PUBLICATIONS

Janumyan, Y., Conley, Z. C., Carlone, H., Ziegler, H. H., Jen, T., Zhang, L., & Chen. (2024). Ecology in urban spaces: Contributions of urban green spaces to ecological and community health. Science Scope, 47(4), 48-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/08872376.2024.2363109.

Our program seeks to introduce middle school students to a range of STEM topics and careers. We planned and enacted a five-lesson unit themed around the contributions of trees/green spaces to ecological and community health. Humans thrive in ecologically healthy communities; however, not all communities have access to healthy ecosystems. Students were introduced to basic ecology tools and concepts, investigated urban parks to make ecological and sociological observations, and analyzed and interpreted the data for shared patterns of interest. The centerpieces of this unit were field work in parks where we followed a question-driven, observational study with scientific investigations into the effect of tree canopy on surface temperature, followed by independent student research to create final products allowing students to blend creativity, technology, and their newly acquired ecological understanding toward making a lasting impact.

Smith, B. E., Carlone, H. B., Ziegler, H., Janumyan, Y., Conley, Z., Chen, J., & Jen, T. (2024). Youths’ investigations of critical urban forestry through multimodal sensemaking. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-024-10127-7. 

A growing body of research suggests that digital multimodal composing can provide students multiple points of entry for making sense of local climate change issues and sharing their voices through digital activism. Building upon this scholar- ship, this study examined the processes of 32 small groups (n = 55) of 7th- and 8th-grade students as they co-created a wide range of multimodal projects (e.g., videos, podcasts, infographics, posters, and cartoons) that explored the environmental, ecological, and sociopolitical impacts of inequitable access to urban tree canopy and greenspace in their city. In particular, scholarship on onto-epistemic heterogeneity, critical place-based learning, and multimodality were integrated to gain an interdisciplinary understanding of how digital multimodal composing mediated students’ sensemaking about urban forestry impacts on community health and ecological well-being. Data sources consisted of field notes, audio and video recordings, survey data, student interviews, and students’ final multimodal projects. Through qualitative and multimodal data analy- sis, five main themes emerged for how multiple modes mediated students’ sensemaking about critical urban forestry: (1) embracing tree equity for compelling stories, (2) engaging authentic audiences through storytelling, (3) perspective-taking through multiple modes, (4) exploring affective dimensions of urban heat islands, and (5) developing solutions for critical urban forestry issues. These findings contribute new insights into how digital multimodal storytelling can provide a produc- tive way for students to make sense of climate justice issues and gain agency by experiencing multiple ways of knowing.

PRESENTATIONS

Carlone, H., Ziegler, H. H., Jen, T., Chen, J., Conley, Z. C., & Mercier, A. (2025, April 23-27). Identity play in horizon-expanding spaces through critical place-based learning for middle school youth [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. Denver, CO, United States. 

Identity play, a construct from organizational studies, is the exploratory process of trying out various narrations and performances of provisional selves. We asked: what are features of horizon-expanding spaces that promote identity play at a two-week at a two-week, critical place-based learning camp for middle school youth? We define horiOur program seeks to introduce middle school students to a range of STEM topics and careers. We planned and enacted a five-lesson unit themed around the contributions of trees/green spaces to ecological and community health. Humans thrive in ecologically healthy communities; however, not all communities have access to healthy ecosystems. Students were introduced to basic ecology tools and concepts, investigated urban parks to make ecological and sociological observations, and analyzed and interpreted the data for shared patterns of interest. The centerpieces of this unit were field work in parks where we followed a question-driven, observational study with scientific investigations into the effect of tree canopy on surface temperature, followed by independent student research to create final products allowing students to blend creativity, technology, and their newly acquired ecological understanding toward making a lasting impact.zon-expanding spaces as those which may not be currently aligned with youths’ prior interests and identities. Video and interview analysis indicated three fertile horizon-expanding activity for identity play: forging new connections to place, advocacy, and futuring. This study demonstrates how STEM activity can be made relevant in practice and how identity play can help theorize the forging new identities in ways that complement the classic identity wok construct.

Jen, T., & Carlone, H. (2025, April 23-27). Tensions in socioecological care: A case study of engagement in a critical place-based science camp [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, United States.

We designed the Connect-Investigate-Interrogate-Act (CIIA) framework for integrating justice-oriented, place-based learning at a think tank with 20 teachers, teacher educators, scientists, and community leaders. We used the CIIA framework to co-design and study an urban forestry unit for 55 middle schoolers, focusing on local urban tree canopy and urban heat islands (UHI). The purpose of this study was to 1) investigate youths’ engagement as critical inquirers and potential advocates, and 2) iterate on the framework based on youths’ engagement. The CIIA Framework included: 1) Connecting youth to urban trees and green spaces with a place-based learning lens; 2) Investigating city parks using urban forestry, environmental sociology, poetry, storytelling, movement; 3) Interrogating issues of justice and equity related to urban heat island and tree canopy; 4) Action through creating multimodal stories. Youth competently engaged in all aspects of the framework, though we note important design considerations for the next enactment, including: 1) accounting for youth positioned differently in relation to the urban tree canopy; 2) youths’ sadness and anger about companies’, government’s, and adults’ “lack of caring” or motivation to act on a problem that “does not affect them” or “generate profit”; and 3) the cultivation of critical civic literacy.

