Boundary Spanners as Bridges of Student and School Discourses in an Urban Science and Mathematics High School

Abstract

A key to improving urban science and mathematics education is to facilitate the mutual understanding of the participants involved and then look for strategies to bridge differences. Educators need new theoretical tools to do so. In this paper the argument is made that the concept of “boundary spanner” is such a tool. Boundary spanners are individuals, objects, media, and other experiences that link an organization to its environment. They serve critical communicative roles, such as bridges for bringing distinct discourses together, cultural guides to make discourses of the “other” more explicit, and change agents for potentially reshaping participants' discourses. This ethnographic study provides three examples of boundary spanners found in the context of an urban public high school of science, mathematics, and technology: boundary media, boundary objects, and boundary experiences. The analysis brings to the foreground students' and teachers' distinct discourses about “good student identity,”“good student work,” and “good summer experience” and demonstrates how boundary spanners shaped, were shaped by, and sometimes brought together participants' distinct discourses. An argument is made for boundary spanners' practical and theoretical utility: practically, as a tool for enhancing meaning‐making between diverse groups, and theoretically, as a heuristic tool for understanding the reproductive and transformative aspects of urban science education.

Tempered radicals: elementary teachers’ narratives of teaching science within and against prevailing meanings of schooling

“…We identified manifestations of this agency with all of the teachers. We referred to these manifestations as boundary activities and artifacts (Buxton et al 2005). Boundary activities were small things that these teachers did to advocate for science within and beyond their school.…”

“…They became boundary activities (Buxton et al 2005) aimed at moving their colleagues toward more progressive schooling Discourses. Wenger (1998) provides us with another way to conceptualize the potential of the teachers' practices and boundary activities.…”

“…Others created lessons and units that integrated other subjects with science. Boundary objects represent a synthesis of complex information and serve as a way to coordinate interactions between communities of practice (Buxton et al 2005). For example, the school zoo and nature trail became ways to connect teachers who were reluctant to incorporate science into their curriculum with science.…”

Adolescent girls’ construction of moral discourses and appropriation of primary identity in a mathematics classroom

“…Based on this concept of ''self-ness'' many researchers have explored issues of identity development through an analysis of discourse-how people construct or content their identities through the use of language, or how the (particular) use of (certain) language contributes to the construction of people's identities in various social contexts (e.g., Lacasa, del Castillo, García-Varela, 2005). Numerous studies have confirmed that the process of identity development at the individual level is a social process (Buxton, Caroline, & Caroline, 2005;Jenson, De Castell, & Bryson, 2003), which features language as a key element (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005).…”

Conception collaborative d’un outil d’aide au transfert de connaissances enseignées en formation par alternance

“…Il peut s'agir, par exemple, d'un schéma technique permettant à différents corps de métiers de se coordonner dans la conception d'une machine ou encore d'une base de données partagée par différents acteurs d'une entreprise. Dans la continuité de cette idée, certains acteurs aux expertises plus horizontales que verticales ont un rôle déterminant dans les activités se situant aux frontières sociales, par leurs capacités à tisser des liens entre des groupes différents, à assurer des processus de transposition et à diffuser de nouveaux outils, pratiques ou connaissances d'un contexte à un autre (Buxton, Carlone, et Carlone, 2005;Wenger, 1998). Cette distinction entre expertise verticale et horizontale, proposée par Engeström (1987), renvoie, pour la première, à celle d'un spécialiste d'un domaine restreint, dont la figure s'est beaucoup dévelop-pée dans nos sociétés modernes caractérisées par une forte division du travail.…”