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Intrinsic and Instrumental Care in Pen Pal Letters: Recognizing Care in STEM Classrooms

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Title: Intrinsic and Instrumental Care in Pen Pal Letters: Recognizing Care in STEM Classrooms
Language: English
Authors: Ashlyn E. Pierson (ORCID 0000-0003-2893-5126), Corey E. Brady, Sarah J. Lee, Deborah Shuler, Pratim Sengupta, Douglas B. Clark
Source: Science Education. 2024 108(6):1608-1636.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 29
Publication Date: 2024
Sponsoring Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
Contract Number: 1742138
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education
Grade 6
Intermediate Grades
Middle Schools
Grade 9
High Schools
Junior High Schools
Secondary Education
Descriptors: STEM Education, Letters (Correspondence), Caring, Grade 6, Grade 9, Biology, Science Instruction, Ecology
DOI: 10.1002/sce.21894
ISSN: 0036-8326
1098-237X
Abstract: Studies of both professional science practice and children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice. In science education research, however, students' care is often overlooked. In this paper, we describe the expression of care across two STEM classrooms (6th and 9th grade) studying biology and ecology and participating in a pen pal exchange. We analyze artifacts from the pen pal exchange as well as students' retrospective interviews and written reflections. Two ways of expressing care surfaced in students' letters: caring for guppies and caring for pen pals. We describe each form of care using examples from our data. We find that students' care for guppies and pen pals was both instrumental (in service of their investigations) and intrinsic (positioning guppies and pen pals as inherently valuable). We then connect these findings to studies of care in children's science learning and in professional science. We discuss methodological and practical implications for recognizing and analyzing how students' care manifests in classrooms and for designing learning activities that cultivate care.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2024
Accession Number: EJ1443289
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0181569385;sed01nov.24;2024Dec13.04:03;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0181569385-1">Intrinsic and instrumental care in pen pal letters: Recognizing care in STEM classrooms </title> <p>Studies of both professional science practice and children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice. In science education research, however, students' care is often overlooked. In this paper, we describe the expression of care across two STEM classrooms (6th and 9th grade) studying biology and ecology and participating in a pen pal exchange. We analyze artifacts from the pen pal exchange as well as students' retrospective interviews and written reflections. Two ways of expressing care surfaced in students' letters: caring for guppies and caring for pen pals. We describe each form of care using examples from our data. We find that students' care for guppies and pen pals was both instrumental (in service of their investigations) and intrinsic (positioning guppies and pen pals as inherently valuable). We then connect these findings to studies of care in children's science learning and in professional science. We discuss methodological and practical implications for recognizing and analyzing how students' care manifests in classrooms and for designing learning activities that cultivate care.</p> <p>Keywords: axiology; care; science; STEM</p> <p>Studies of professional science practice and of children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice (e.g., Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref1">21</reflink>]; McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref2">44</reflink>]). Yet, as critical scholars have noted, care is often invisibilized in science (caring for colleagues; Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref3">18</reflink>]; caring for objects of study; Kimmerer, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref4">32</reflink>]). In science education research, students' care is often overlooked (notable exceptions include Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref5">35</reflink>]; McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref6">44</reflink>]; McGowan & Bell, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref7">45</reflink>]; Taylor & Pacini‐Ketchabaw, [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref8">81</reflink>]). Instead, science education research focuses primarily on teachers' caring toward students (e.g., Velasquez et al., [<reflink idref="bib88" id="ref9">88</reflink>]) or on pedagogies that promote care as part of socioemotional learning (e.g., Garner et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref10">23</reflink>]). Moreover, students' expressions of care may not be recognized as such by researchers or educators, in part because care is interpreted and enacted differently across communities, and individuals' perceptions, expressions, and experiences of care are shaped by their identities (Antrop‐González & De Jesús, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref11">2</reflink>]; Rogers & Weller, [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref12">70</reflink>]).</p> <p>In this paper, we aim to understand students' commitments of care and the ways they were expressed in a particular community: a pair of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. We propose that it is important to consider care in science classrooms to understand the relational, emotional, and ethical work needed to sustain generative investigations. Specifically, we focus on pen pal letters exchanged between two classrooms: 6th grade students constructing closed system biospheres (jars containing fish, plants, and snails) and 9th grade students constructing terrariums (tanks modeling specific biomes using plants and abiotic components). Letters were particularly fruitful for this analysis because they created a private dialogic space, beyond the communicative genres of typical school science, for students to express care. In our analysis, we take students' expressions of care as a starting point (Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref13">60</reflink>]), first analyzing students' expressions of care, then discussing them in the context of studies of care in children's science learning and in professional science.</p> <p>Our findings demonstrate that, in this context, students' care for their guppies and pen pals was both <emph>instrumental</emph> (they cared for guppies and pen pals in service of their projects) and <emph>intrinsic</emph> (they cared for guppies and pen pals as inherently valuable), and their care was entwined with their sensemaking and practice (their care shaped the questions they asked and the ways they engaged with their projects). Our findings thus respond to calls in the literature to attend to both social and epistemic dimensions of science learning (e.g., Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref14">35</reflink>]; McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref15">44</reflink>]), and they offer constructs for recognizing care in students' scientific work (e.g., intrinsic, instrumental). In our discussion, we map students' care to studies of professional science to help the field of science education recognize how students' care (for objects of study, like guppies, and for collaborators, like pen pals) is generative for their science learning. In the context of science education research, we offer implications of these findings for (a) recognizing students' care and its role in their learning and (b) designing learning environments that surface and value care.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-2">LITERATURE REVIEW: CARE IN PROFESSIONAL SCIENCE AND SCIENCE EDUCATION</hd> <p>Tronto and Fisher ([<reflink idref="bib84" id="ref16">84</reflink>]) defined care as "everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair 'our world' so that we can live in it as well as possible" (p. 40). María Puig de la Bellacasa ([<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref17">66</reflink>]) connected Tronto and Fisher's definition of care to affective and ethico‐political dimensions of scientific work, focusing on technoscience, ecology, and human–nonhuman relations. Puig de la Bellacasa offered an image of care as a form of <emph>hands‐on</emph> agency (the work needed to maintain and continue "our world"), an <emph>ethical</emph> obligation, and an <emph>affective</emph> concern. Within scientific work, she cautioned against idealizing care, and instead she described care as essential, collective, and disruptive. For instance, care includes mundane everyday activities that are necessary to maintain "our world" and that can also be harmful, such as "weeding one's garden to make possible more fertile growth" (p. 164)—in this case, care can be tedious, and it is also inseparable from killing. Puig de la Bellacasa noted the power of such examples for questioning what kinds of care work are valued and prioritized, as well as what is obligatory.