Carlone, H., Ziegler, H. H., Jen, T., Conley, Z. C., Smith, B. E. (2025, April 23-27). Youths’ storytelling through zines as precarious suturing of hope/despair and other binaries. In Carlone, H. (Chair), Attending to Climate and Environmental Hope, Despair, and Repair through Storytelling [Structured poster session]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, United States.

Zines, self-published booklets combining art and narrative, have a history as an outlet for marginalized voices and encourage remixing of ideas and youth advocacy. This study examined how youth used zines to tell stories during a critical place-based learning unit about a local creek, asking: 1) How do the zines reflect and disrupt binary thinking? 2) What kind of world-building do the youth engage in through their zine stories? The researchers developed a metaphor of "precarious suturing" to theorize how storytelling can suture different ways of being and knowing to recognize both healing and trauma, with the understanding that such suturing leaves scars and may not fully heal.

Ziegler, H. H., Chen, J., Carlone, H. (2025, April 23-27). Engaging youths’ imaginative placemaking through a local civic design case study [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. Denver, CO, United States. 

Youth are seldom presented with meaningful opportunities to design their own futures through civic engagement and advocacy. This study delves into how a critical place-based curriculum empowers youth in imagining and re-envisioning the future of Creekside Plaza, a local mall under redevelopment. The curriculum supported students’ imaginative placemaking through maps, plans, community engagement, and 3D design tools. Although some of the curriculum’s activities simultaneously augmented and curtailed youths’ creative expression, we argue for the necessary inclusion of youth in placemaking roles to design hopeful, vibrant futures.

Ziegler, H. H. (2025, March 23-26). Positioning Youth as Agents of Change through Placemaking in a Local Civic Design Project. In Hayes, S. (Chair), Graduate Student Research Symposium [Symposium]. National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, United States.

Amidst intensified climate and environmental challenges, today's youth need resources to help them combat the ecological precarity they experience in their everyday lives. Yet youth are seldom presented with meaningful opportunities to design their own futures, such as civic engagement or youth activism. This qualitative study explores placemaking as an approach that enables youth to become empowered and informed to design their own (hopeful) futures despite grave environmental issues. Placemaking is defined as the agentic process of (re)imagining spaces for oneself and one's socioecological community, informed by critical place-based learning, critical geography, land development, and imaginative education. The study centers on how youth engaged in placemaking during a local civic design unit, finding they repositioned themselves from 'excluded and uninformed' to 'active agents of change,' recognized their imagination as a legitimate epistemic resource, and practiced intergenerational socioecological care, contributing to understanding placemaking's potential to increase opportunities for youth to act as agentic placemakers and mitigate climate anxiety and eco-grief.

Carlone, H., Ziegler, H. H., Jen, T. T., Chen, J., Conley, Z., & Mercier, A. K. (2025, March 23-26). Middle School Youths’ Identity Play as Investigators, Futurists, and Advocates During Critical Place-Based Learning [Paper presentation]. National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, United States.

Middle school youth operate in an ongoing state of self-reinvention. Though identity work as an analytic construct has provided the field valuable insights about inextricable connections of identity with power, scholarship using identity work does not generally attend to the process of exploration involved in forging new identities. This presentation unpacks the construct of identity play, defined as the exploratory process of trying out various narrations and performances of provisional selves. We were interested in identity play in horizon-expanding spaces that are not aligned with youths’ prior interests and identities. Using design-based research and grounded theory, we asked: What are features of horizon-expanding spaces that promote identity play at a two-week, place-based learning camp for middle school youth? How do youth do identity play in those spaces? Data included video, youth-created artifacts, and interviews. We identified three kinds of horizon-expanding activities: 1) forging new connections to place; 2) advocacy and “using my voice”; and 3) futuring and imagining. This study should promote thoughtful discussion about relevance. Do STEM experiences need to be relevant before youth engage meaningfully? In horizon-expanding spaces, relevance can be constructed in practice as youth push through fear and discomfort to engage in activities previously deemed unthinkable. 

Davis, E. A., Anderson, S., Bautista, J., Burgess, T., Carlone, H. B., Gyles, S., Marshall, S., McGowan, V. C., Sherry-Wagner, J., & Williams, M. R. (2025, March 23-26). Powered decision-making for equity in science education: Beyond access and inclusion [Symposium]. National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, United States.

