vibrations on both a practical and theoretical level, and particular advice on how to explain things in the Presentation. Brian perceived his task as providing Tony with a technical understanding of both the theory behind and the hands-on interpretation of an EELS spectrum. Jon's mentoring built upon Brian's, as it followed on the same day and had the same overall goal of helping Tony prepare for the Presentation. Jon helped in clearing up specific questions Tony still had about spectrum interpretation; he perceived his main role as that of helping Tony construct the structure of presentation of that knowledge. This is evident in the types of talk and activity apparent across events. Links The Link Map for this Episode, illustrates the linking of Tony's Presentation to three Laboratory events. The entire Link Map ran for 557 message unit lines and covered 44 pages. A representative example from this Link Map will be employed to illustrate how their interpretation helps answer the research questions. Link Map Example. Figure 4 contains a segment from a section of the Presentation that had been introduced as "How does EELS function". Lines 155 - 167 were read verbatim from an OHP slide titled just that. _______________________ Insert Figure 4 about here _______________________ Firstly, where did the words used in the Presentation come from? Lines 156 - 159 come from a textbook about EELS, by Ibach, a famous surface scientist. Jon had given this book to Tony early in the program, and he had extracted these words from the introduction to that text. It is notable that "thermionic emitter" and "electrostatic energy selector" were never subsequently explained in the presentation. Also, both Brian and Jon had advised Tony not to use "a lot of scientific jargon" and "bore the pants off them", rather to "explain things basically" in "your own Tony speak": these lines demonstrate that this advise was not always heeded. Lines 160 - 167 were derived from mentoring in Laboratory Events. Looking at the Laboratory column, lines 155 - 158, Brian's explanation of the flow of electrons through the EELS device, though similar in form, uses different technical terms: "cathode" instead of "thermionic emitter", "lens system" instead of "electrostatic energy selector". "Electrostatic" was employed by Brian to try to explain the forces acting upon electrons passing through the EELS: he subsequently gave up this attempt and explained things in what he perceived to be easier to understand terms such as "bounce", "electron", "lose energy", "scattering". Lines 160 - 163 demonstrate close modeling of Brian's "mentoring talk" in Tony's "presentation talk". What cannot be determined from looking only at the Presentation transcript is what is missing from the conceptual understanding being developed in the talk. This segment of the Presentation introduced several terms and some explanation. Tony avoided the fundamental explanation of how EELS functions, by not mentioning the quantum mechanical theory behind it. That such knowledge was considered important by laboratory members, is evident from the extraordinary amount of time and effort spent by Brian and Jon in explaining it. Fundamental to how EELS operates is the concept of energy loss: energy lost by electrons travelling from the EELS device, hitting the surface of interest, and coming back into the EELS device to be analyzed. How the electrons lose energy is explained by quantum mechanics. Tony never mentioned the word "quantum" or "quantum mechanics" in the Presentation. The scenario of electrons bouncing off the crystal and losing energy was discussed explicitly, 33 times, by Brian and Jon in the laboratory. Tony does return to the subject of energy loss later in the Presentation in a section that aims at explaining what can be learned from studying an EELS spectrum. He says "the electron can bounce off (the crystal) elastically that is uhm losing uh no no energy or it can excite the uh molecule from a ground state to an excited state in which it does give off energy". The italized words were read verbatim from a slide. This would have been a good start in the earlier section on "how does EELS function" to the quantum mechanics explanation. Furthermore, the mention of technical terms such as "excited state" and "ground state" without explanation of what these mean is noticeably inappropriate to the aim of explaining things to the audience. Evidence for the hypothesis that Tony's struggled repeatedly with his understanding of Brian's explanation of quantum mechanics is supported by his question patterns during Laboratory Events. For example: at the end of a 107 message unit long explanation of quantum mechanics by Brian, in response to Brian's prompt "do you understand", Tony responded: "I uh kind of understand" (spoken with little conviction in his tone of voice). This led to another extended turn of talk by Brian to explain it one more time (1 of 11 such repetitions), followed by another such response from Tony. This example of something missing from the Presentation is not meant to build a case of "badly learned" science, or "badly presented" science. The point is that what can be displayed in a presentation, as learned conceptual understanding, is usually judged by what can be seen and heard. The important things that may be missing may not be evident at all to those listening to such a presentation. The missing items may not be marked by contextualization cues or by interuption of the logical development of topic in the talk. This has implications for assessment of student learning from presentations, which will be taken up later. Some of the findings that emerged from Link Map analysis consistently across all four Episodes include: 1.Conceptual understanding in a laboratory instructional event were sometimes represented in the public presentation event appropriately, sometimes vaguely or inconsistently. Through linking the discourse in the two events, it could be determined how the match or mismatch between understanding came about. 2.The speaker's conceptual vagueness or inconsistency was usually not apparent to the audience of the public presentation. 3.The choice of words, manner of delivery, and use of visual aides communicated a sense of either confidence or doubt to the audience: the audience visibly reacted (laughter, quizzical facial expressions, clapping) in response to their sense of confidence in the accuracy and quality of information being presented to them. 4.The use of diagrams and hands-on equipment by scientists in laboratory instructional events was modeled in the public presentation by the student. 