</p> <p>Antrop‐González and De Jesús ([<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref18">2</reflink>]) cautioned that the White feminist conceptions of care prevalent in education are susceptible to culturally, racially, and gender biased lenses. As McKamey ([<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref19">46</reflink>]) argued, "in the education literature, it seems that caring is not a common reference point—it does not hold the same meaning across texts, and often does not even hold the same meaning within one article or essay. Caring is a <emph>symbolic concept</emph> charged with multiple political, social, and cultural meanings" ([<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref20">46</reflink>], p. 5). In light of this critique, rather than applying theories of care to our data as a priori categories, in our analysis, we take students' expressions of care as a starting point.</p> <p>Below, we provide an overview of research about care in science. The accounts from professional science are not aspirational—we do not expect or hope for students to reproduce the experiences or discourse of professional scientists. Rather, we propose that comparing students and classrooms with scientists sensitizes us to the consequentiality of attending to care in science and prepares us to notice resulting shifts in interactions and epistemic work that might accompany such changes.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-3">Care in professional science and technoscience</hd> <p>Drawing on posthumanism, eco‐feminism, materialism, and Indigenous perspectives, scholars have critiqued notions of science that devalue care. Such notions of science endorse overly limited epistemologies as natural to STEM (Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref21">21</reflink>]; Turkle & Papert, [<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref22">86</reflink>]). In doing so, they undermine relations of kinship with the more‐than‐human (Haraway, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref23">27</reflink>]; Kimmerer, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref24">32</reflink>]), and they neglect the entanglement of axiological, epistemological, and ontological dimensions of science (Barad, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref25">5</reflink>]; Barajas‐López & Bang, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref26">6</reflink>]).</p> <p>Fox Keller's ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref27">21</reflink>]) critique was grounded in her own experiences as a mathematical biologist and in her study of the geneticist Barbara McClintock (see also Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref28">20</reflink>]). Fox Keller ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref29">21</reflink>]) argued that at the heart of McClintock's discovery of mobile genetic elements was her "feeling for the organism," which was evident in her keen recognition of the enduring uniqueness of each organism. "No two plants are exactly alike. They're all different, and as a consequence, you have to know that difference," she explained. "I start with the seedling, and I don't want to leave it. I don't feel I really know the story if I don't watch the plant all the way along. So I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately, and I find it a great pleasure to know them" (p. 164). Fox Keller ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref30">21</reflink>]) thus demonstrated that, for McClintock, knowing was not only an <emph>epistemic</emph> act, but also an act of <emph>intimacy</emph>, which resulted from McClintock's repeated observations—entangling her knowledge of plants with her care for them.</p> <p>Care is not just evident in the work of individual scientists; it can also be fundamental to scientific practices that constitute the culture of a lab. Analyzing interview data from a 5‐year ethnographic study of the practices of biomedical engineering labs, Osbeck and Nersessian ([<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref31">53</reflink>], p. 57) argued that caring for organisms of study is not "simply tacked onto reasoning," but "integral to it." They described how scientists in a neural engineering lab "anthropomorphized" neurons. Scientists from across the lab spoke about the importance for their research of the cells being "happy." They described how protocols served the purpose of keeping cells in a "happy" state and how this sustained effort was rewarded in results. In describing this work, Osbeck and Nersessian (p. 75) noted "the dynamic interplay between the attributed happiness of the cells and the researcher's cognitive goals." They explained, "the cells make the rules for the way the network works, thereby requiring researchers to care about their happiness." Like McClintock, these scientists developed relationships with individual objects of study, explaining that "each dish definitely has its own personality" (p. 75). Overall, Osbeck and Nersessian ([<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref32">53</reflink>]) described the feelings of care, concern, and reciprocity that this lab had with their neurons as an example of "cognitive partnering" (a system of distributed cognition) in laboratory practice (Nersessian, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref33">48</reflink>]). As a result, "there is a laboratory mandate to care about and for the cells" (p. 76).</p> <p>While the studies above focused largely on positive emotions, across essays in their edited volume, Gillespie and Lopez ([<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref34">24</reflink>]) explored the grief felt by researchers in response to witnessing the forced sacrifice of those they study (e.g., salmon, cockroaches, birds). This grief was often paradoxically juxtaposed with researchers' ongoing commitment to continue their work in service of larger goals (e.g., knowledge production, conservation). Though researchers reported feeling affective connections to their objects of study, Lopez and Gillespie ([<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref35">40</reflink>]) noted that researchers often felt pressured to hide their feelings to preserve an image of objectivity in their field. In other cases, researchers' grief motivated them to question or challenge existing practices within their fields.</p> <p>In addition to caring for objects of study, scientific work also involves care for collaborators. In the context of laboratory animal science, Williams ([<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref36">93</reflink>]) explained that, although the phrase "culture of care" has made its way into handbooks, policies, and staff reward programs, there has been little consensus in the field about how such a culture is defined. Her definition takes into account legal accountability to animal welfare and valuing respectful behavior toward animals and coworkers. Drawing on Tronto's ([<reflink idref="bib83" id="ref37">83</reflink>]) multidimensional care and Haraway's ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref38">26</reflink>]) multirelational approach, she analyzed human–animal and human–human relations that are often overlooked, yet shape institutional cultures of care. For instance, she described how researchers "held" responsibility for invasive and challenging tasks—either taking them on themselves to shield technical staff or delegating to technologists, providing technologists with opportunities to build skills that supported their career development. Williams explained: "a culture of care demands more than attentiveness to the needs of the animals; it requires attentiveness to the needs of others working within the organisation" (p. 41).</p> <p>In technoscientific professions, sociologists have noted the gendered invisibilization of care work. For example, in a study of women engineers in a high‐technology firm, Fletcher ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref39">18</reflink>]) described how care that was instrumental to the success of design teams was also construed as "feminine" (e.g., nurturing, community building), and thus was devalued and "disappeared" institutionally. Women designers were disproportionately positioned to perform such care work; they were, however, not allowed to report this labor as part of their regular works, and they were penalized if they did so for time‐theft. In other contexts, the "disappearance" of care work has led to the further invisibilization of the contributions of women scientists, who have made epistemically significant contributions despite being relegated to subordinate positions that entailed caring for instruments, specimens, and data (Martin et al., [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref40">42</reflink>]; see also: De Chadarevian, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref41">11</reflink>]; Pycior et al., [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref42">67</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-4">Care in classroom science</hd> <p>Similar to Fletcher's ([<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref43">19</reflink>]) work on the institutional disappearance of care, critical STEM education scholars have noted the devaluing of care in classrooms, especially among marginalized learners. For example, Sengupta et al. ([<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref44">75</reflink>]) argued that disciplinary expectations for scientific and computational modeling can devalue care work by learners of color that could otherwise expand the scope of STEM learning. Such work emphasizes the importance of an axiological reorientation in K‐12 STEM classrooms (Bang, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref45">3</reflink>]) that reconsiders the knowledge, practices, and interactions that are seen as valuable for STEM learning. This shift connects to broader calls in science education for axiological reorientation, for example, by prioritizing educational dignity to contest hegemonic rationales for STEM learning (Sengupta‐Irving & Vossoughi, [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref46">76</reflink>]) and by valuing heterogeneity in representational work over disciplinary forms (Kayumova & Sengupta, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref47">30</reflink>]). As Takeuchi et al. ([<reflink idref="bib80" id="ref48">80</reflink>]) noted, such axiological reorientations are needed to value the languages and embodied and affective interactions through which historically marginalized learners may make STEM work meaningful to themselves. In this paper, we contribute to the work of axiological reorientation, as well as to the work of scholars who have helped expand the field's image of STEM learning to include emotion as a part of disciplinary work (e.g., Jaber & Hammer, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref49">29</reflink>]; Lanouette, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref50">36</reflink>]; Vea, [<reflink idref="bib87" id="ref51">87</reflink>]), by foregrounding students' care as a core and generative constituent of STEM learning.