Increasing evidence suggests that individuals develop their understanding of science concepts in and out of school, using varied community resources and networks. Thus in contrast to historic research approaches that focus exclusively on single organizations and/or educational events, the current paper presents exploratory research in which we utilized specific community ecology analytical tools and approaches to describe and analyze the UK science education community as a whole. Data suggest that overall the UK science education community is highly interconnected and collaborative within
This paper explores how participating in a program spanning an informal science institution and multiple school sites engaged youth with science in a different way. In particular, teens in the program selected and researched science topics of personal interest, and then authored, revised, and published science news stories about those topics in an authentic publication venue with an outside editor. Through five case studies analyzed according to a sociocultural framework for engagement understood as involving actions, interests and identifications, the authors describe how the news story