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To address the limited time and support for elementary science, science instruction is sometimes distributed among classroom teachers, science specialists, and informal science educators, creating a complex school science culture. We investigate how student agency may be enabled and constrained when school science learning happens simultaneously across multiple school contexts. Using a social practice theory lens, we examine how three third‐grade students with a strong interest in science attempt to pursue their own interest‐driven inquiries across the classroom, school garden, and science lab and how the culture and resources of those contexts may enable or constrain students' understanding and use of environmental science in their lives and communities, or environmental science agency (ESA). Drawing on observations, videos, and interview data, we found that the particular culture of the different science learning settings appeared to enable or constrain students' ESA. The classroom teacher allowed for narrow forms of participation in science practice, and both she and the students reinforced these norms, which seemed to constrain ESA across all three settings. The science teacher allowed for broader forms of student participation, which appeared to support student ESA in the science lab. Students drew on flexible activity structures as well as access to scientific tools, living organisms, and citizen science resources to take actions to pursue their own inquiries. We found ESA for students in the garden was supported by garden resources but narrow forms of participation reinforced by the classroom teacher, garden teacher, and students transferred to the garden context. While this study explored student agency over 2 months, these findings have broader application because students receiving conflicting messages about who one can be in science can have implications for possible futures they might imagine for themselves.

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