</p> <p>In classroom settings, theories of care have most often been applied to analyses of teacher–student relationships (McKamey, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref52">46</reflink>]; Velasquez et al., [<reflink idref="bib88" id="ref53">88</reflink>]), focusing on teachers as the "one‐caring" and students as "cared‐for" (Noddings, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref54">51</reflink>]). As a result of this focus, researchers have often overlooked students' care (Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref55">35</reflink>]). When students' care is studied, it is often treated as an outcome of social‐emotional learning (e.g., Garner et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref56">23</reflink>]) or social and ethical education (e.g., Zeidler & Sadler, [<reflink idref="bib94" id="ref57">94</reflink>]). More recently, science education research has explored ways to foster concern for collective well‐being in relationships (between students, and between students and more‐than‐human objects of study).</p> <p>Krist and Suárez ([<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref58">35</reflink>]) focused on students' interpersonal relationships in science classrooms. Using Noddings' ([<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref59">49</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref60">50</reflink>]) care theory, they critiqued the ethics of research that frames social interactions as <emph>in service of</emph> epistemic goals (e.g., Engle & Conant, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref61">15</reflink>]; Kelly, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref62">31</reflink>]; Lemke, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref63">39</reflink>]). Instead, they offered an alternative: attending to both social and epistemic goals simultaneously. Krist and Suárez illustrated how students communicated care for relationships and ideas by being receptive and responsive to each other's contributions. They concluded that future science education research should explore design innovations that support classroom interactions characterized by care.</p> <p>Other studies focus on relationships between students and more‐than‐humans. McGowan and Bell ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref64">45</reflink>]), for example, centered multispecies care as a part of ecological and climate science learning. Their project evaluated a unit about climate change and sea star wasting disease—a virus caused by an unknown pathogen to which sea stars are more susceptible at warmer temperatures. Their findings echo those of other climate science education researchers (e.g., Burke et al., [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref65">10</reflink>]; Monroe et al., [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref66">47</reflink>]; Ojala, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref67">52</reflink>]) who demonstrate that meaningful engagement, like problem‐solving around sea star wasting disease, creates positive affective outcomes. Though McGowan and Bell ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref68">45</reflink>]) offered one example of a design that fosters care, they noted that "more research describing how to design for ecological care across contexts and ages is needed, especially for learning within traditional K‐12 science classrooms" (p. 119).</p> <p>In the contexts of informal education and higher education, scholars focusing on Indigenous epistemologies have foregrounded reciprocal caring relationships between learners and more‐than‐humans. In <emph>The Common Worlds of Children and Animals</emph>, Taylor and Pacini‐Ketchabaw ([<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref69">81</reflink>]) drew on Inuit and Aboriginal epistemologies of reciprocity alongside Haraway's ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref70">26</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref71">27</reflink>]) theories of human–nonhuman entangled lives and trajectories. From these perspectives, they conceptualized children's unplanned encounters with wildlife, focusing on early childhood centers. They described how children frequented a shallow stream, taking care to avoid stepping on the worms. The children enjoyed caring for worms by transporting them to areas where they would not be stepped on. While children were excited to care for the worms and found pleasure in their encounters (for instance, they liked when the worms tickled their hands), these encounters also could cause the children distress (for instance, a child was upset when they accidentally broke a worm in half). Inspired by the children's interest in worms, the educators at the childcare center purchased a compost bin with worms. Children engaged in labor‐intensive work to care for the worms (e.g., harvesting worm castings, feeding worms, shredding newspapers for bedding, keeping the bin moist). Taylor and Pacini‐Ketchabaw framed this care as reciprocal; in return for the children's work, the worms cared for the children by turning food scraps into fertile soil to grow more food; however, from the data presented, it is not clear that the children adopted this perspective of reciprocity.</p> <p>While Taylor and Pacini‐Ketchabaw ([<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref72">81</reflink>]) identified instances of reciprocal care within unplanned encounters, other researchers drawing on Indigenous perspectives have intentionally designed learning opportunities that foster interspecies care. For instance, McDaid Barry et al. ([<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref73">44</reflink>]) described an informal environment that supported learning rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing by enacting and centering kin relationships through recognizing the personhood of more‐than‐humans. They illustrated how a student recognized the personhood of a specific plant (stinging nettle). Their analysis offered six dimensions of recognizing more‐than‐human personhood, including (a) perspective taking, (b) addressivity, (c) internal states, (d) agentic capacities, (e) answerability, and (f) explicit recognition. They found that activities designed and facilitated around this framework supported the student in seeing stinging nettle as a person, and they suggested that caring for and respecting more‐than‐humans in this way could impact socioecological decision making toward more sustainable climate futures.</p> <p>Similar to McDaid Barry et al. ([<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref74">44</reflink>]), science educators have proposed pedagogical designs that can help disrupt images of classroom science that rely on an ontological separation between humans and more‐than‐humans (e.g., Bang, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref75">3</reflink>]), instead making space for care as a generative part of science learning. For example, Pugh et al. ([<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref76">65</reflink>]) leveraged embodiment in an activity intended to foster observations of and connections with plants, centering mutual caring relationships between different species. Salmón ([<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref77">73</reflink>]) used observation alongside journaling to help college students notice relationships between the sun, themselves, and their surroundings, offering a "responsibility‐based" perspective of science. Parekh et al. ([<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref78">55</reflink>]) developed summer camp activities that used augmented reality technologies to support and understand teens' perspective‐taking and reciprocal care for pets. Each of these designs shifted away from communicative genres typical of school science to make space for exploring and expressing care as part of scientific investigations.