5.The choice of words and manner of delivery by scientists used in laboratory instructional talk was modeled by the student in the public presentation. 6.The overall structure of topic development constructed by the scientist in a laboratory instructional event was modeled by the student in how they developed topic structure in the public presentation. 7.Instances of students employing the same words, manner of delivery, and visual aides in their public presentations as their scientist-mentors used in laboratory instructional events were noted. Such instances were most often linked to two situations: explicating details of a schematic diagram or data summary graph/table; presenting an analogy to explain a difficult theoretical issue. There was a relationship between what students had the opportunity to learn and do in one site and how they took it up and displayed it in another site. For example, analysis of what occurred over time in the EELS Episode showed that what Tony displayed as knowledge was directly tied to what he did and learned in laboratory. From his laboratory experiences and the way in which the scientist instructed him, Tony took up a vocabulary, a way of talking about it, and ways of representing it (particular charts, graphs, overhead transparencies). While aspects of what got displayed in presentation were uniquely attributable to Tony, parts of it were clearly related to the personal influence of the scientist through laboratory instruction. Modeling as an active principle in learning has been studied extensively (Perrett-Clermont, 1980). A Vygotskiian approach to learning environments urges teachers to provide substantial modeling, especially designed to scaffold the learner in the zone of proximal development (Cole, 1985). It is common among teachers to employ modeling activities as an effective method to promote learning. It was confirmatory to note that, in this study, students modeled the communication signals of scientists in their presentations. Schematics and analogies used in the public presentations were often similar to those emphasized by scientists in laboratory. The student employed communicative strategies similar to his mentor when explaining common items to the audience in a public presentation. When introducing such schematics or analogies, there was a noticeable change in the manner of delivery of the talk. The structure of topic presentation also revealed modeling. Sequencing of topics in presentation generally modeled that of laboratory. Students usually presented the sections of their talk in more or less the same order as they were presented by scientists in laboratory instructional events. This makes sense since presentation involved the student in trying to explain some rather technical and difficult to understand science topics. Scientific conceptual instruction traditionally involves a pyramidal approach. Learning a fundamental concept leads to more complex concepts based on the previous ones. Since the scientists in this study received their science instruction in this manner, it is not surprising that this was their strategy of choice when instructing the high school students. Students reported that they were quite used to this same strategy in their school science courses. This sequential, pyramidal topic development was modeled by students in their presentations. Implications This study contributes to two areas: 1) characterisation of the scientific workplace; 2) knowledge of what a high school student can learn in that workplace. Science gets defined by the actions of scientists. It gets altered as scientists interact with other scientists. Scientists are continuous learners of science. Their task is to learn more about their phenomenon. There is uncertainty inherent in doing science. The scientific laboratory can generate alternating feelings of frustration, boredom, or exhilaration in the scientists that work there. As a student enters into this environment, she/he must use tools such as language, equipment, and procedures to begin to understand what is going on there. Students learning in research laboratories. This study revealed that learning in the laboratory took place on three dimensions: theoretical/conceptual scientific knowledge (understanding science); practical laboratory skills (doing science); and socio-communicative skills (writing in laboratory book, recording data, asking questions to clarify explanations, getting along with laboratory members, giving public presentations). While these can be discussed as three distinct components, they certainly overlap and, at times, cannot be realistically teased apart. Still, in practical terms, the three scientists mentoring Tony in this study often organized their teaching strategies clearly along these three; furthermore, both mentors and Tony commonly distinguished between these three dimensions in their everyday discussion of what he needed to learn next. This study supports the conceptualising of learning in the laboratory as occurring through opportunities afforded to the student to do science that are created by a social co-construction between student and scientist of particular views of what it means to do science and be a laboratory member. In examining the learning opportunities of a high school student in a science research laboratory, there is a need to understand the culture of the particular laboratory in question - what participants do in their everyday work there that defines what they mean by science and scientific knowledge. Once this is understood, then learning can be defined as taking up the patterned ways that local participants in the laboratory do science, know science, talk about science, and present science to those outside the laboratory. What gets learned must support the research efforts in the laboratory. It will always be learning a particular kind of scientific knowledge, defined in the ways that the local scientists engage in the doing and talking about the phenomenon they are trying to understand. To understand how learning can take place in actual science laboratories, it is necessary to ask the following questions: What are the roles/relationships, rights/obligations, and norms/expectations of laboratory participants? What counts as science worth doing to local participants and how does it get accomplished? How do scientists talk to each other about their research; how do they present their findings to outside scientists? What do participants consider a legitimate representation of their knowledge at a point in time? In the