Over the last three years, two important reports have been published from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM, 2022, 2024). Together, these reports provide powerful and coherent frameworks for conceptualizing issues of equity and justice in science education, including a set of approaches to equity and frames for decision-making about equity. Through discussion among nine poster presenters, a discussant, and the audience participants, in this structured poster symposium we aim to explore how science educators can move beyond a vision of access and inclusion, toward a much richer perspective of what working toward equity in science education can look like. Through the posters and discussion, we will put the frames in conversation with each other and explore their interconnectedness, the tensions among them, and the need for concretizing them in research methods, design, and practice. The posters collectively span actors, participants, and designs across the educational ecosystem, including children and youth, preservice and inservice teachers, school and district leaders, and instructional designers. Collectively, the work represented in this session will help the field make important progress in moving toward equity and justice in science education.

Chen, J., Carlone, H., Ziegler, H., Conley, Z., Janumyan, Y., Zhang, L., Jen, T., & Tanner, Q. (2024, April 11-14). Middle schoolers as critical inquirers and advocates in an urban forestry unit: Possibilities and uncertainties [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA, United States. 

The overlap between environmental and social justice education increasingly necessitates youth viewing themselves with agency. This research examines the engagement of 55 diverse middle school youth in an 18-hour justice-oriented urban forestry unit and investigates how they embraced their role of critical inquirer and advocates to make sense of urban heat islands (UHI) and tree canopy disparities. Our findings reveal 1) youths’ definition of, affinity for, and uncertainties in acting as advocates in this triple pandemic era 2) the potential of middle school youth as catalysts for fostering environmental-justice awareness and actions 3) youth anxiety over the perceived indifference of those with the power to implement solutions. We present implications for design and pedagogy of justice-oriented climate education.

Jen, T., Carlone, H., Chen, J., Conley, Z., Janumyan, Y., Tanner, Q., Zhang, L., & Ziegler, H. (2024, April 11-14). Constraints on speculation: representations of powered human-nature relations in students’ projects about tree equity. In Jen, T. (Chair), Speculative science education toward socioecological care [Structured poster session]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, United States. 

Envisioning more just worlds requires recognizing and understanding current injustices. These injustices interweave human and more-than-human relations, so collective thriving requires disrupting the nature-culture binary, which presumes humans are separate from and superior to other beings. Critical place-based science education may be a powerful context for apprehending and rectifying socioecological injustices. However, we need to better understand diverse youths' meaning-making within justice-centered science learning contexts. Given youths' various identities and relations within sociopolitical power structures, insight into how differently-positioned youth take up and communicate about environmental justice issues will help researchers and educators to better support critical understandings and liberatory futures. This poster explores how diverse middle school students represent human-nature relations and power within these relations in their final projects in a critical place-based science unit on tree equity and the urban heat island effect.

Smith, B., Carlone, H. C., Ziegler, H. H., Jen, T., Janumyan, Y., & Conley, Z. (2024, April 11-14). Youths’ investigations of local urban tree canopy through multimodal storytelling [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA, United States.

This study examines how 32 small groups (n=55) of 7th and 8th grade students co-created a wide range of digital multimodal projects that explored the environmental, ecological, and sociopolitical impacts of inequitable access to urban tree canopy and greenspace. Through qualitative analysis of students’ interviews, collaborative processes, and projects, we found that multimodal storytelling mediated students’ sensemaking through 1) embracing tree equity, 2) engaging authentic audiences, 3) perspective-taking, 4) exploring affective dimensions, and 5) developing solutions. Multimodal composing offered students multiple points of entry, opportunities for agency, and a way to desettle the epistemic supremacy perpetuated by prototypical, settled school science. We will conclude this presentation with implications for scaffolding digital multimodal composing in the science classroom.

Carlone, H., Chen, J., Ziegler, H. H., Zhang, L., Conley, Z., Janumyan, Y., Jen, T., Smith, B. E., & Tanner, Q. (2024, March 17-20). The connect-investigate-interrogate-act framework for designing and studying critical place-based learning. In Carlone, H. (Chair), Frameworks and Considerations for Justice-Oriented, Place-based Learning [Structured poster session]. 2024 National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, United States.

We designed the Connect-Investigate-Interrogate-Act (CIIA) framework for integrating justice-oriented, place-based learning at a think tank with 20 teachers, teacher educators, scientists, and community leaders. We used the CIIA framework to co-design and study an urban forestry unit for 55 middle schoolers, focusing on local urban tree canopy and urban heat islands (UHI). The purpose of this study was to 1) investigate youths’ engagement as critical inquirers and potential advocates, and 2) iterate on the framework based on youths’ engagement. The CIIA Framework included: 1) Connecting youth to urban trees and green spaces with a place-based learning lens; 2) Investigating city parks using urban forestry, environmental sociology, poetry, storytelling, movement; 3) Interrogating issues of justice and equity related to urban heat island and tree canopy; 4) Action through creating multimodal stories. Youth competently engaged in all aspects of the framework, though we note important design considerations for the next enactment, including: 1) accounting for youth positioned differently in relation to the urban tree canopy; 2) youths’ sadness and anger about companies’, government’s, and adults’ “lack of caring” or motivation to act on a problem that “does not affect them” or “generate profit”; and 3) the cultivation of critical civic literacy.