</p> <p>Drawing inspiration from the literature reviewed above, the current study considers the expression of care in the context of a specific classroom activity: exchanging pen pal letters. Across content areas and contexts, a wealth of research demonstrates that pen pal letters can help students develop empathy and humanistic values (Kneese et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref79">33</reflink>]; Tsang et al., [<reflink idref="bib85" id="ref80">85</reflink>]) and help students acquire cultural knowledge, identify similarities across cultures, and challenge stereotypes (Martin, [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref81">43</reflink>]; Riley et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref82">69</reflink>]; Shandomo, [<reflink idref="bib77" id="ref83">77</reflink>]; Thompson McMillon, [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref84">82</reflink>]). In the context of a literacy class, Wiener and Matsumoto ([<reflink idref="bib92" id="ref85">92</reflink>]) demonstrated how pen pals might also support science learning. They analyzed a year‐long literacy project in which 4th and 5th grade students exchanged letters with pen pals across the Pacific about local marine ecosystems. From their participation in this project, students reported that they valued their new relationships, learned about new cultures and marine species, and learned how to take care of the environment. Pen pal relationships could support learning in part because they provide students with an authentic audience for their work; studies of writing, modeling, and scientific argumentation demonstrate that interacting with an audience supports learning (Berland & Reiser, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref86">8</reflink>]; Kolodner et al., [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref87">34</reflink>]; Magnifico, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref88">41</reflink>]; Pierson & Clark, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref89">62</reflink>]; Sengupta et al., [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref90">75</reflink>]).</p> <p>The research above suggests that pen pal letters could be a fruitful context for analyzing students' care. Writing letters can shift students out of typical school science activities (e.g., lab reports, presentations) that might position care as unscientific. Moreover, letters provide students with a less surveilled space to express care in their investigations. To build on and extend the literature reviewed above, we analyze pen pal letters exchanged between 6th grade and 9th grade students conducting investigations about biology and ecology topics. We ask: What commitments of care are present in students' pen pal letters, and how is care expressed?</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-5">METHOD</hd> <p>This study is part of the larger SAIL + CTM project (NSF DRL#1742138). This iterative design‐based study serves as a vanguard for the larger project, developing and testing principles in one 6th grade classroom that could be applied in the more formalized SAIL + CTM curriculum. In this paper, we focus on data collected from the implementation of a 9‐week 6th grade unit, which was originally developed in 2018. The unit has been enacted and revised repeatedly from 2018 to 2024. We analyze student work from the unit, focusing on the implementation of a new activity within the unit—pen pal letters. Sixth graders exchanged pen pal letters with 9th graders participating in a different project who attended school in the same state but in a different school district. We contextualize and triangulate pen pal data with other sources: videos exchanged between pen pals, interviews with 6th grade students, written reflections from 9th grade students, classroom observations, and field notes. These data sources enable us to identify expressions of care in students' work.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-6">Participants</hd> <p>The larger study was conducted in a public middle school in a small suburban school district in the southeastern United States in Deborah Shuler's classroom. Ms. Shuler's January–March 2023 6th grade class participated in this iteration of the unit (18 students). According to the state report card, 11% of the school's students were classified as "economically disadvantaged." At the school, 53% of students identified as White, 36% as Hispanic or Latino, and 5% as Black or African American. Twenty‐one percent were classified as English learners. Corey Brady was at the time the principal investigator of the IRB‐approved project in Ms. Shuler's classroom, and participating students were consented under that IRB. Although the research activities included regular classroom activities, it was optional for students to participate in the research by permitting their work to be analyzed as data. Beyond typical classroom activities, some consented students were selected as focal students that participated in brief interviews (approximately 20 min) conducted during Ms. Shuler's class time.</p> <p>The STEM class was a one‐quarter (9‐week) course that was separate from the school's science course. This afforded Ms. Shuler some flexibility in her curricular design, though she considered supporting science standards to be a primary goal of the STEM class. Because the STEM class was 9 weeks long, Ms. Shuler welcomed a new cohort of students each quarter, allowing four design iterations in the span of a school year. Because the STEM course was required, Ms. Shuler saw each of the school's 6th grade students in one of the quarters of the year.</p> <p>The unit was initially designed by Ashlyn Pierson and Deborah Shuler (for details about this collaboration, see Pierson, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref91">57</reflink>]). Over time, learning activities were revised by Ms. Shuler, sometimes independently and other times in collaboration with the research team. The unit was designed to enable students to engage with topics from the state and next generation science standards (Table 1), although it was enacted in a way that allowed students to explore topics beyond those represented in the standards. Lessons took place three times a week during the students' 56‐min STEM class (approximately 22 class sessions per 9‐week cycle).</p> <p>1 Table Sequence and summary of learning activities.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr valign="bottom"><th>Aligned next generation science standards (NGSS) and state standards</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Next generation science standards</td></tr><tr><td>5‐LS1‐1. Support an argument that plants get the materials they need for growth chiefly from air and water.</td></tr><tr><td>5‐LS2‐1. Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.</td></tr><tr><td>5‐PS3‐1. Use models to describe that energy in animals' food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.</td></tr><tr><td>State standards</td></tr><tr><td>6.LS2‐1. Evaluate and communicate the impact of environmental variables on population size.</td></tr><tr><td>6.LS2‐2. Determine the impact of competitive, symbiotic, and predatory interactions in an ecosystem.</td></tr><tr><td>6.LS2‐3. Draw conclusions about the transfer of energy through a food web and energy pyramid in an ecosystem.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th>Activity</th><th>Days</th><th>Description</th><th>Standards</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Introduction to biospheres, Letter 1</td><td>1–2</td><td>Students watch a video about humans in the "Biosphere 2" project and imagine creating a sustainable "Biosphere 3" for guppies</td><td>5‐LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐1</td></tr><tr><td>Plant investigation, Letter 2</td><td>2–3, 7</td><td>Design and implement an investigation to determine the materials plants need to grow bigger</td><td>5‐LS1‐1, 5‐LS2‐1, 5‐PS3‐1, 6.LS2‐1</td></tr><tr><td>Computational model</td><td>4–6, 8–12, 15–16, 19–21</td><td>Create a sustainable system with sun, plants, guppies, killifish (guppies' competitors) and cichlids (guppies' predators)</td><td>5‐LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐2</td></tr><tr><td>Biosphere plan, Letter 3</td><td>8–10</td><td>Design a closed‐system sealed jar that supports guppies</td><td>5‐LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐3</td></tr><tr><td>Biosphere/jar</td><td>11–12</td><td>Build and monitor a closed‐system sealed jar that supports guppies</td><td>5‐LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐3</td></tr><tr><td>Food web</td><td>13–15</td><td>Represent the flow of energy in guppies' environments</td><td>5‐LS2‐1, 5‐PS3‐1, 6.LS2‐3</td></tr><tr><td>Embodied model</td><td>17–18</td><td>Represent behavior and energy for algae, guppies, killifish (competitors), cichlids (predators); represent population dynamics</td><td>5‐LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐1, 6.LS2‐2</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>During this quarter, the 6th grade students also interacted with 26 9th grade students participating in their first year of a 4‐year joint venture between a university and an urban school district. This program offered science and math enrichment one full day per week on the university campus during school hours. Admission to this program is based on a competitive application process that takes race, SES, and zoned school into account in an effort to make opportunities to participate equitable to students in the district and to create classes that are representative of the large metropolitan school district that it serves. Corey Brady was at the time the principal investigator of the IRB‐approved project associated with the program, and the students were consented under that IRB. Like in the 6th grade classroom, though the research activities were regular classroom activities, it was optional for 9th graders to participate in the research by permitting their class work to be analyzed as data.</p> <p>In our study, each 6th grader was matched with one or two 9th grade pen pal(s) by the lead instructor of the 9th grade program. All students are identified by pseudonyms that they chose. Corey Brady and Deborah Shuler collaborated with the 9th grade instructors to introduce and facilitate the pen pal project in the 6th and 9th grade classrooms (described below).