case of a high school student, it is necessary to understand what level of expertise she/he is bringing to the laboratory. It is also necessary to determine how scientists perceive such a learner. In any research laboratory, a high school student will place specific demands upon the scientist-mentor which will interrupt the flow of their work. In any laboratory there will be a range of opportunities for the high school student to engage in the doing and learning of science. In any laboratory, that student will take up learning in differing degrees along the three dimensions of doing, understanding, and communicating science. Results from analysing the student presentations of science raise the question of just what is being seen in the activity of presentation. It is a performance in many facets. But is it a display of competence. Are the skills and conceptual understanding that the student actually possesses being demonstrated? The problem of performance versus competence is not an easy one. When evaluating student learning through any performance, caution must be taken as to what is actually being inferred about competence. Pre-post research designs only tell us part of how a summer science program might be contributing to student learning. The ethnographic-sociolinguistic design of this study takes a different perspective that provides insights through examining learning opportunities across sites and over time. It shows that student displays of knowledge are the results of instruction given in social and cultural settings, rather than totally the result of individual differences. School settings. This study was designed as a foundational study in examining the learning opportunities of high school students in on-going science research laboratories. The findings of this study show that high school students in non-traditional settings such as university research laboratories are capable of learning both conceptual knowledge and hands-on laboratory skills far beyond the expectations of their teachers (from analysis of pre and post interviews with the science teachers of student participants in the program). Additionally, they developed sophisticated ways of communicating that knowledge to others both informally and formally in presentations. This has implications for high school science situations. Joseph Schwab (1962) identified three components of a laboratory learning situation that provide a useful framework for better understanding this concept of minimal guidance. The three components are: 1) problems, 2) ways and means for discovering relations (methods), and 3) answers. In the model, the learner is supplied with all, one, or various combinations of these three components in a laboratory activity. Table 1 illustrates Schwab's four levels of guidance. Table 1 Schwab's Levels of Guidance      Problems Ways & Means Answers  Level 0 Given Given Given  Level 1 Given Given Open  Level 2 Given Open Open  Level 3 Open Open Open   Level 0 is a laboratory learning situation of full guidance, Levels 1 and 2 less, while Level 3 provides the least, or minimal guidance for the learner. Levels 0 and 1 are situations which Tamir (1992) terms verification laboratories, designed to validate the teacher's lectures or textbook materials. This is cookbook science, where the student is given a full explanation of the problem, how to do the experiment, and even the expected results in the case of Level 0. In Level 3, the student is presented with some phenomenon, but must pose her own problem or hypothesis, determine some method to test it, and use the data or observations to negate or lend support to that hypothesis. Modern approaches to science curriculum would be committed to working towards teaching-learning situations that are characteristic of Levels 2 and 3. In a major review of science studies during the first half of the 1980's, Yager and Penick (1987) reported a major mismatch between the science laboratory model suggested above and that found in the schools. They found that, in many instances, laboratory activities were not offered to students, and if done, the activities were merely designed to verify the lecture or textbook. This finding was true across schools of varying philosophy including schools in which Inquiry and Discovery materials were being utilized. Returning to Schwab's notion of Levels of guidance in laboratory activity, why do researchers report that most school laboratory science is at the Level of 0 or 1? Part of the answer to this question lies in the scant empirical evidence that would help guide teachers in engaging students in Level 3 or 4 laboratory activities. Though theoretically sound, the practical development of laboratory programs of instruction that actually achieve a high incidence of Level 3 or 4 laboratories are nearly none existent in most American schools. The critical mass of model classroom examples is not there to support the widespread occurrence of the desired effect. Another aspect to this problem is the lack of clear model of the range of activities and skills of which students are capable within laboratory settings. Most high school science teachers do not have recent experience with research science and can only guess at what these skills might be. Scientists who have chosen secondary science teaching as a second career later in life have fared no better than more traditional teachers in their evaluation of what they can teach to students (Powell, R., 1994). This study connects very strongly at this point in providing the foundation to build a model for learning in laboratory settings. There is a huge gap between the purposes, equipment, and consequential funding systems that operate within university research laboratories and school laboratories. Merely reproducing the equipment and/or experiments does not solve the problem. Working out the practical details of applying the research laboratory model to school settings will be a long, but rewarding road for future research and policy decisions. There is a need to develop school laboratory environments that achieved levels 3 and 4 in Schwab's hierarchy. Examination of how students learn science in an on going got-to-get-data-report-findings oriented research environment provides insights into how to go about achieving these higher levels in school settings. Schools have a different purpose than university research laboratory - products of the two differ. The research laboratory produces reports in published journals in order to maintain credence for funding purposes. 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