</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-7">Research context</hd> <p>All iterations of the STEM unit foregrounded modeling (for details, see Pierson & Brady, [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref92">58</reflink>]; Pierson et al., [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref93">59</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref94">63</reflink>]; Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref95">60</reflink>]; Pierson, Brady, & Lee, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref96">61</reflink>]; Pierson & Grapin, [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref97">64</reflink>]). Throughout the unit, students were instructed to create diagrammatic, physical, computational, and embodied models with an emphasis on offering students opportunities for creating and thinking across multimodal models to support learning by helping students carefully attend to the meaning of representations and critically reflect on the representations they designed (diSessa et al., [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref98">13</reflink>]; Enyedy, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref99">16</reflink>]; Lehrer & Schauble, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref100">38</reflink>]).</p> <p>The 6th grade unit was framed by two design challenges: students designed a physical model (a "biosphere"—a closed system physical model that included plants, snails, and guppies), and they programmed a computational model that represented a larger ecosystem of plants, snails, guppies, and guppies' competitors and predators. Throughout the unit, students gathered information and rerepresented the guppies' environment with increasing complexity, logging observations of their biosphere in a "biosphere journal." In the 9th grade classroom, students were tasked with building terrariums that represented a specific biome using plants and abiotic components of the ecosystem. They built their terrariums in tanks partitioned into two sides: a control side that modeled real‐world conditions and a variable side in which students imagined a change to the environment. The projects were not concurrent: 6th graders planned and constructed their biosphere jars before the 9th graders began work on their terrariums.</p> <p>Our research team had previously described the generative role of emotion in this unit (Pierson, Brady, & Lee, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref101">61</reflink>]) and the role of care in guiding students' investigations (Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref102">60</reflink>]). However, researchers were concerned that students only had opportunities to express and think with feelings in vulnerable public spaces. At the same time, Ms. Shuler was concerned that the biosphere journal was not meaningful to the students. In response, the team considered two solutions: (a) asking students to reflect on feelings within the biosphere journal, and, later, (b) providing students with a meaningful "audience" for their observations through pen pal letters.</p> <p>In Fall 2021, we revised the biosphere journal to create space for emotions broadly (including care). Rather than creating headers for students about data to record, we grouped observations into "what do you see?" (qualitative data), "what can you measure?" (quantitative data), and "how do you feel and why?" (emotional data). In class, students were also told they could write about what the fish might feel. These inferences came from students' care work, including (a) observations of guppies and discussions about what their behaviors might mean and (b) students imagining how they might feel in the guppies' position. We hoped the "feelings" column in the journal would enable students to engage with emotional dimensions of their work in a safe, private, and reflective context. Yet, only 9 out of 18 students expressed feelings in their journals, and their responses were brief (Mac wrote "I feel excited because he [the guppy] is happy"; Kendall wrote "barbie [the guppy] is so ugly im disgusted"). Thus, this addition to the journals did not serve a generative role in students' investigations as anticipated.</p> <p>We hypothesized that an authentic audience might encourage students to express feelings. To offer the 6th graders an authentic audience for their observations, feelings, and questions, we paired 6th graders with 9th grade pen pals. 6th graders were told that 9th graders were working toward a similar terrarium project and that they could share information and ask questions. For Letter 1, 6th graders were instructed to tell the 9th graders about their biosphere projects and ask them about their plans. For Letters 2 and 3, 6th graders were instructed to share specific information about a plant investigation and their biosphere jars, respectively. These instructions focused on the epistemic goals of the biosphere project rather than on social or emotional goals: 6th graders were not instructed to write about feelings, and they were not instructed to follow a specific template, protocol, or etiquette.</p> <p>Similarly, 9th graders were given limited instructions for their letters. Again, the focus was on epistemic goals. 9th graders were instructed to avoid directly responding to the 6th graders' questions with factual answers or responses that "closed down" inquiry, and they were encouraged to instead share suggestions for how the 6th graders might answer their own questions or investigate further. They did not receive instructions related to caring for 6th graders; for example, they were not directed to build personal relationships with 6th graders, to comfort them, to build their confidence, or to encourage them as developing scientists.</p> <p>Before the project, the 6th and 9th graders did not know each other (all of the information students knew about their pen pals was shared through the exchange of letters, and, at the end of the quarter, videos). Throughout the quarter, pen pals exchanged three sets of letters and one set of videos (see Figure 1 for a timeline of their exchange; see Supporting Information: Appendix A for an example of a pen pal exchange between two students). Initially, all letters were handwritten, though some 6th graders typed subsequent letters because they were concerned about legibility. The first letters were exchanged in early January, after 6th graders had learned about the biosphere project, but before they began to work on the project. The second letters were exchanged in mid‐January, as 6th graders were designing an experiment about plants that would inform their biosphere plans. The third letters were exchanged in early February, after the 6th graders had seen the results of their plant experiments and as they were planning their biosphere jars. In the spring, the pen pals exchanged videos—in March, the 6th graders sent videos showing their completed biosphere jars, and, in May, the 9th graders sent videos reporting the results of their terrarium projects.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01nov24/sce21894-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21894-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 Timeline of the pen pal exchange." /> </p> <p></p> <p>Based on many students' desires to see their pen pal, we believed that sharing videos rather than letters would enhance the pen pals' communication. We conjectured that students might be able to share more information verbally, for instance, and that putting a face to their pen pals' names could help students deepen their connections. We were surprised to find that when pen pals exchanged videos, the videos they created seemed less generative than the letters. Instead, the videos followed the format of a class presentation. In the 6th grade videos (typically 3 min long), each 6th grader showed their biosphere jar and a few other related artifacts, typically describing the components of each artifact. Only two 6th grade students referenced content from their letters. Similarly, all of the 9th grade videos were one‐way transmissions of information about their terrariums. One possible explanation is related to the timing of the videos; whereas letters were written as the projects were being conceptualized and designed, the videos were recorded after the biosphere was sealed and the terrarium experiment had been conducted, so students may have felt they were presenting finished work rather than exchanging ideas on works‐in‐progress. In addition, the fact that these videos were filmed with cameras often operated by teachers and researchers may have contributed to a feeling of the videos being more surveilled than the letters, limiting what students shared with their pen pals.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-9">Data sources and analysis</hd> <p>We analyze pen pal artifacts, including scans of 102 letters (51 written by 6th graders, 51 written by 9th graders), 16 videos produced by 6th graders about their models, and 11 videos produced by the 9th graders about their terrarium projects. To triangulate our interpretation of these artifacts with students' experiences of the learning activities, we analyzed interviews and written reflections. In addition, we drew on secondary data sources (including observations of students' interactions during class and outside of class).</p> <p>From the 6th grade classroom, nine focal students participated in end of quarter interviews (March 2023; see Supporting Information: Appendix B for interview protocol). Focal students were selected with input from the 6th grade teaching team to represent a wide range of backgrounds, academic performance, and engagement. The interviews aimed to understand how students valued models, how they perceived models from the unit to be related to each other, and how they reasoned with the models during class. Students were also asked specifically about the role of feelings in their investigations, as well as about their pen pals. From the 9th grade classroom, 23 students completed written reflections. While we initially intended to focus our analysis on the 6th grade students, our analysis surfaced questions about the 9th graders' role in these interactions. We shared a set of three questions with the 9th graders that they answered in writing (June 2023; see Supporting Information: Appendix C for framing and prompts). Because this activity took place months after the last letter exchange, we individualized the prompts by including copies of selected letters from their pen pal exchange. The prompts aimed to help us as researchers understand, from 9th graders' perspectives, what feelings surfaced in the 6th graders' letters, how the 9th graders responded and why, and how the 9th graders experienced the pen pal activities. After students wrote their reflections, Corey Brady facilitated an informal discussion about the 9th graders' experiences, and he recorded their reflections in field notes (6/12/23).</p> <p>Our retrospective analysis, which used constant‐comparative methods and inductive coding (Charmaz, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref103">12</reflink>]; Strauss & Corbin, [<reflink idref="bib78" id="ref104">78</reflink>]), was inspired by calls for axiological reorientation that center students' values as essential for supporting their epistemic and representational work (Bang, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref105">3</reflink>]; Espinoza et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref106">17</reflink>]; Kayumova & Sengupta, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref107">30</reflink>]; Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref108">60</reflink>]; Vossoughi et al., [<reflink idref="bib90" id="ref109">90</reflink>]). Therefore, we took students' values as a starting point for making sense of their scientific work. While our design aimed to make space for students' emotions broadly, our findings focus more narrowly on care, which emerged in our analysis as central to students' biosphere projects. Because care integrates feelings, sensemaking, and practices through the dimensions of hands‐on, affective, and ethical agencies (Puig de la Bellacasa, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref110">66</reflink>]), our work is also synergistic with Vea's ([<reflink idref="bib87" id="ref111">87</reflink>]) emotional configurations.</p> <p>Building on our prior analyses (Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref112">60</reflink>]), we focused on the function of care as a <emph>commitment</emph>: a resource (Hammer et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref113">25</reflink>]) that shapes how students use, value, and learn from models. From a resources perspective, commitments are activated and expressed by individuals in response to conceptual and social contexts (Elby et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref114">14</reflink>]; Philip, [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref115">56</reflink>]; Richards et al., [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref116">68</reflink>]; Sandoval, [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref117">74</reflink>]). By taking students' values (rather than disciplinary practices) as a starting point, this approach is heterogeneity‐seeking, foregrounding messy, nonlinear aspects of learning, then mapping them to disciplinary resources typically backgrounded in education (Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref118">60</reflink>]). To identify commitments, we analyzed students' letters using qualitative analysis software. We created initial coding categories based on students' language (e.g., "fish needs," "protect"). Care work emerged as central in this analysis. We termed caring toward fish and their environments "caring for guppies," and we termed caring toward each other as "caring for pen pals." To deepen our understanding of students' care, we developed subcategories that more closely describe the expressions of care in the letters (see Table 2 for codes, subcodes, frequencies, and descriptions). Specifically, during research meetings, we reviewed and analyzed examples of care in students' letters and created provisional coding categories. Then, Ashlyn Pierson refined categories through the process of coding the entire data corpus. This process was repeated iteratively as Pierson shared updated codes and examples with the larger team.</p> <p>2 Table Summary of codes and frequencies.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr valign="bottom"><th>Codes</th><th>Frequency</th><th>Description</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Caring for guppies</td><td>56/102 letters, 55%</td><td>Expressing or enacting care for guppies</td></tr><tr><td>Caring about guppies' survival, health</td><td>53/102 letters, 52%</td><td>Asking or sharing information about what guppies need to live and avoid disease. Keeping fish safe in their environment.</td></tr><tr><td>"Taking care" of guppies.</td></tr><tr><td>Protecting guppies from each other</td><td>10/102 letters, 10%</td><td>Asking or sharing information about how to protect fish from being eaten by other fish. Keeping fish safe from each other.</td></tr><tr><td>Attending to guppies' feelings & individuality</td><td>12/102 letters, 12%</td><td>Asking or sharing information about how to notice and respond to fish's feelings. Promoting positive feelings and avoiding negative feelings for the fish.</td></tr><tr><td>Choosing a name for the fish; a way of establishing a connection with the fish as an individual.</td></tr><tr><td>Caring about pen pals</td><td>64/102 letters, 63%</td><td>Cultivating caring relationships with pen pals: (1) as individuals, (2) as colleagues, (3) as mentor‐mentee.</td></tr><tr><td>Building personal relationships</td><td>33/102 letters, 32%</td><td>Exchanging personal information (drawings, questions). Attending to pen pals' identities and interests.</td></tr><tr><td>Working with colleagues</td><td>13/102 letters, 13%</td><td>Exchanging information or practices. Considering how each pen pal could learn from the others' projects.</td></tr><tr><td>Mentoring 6th graders</td><td>38/51 9th grade letters, 75%</td><td>Attending to 6th graders' feelings and experiences. Supporting 6th graders' developing identities and competence as scientists.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Initially, our understanding of care was guided by Puig de la Bellacasa ([<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref119">66</reflink>])'s components of care: the hands‐on, affective, and ethical agencies used to "maintain, continue, and repair 'our world' [e.g., the biosphere jars]" (Tronto & Fisher, [<reflink idref="bib84" id="ref120">84</reflink>], p. 40), as well as our own personal and cultural understandings of care. Following from Antrop‐González and De Jesús ([<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref121">2</reflink>]) and other critical scholars, we acknowledged that Puig de la Bellacasa's ([<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref122">66</reflink>]) definition of care, in combination with our own understandings, was unlikely to enable us to recognize all expressions of care in students' letters. As a result, we relied on additional data sources (interviews, written reflections, classroom observations, field notes) to contextualize and elaborate our analysis. Specifically, in our discussion of codes, we also reflected on moments in our interactions with students and observations of the classroom that supported or challenged the emerging categories. In addition, we iteratively returned to the literature about care in professional science and children's science learning to further broaden our lens (see Implications section for affordances of this methodological approach, including examples from our Findings). This attention to secondary data sources allowed us to recognize expressions of care that we, as teachers and researchers, might have overlooked in our analysis of primary artifacts.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-10">FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION</hd> <p>Of the 44 participating 6th and 9th graders, all students expressed care in at least one of their letters. Across our data, we found two ways of expressing care that surfaced in students' letters, which we organized by the object of care: caring for guppies and caring for pen pals (Table 2). Below, we describe students' expressions of care, and we illustrate how their epistemic work was inextricably intertwined with care work. Our analysis thus responds to calls from across disciplines to analyze care as an integral and generative part of science. These findings have implications for how educators', researchers', and students' conceptions of care influence what is considered productive and allowable as part of science.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-11">Caring for guppies</hd> <p>In this section, we focus on how students expressed and enacted care for their guppies. In their letters, both 6th and 9th grade students demonstrated care for the guppies (56/102 letters, 55%). Across the participants, almost all 6th and 9th grade students included at least one expression of care for guppies in at least one of their letters (43/44 students, 98%). Their letters included both intrinsic care (care for guppies as inherently valuable) and instrumental care (care for guppies as a means to an end; e.g., as a mechanism for representing and understanding animals broadly, a particular type of animal, or an ecosystem).</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-12">Caring about guppies' survival and health</hd> <p>Most often, students expressed care for guppies by asking or sharing information about the guppies' survival (53/102 letters, 52%). Within this category, 6th graders often asked or shared hypotheses about their fish's survival, including the need to provide food and oxygen for the fish and to protect the fish from disease. For instance, George (6th grade, letter 1) wrote, "I don't think that the fish would stay alive if [I] put a lid on the jar. I want to put water and plants in my jar. This is what I think → when the fish move the plants will move so the fish have air. Help me!" In this letter, George described his plan to build an environment in which the fish could breathe ("when the fish move the plants will move so the fish have air"). This plan was also accompanied by concern ("I don't think the fish would stay alive") and felt intensity ("Help me!"), demonstrating that George's feelings of care for the fish were entangled with his sensemaking at this point in his investigation. George's pen pals (Holmes and Jester), in their written reflections, also interpreted George's letters as conveying stress that prompted sensemaking about helping the fish survive. Holmes wrote, "it seemed like the 6th graders were a little stressed about the fish dying and they [were] trying to figure out the best way for them to help the fish survive."</p> <p>Ninth graders also expressed care for the guppies. For instance, Flora (9th grader, letter 2) wrote, "Just be sure you add enough plants so the fish has enough oxygen and nutrients to survive. Some plants that guppies eat include java moss, waterweeds, anubias, moss, leptochilus pteropus, hygrophila difformis and more." This detailed list of plants suggests that Flora did her own research to provide her pen pal with a list of appropriate food sources for his guppy (the guppy could eat the algae, decaying plant matter, and small organisms that would thrive around these plants). From Flora's perspective, this advice was intended to help the guppy not only by providing information, but also by directing her pen pal's attention toward the guppy's survival needs. In her written reflection, she wrote, "my pen pal in particular was slightly distracted about their guppy having babies and the parent eating the babies ... I was trying to help communicate what his guppy could need to survive to help his project be successful." Like George in the example above, Flora took responsibility for the fish and the biosphere project and did research to determine what she believed the fish could eat in the jar. In such cases, care for the fish was generative not only for the 6th graders, but also for the 9th graders, who asked and explored their own questions about the biological and ecological needs of guppies.</p> <p>In addition to practical concerns, students also discussed moral and ethical implications of their decisions—an additional manifestation of their care for the guppies. For instance, CJ's question (6th grade, letter 1)—"my teacher says that failure isn't bad, but what if a life is on the line?"—is an example of a student considering both the moral and ethical implications of the project. Thus, CJ's care was generative in terms of his understanding of science—specifically, what is justifiable in a scientific investigation. CJ's question suggested that he was not comfortable with the possibility that the fish could die, asking the 9th graders whether failure could in fact be considered "bad" if a fish's life was at stake. At the same time, he questioned the ethical norms of the classroom and an image of science that is often presented to children—"failure isn't bad." In such cases, the 9th graders offered the 6th graders a safe space to question the ethical assumptions of the classroom, the teacher, or science. In addition, the letters offered the 6th graders a space to explore their own feelings of moral obligation in the context of their investigations. Throughout the quarter, CJ also continued to push back against the ethical assumptions of the classroom with regard to "cannibalism," which we describe in the following section.</p> <p>In addition to explicitly considering survival, some students used the phrase "taking care" of the guppies in their letters. For instance, Ben (6th grade, letter 3) wrote, "I feel really excited because we get to work with guppies and take care of them." "Taking care" was not clearly defined in these cases, though it implies responsibility for the guppies' wellbeing. In each case, this phrase was also associated with positive feelings on the part of the students, indicating that responsibility for the guppies involved not only concern but also enjoyment—though it is unclear in the data whether these feelings emerged in response to the students' engagement in the biosphere investigation (guppies as instrumental to investigations), the students' personal relationships with the guppies (guppies as intrinsically valuable), or both.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-13">Protecting guppies from each other</hd> <p>Beyond providing fish with what they needed to survive, 6th and 9th graders also considered ways they could protect their fish from each other (10/102 letters, 10%). Several of the 6th grade students were concerned about adult fish eating their offspring, which the classroom referred to as "cannibalism." For instance, Emma (6th grade, letter 1) wrote, "when the fishes give birth like how do we make the mom fish not eat there baby." Emma's pen pals (Octopus and LeBron) also interpreted her letter as an expression of care for the fish. In her written reflection, Octopus explained that Emma's letters "were sympathetic to the aquatic animals ... for example, in the letter the 6th grader worries about how the mom fish might eat the baby fish." Octopus considered addressing these concerns to be part of the emotional work of science. She explained, "I decided to reply in a more sympathetic tone instead of a factual [tone] ... I could turn the mindset of the fish dying to a more positive topic or situation and the 6th grader could focus on the main objective ... making sure the tank was suitable for the fish." Such concerns were not only emotional, but also generative; they drew students' attention to guppies' behaviors in low‐resource environments, enabling them to consider new aspects of their survival, population dynamics, and food webs.</p> <p>In their letters, in response to cannibalism concerns, some students prioritized protecting baby guppies, while others prioritized adults. For instance, Tripp (6th grade, letter 1) wrote, "How do you make a successful ecosystem that is a noncanibalistic community (in sealed jar). I want to try to make canibalism a nonexistent factor. I was told that they, eat the children, but our teacher protects them (babies) What if she didnt have to." Here, Tripp expressed a moral and ethical obligation to protect hypothetical baby guppies that might be born in the jar from being eaten by their parents. This moral and ethical obligation motivated Tripp's understanding of what a "successful ecosystem" would entail, entwining care with sensemaking.</p> <p>CJ (6th grade, letter 3) interpreted the same scenario from a different lens, prioritizing protecting the adult guppies in his work to understand and design a successful ecosystem. He wrote, "I am thinking of basing the food in the jar on cannibalism, would that work, and even if it would work will the guppies still lay their eggs when there are no hiding spaces?" Later in his interview, he clarified, "I based cannibalism as the back up source of food in the tank ... if the plant had died, then I was hoping that, you know, if they had children that they could eat the children instead of dying themselves ... so my goal is to keep the main guppies alive, but to see, like, if they would refrain from eating the babies as long as they could." In these letters, Tripp and CJ considered similar moral and ethical questions, caring for different fish within the jar—Tripp for the babies, and CJ for the adult "main" guppies. While Tripp aligned with ethical norms of the classroom, CJ used his letter to explore an idea that challenged an ethical norm of the classroom (a responsibility to protect baby guppies).</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-14">Attending to guppies' feelings and individuality</hd> <p>Although students primarily demonstrated care by attending to guppies' survival, some also considered guppies' well‐being in terms of their feelings (12/102 letters, 12%). Whereas guppies' survival was key to the disciplinary work of modeling a "balanced" and sustainable ecosystem, attending to their feelings went beyond the assignment and implied moral and emotional engagement on the part of the students. Caring about guppies' feelings also raised new biological questions about the guppies (e.g., whether, how, and under what conditions guppies experience feelings, like stress or happiness).</p> <p>Some students focused on feelings of stress. For instance, Kendall (6th grade, letter 1) wrote that she did not "want the fish to become stressed." Her pen pals followed up with suggestions, which they both described in their written reflections as an effort to be "reassuring" to Kendall. Other students focused on guppies' happiness. For instance, Tripp (6th grade, letter 3) suggested, "Also, we could make the fish happy by letting them have free roaming in their environment (jar)." In these instances, the students engaged in care work by considering the fish's feelings and ways that they could support the fish's happiness or lower their stress. In these exchanges, students not only described designs to support the fish emotionally, but also considered how they might observe these feelings (how they would <emph>know</emph> whether the fish were happy or stressed). In this way, care shaped not only students' sensemaking about the biosphere designs and the guppies but also sharpened their practices of observation.</p> <p>Another form of care was giving names to the fish, though this form of care only appeared once in the letters. Tripp (6th grade, letter 3) wrote, "we also need to create a name for our male and female guppie." Though names only surfaced in the letters once, it was common practice in this classroom and in previous implementations of the unit for students to name their guppies—many students in this classroom shared the names of their guppies in the end‐of‐quarter videos that they created for their pen pals. Beyond naming the fish, in our analysis of previous quarters, we have noticed students referring to fish as their family (e.g., Denise exclaimed "I'm a grandma!" when baby guppies appeared in her tank; Andrea described Fisha, her fish who had died, as "a disgrace to our family" [Pierson, Brady, & Lee, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref123">61</reflink>]]). These familial connections shaped how students observed and interacted with their fish. For instance, when Pepper was concerned that her group's male guppy might hurt their female guppy, she said to him, "I'm gonna kick you if you do." With this statement, Pepper demonstrated care for both guppies in an almost parental way; she took responsibility for the male guppy's actions and the female guppy's safety, threatening the male with consequences if he hurt the female. In these cases, students' care for the guppies shaped how they observed their guppies, demonstrating the entanglement of sensemaking and practice not only in their letters but also in their classroom interactions (Pierson, Brady, & Lee, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref124">61</reflink>]).</p> <p>There is evidence that students in this classroom formed similar personal connections with their guppies, including those in the classroom tanks who were not placed in their jars, though these connections were not described in their letters. For example, during the 4th quarter of the school year, when Larry (a fish with a bent tail from the classroom tank) died, students from the 3rd quarter class came back to the classroom to honor Larry with a sign and a "grave" (Figure 2). By naming specific physical attributes and personality traits of Larry, students demonstrated their deep personal connections with the fish as intrinsically valuable. Our previous analysis of classroom interactions (Pierson, Brady, & Lee, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref125">61</reflink>]) implies that such connections may have similarly supported practices, such as new forms of observation.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01nov24/sce21894-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21894-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 "Grave" for Larry the fish, created by 6th graders, including several participants in this study (Tiger and Katherine)." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0181569385-16">Discussion: Caring for guppies</hd> <p>Almost all students demonstrated at least one form of care for guppies in their letters by (a) supporting guppies' survival, (b) protecting guppies from each other, or (c) attending to guppies' feelings or individuality. The assignment positioned the guppies and biosphere jar as representations of animals and ecosystems, which could have promoted only an <emph>instrumental</emph> concern for the guppies (a means to the end of understanding ecological systems). However, our data show that 6th graders also developed <emph>intrinsic</emph> care for the guppies in their own jars and in the classroom, and 9th graders responded in kind. Below, using literature from professional science and science education, we argue that this intrinsic care was not merely decorative or epiphenomenal; rather, it was generative for scientific investigations and integrated into scientific practices and sensemaking. Thus, we argue that the epistemic work of representing ecosystems and the care work of designing, monitoring, and maintaining the biosphere jars were intimately entwined.</p> <p>Just as scientists are attentive to the survival needs of animals in their labs (Williams, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref126">93</reflink>]), the students in our study demonstrated attentiveness to the survival of their guppies. In both cases, animals living in captivity are unable to meet their own needs for survival, and they are thus dependent on the humans (researchers, students) who care for them. Williams ([<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref127">93</reflink>]) noted that humans' care for animals in such contexts has been framed as instrumental—animals are positioned as a means to the end of knowledge production. Yet, she also noted that while humans appear to hold power over animals, they are in turn beholden to the systems (organization, cultures, and, in our case, curriculum) that dictate roles for humans and animals. Similarly, our data demonstrate the ways that students' care for the guppies was shaped not only by their instrumental knowledge‐building goals, but also the moral commitments of the students and the norms of the classroom (e.g., Tripp and CJ's differing responses to cannibalism). In such cases, students' intrinsic care deepened their sensemaking, raising new questions about guppies' biology, behavior, and dynamics within the ecosystem.</p> <p>In their edited volume <emph>Vulnerable Witness</emph>, Gillespie and Lopez ([<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref128">24</reflink>]) further problematized a view of care in research as instrumental, considering the complex relationships between researchers and those they study, compiling narratives about researchers' grief which they often hide so that they can be "taken seriously" in their fields. For instance, in <emph>Vulnerable Witness</emph>, Isaacs ([<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref129">28</reflink>]) reflected on the way that animals (cockroaches, birds) can become interchangeable and ungrievable in the public discourse on conservation outreach and research—a forced sacrifice for the good of their species. In our data, while students' concern for guppies could be considered instrumental (a means to the end of a successful biosphere jar), there is also evidence that students similarly felt a tension between this instrumental framing and their intrinsic care for guppies (e.g., CJ's question "what if a life is on the line?" and Flora's focus on the guppies' immediate needs—plants that they could eat—rather than on abstract concerns, like cannibalism).</p> <p>While the commitment of care above focuses on avoiding negative outcomes, some students also expressed positive feelings, like excitement and enjoyment, related to "taking care of the guppies." Such feelings resonate with accounts of professional science that consider the joy in getting to know organisms as individuals and as familiar friends in the field (Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref130">21</reflink>]; Kimmerer, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref131">32</reflink>]). While such commitments of care could again be framed as instrumental, because caring about organisms can be generative (Barad, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref132">5</reflink>]; Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref133">20</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref134">21</reflink>]; Haraway, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref135">27</reflink>]), feminist theories of science practice have also framed such interactions as relational, challenging the value and reality of antiseptic objectivity in science. Puig de la Bellacasa ([<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref136">66</reflink>]) added complexity to feminist theories of care, considering the way that care might include both positive and negative emotions, as well as acts that are both nurturing and violent. This nuanced lens—which makes space for feelings of guilt and grief as well as pleasure and joy—can help us to interpret the mixed feelings expressed in students' pen pal letters about the guppies. For instance, acknowledging the intertwined relationship between care and harm can help explain the students' differing responses to cannibalism, with some students (like Tripp) aiming to protect potential babies from their parents and other students (like CJ) aiming to protect the potential parents by positioning baby guppies as a "back up source" of food.</p> <p>Studies of science education in formal and informal settings can add further insight to our understanding of students' care for guppies. Taylor and Pacini‐Ketchabaw ([<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref137">81</reflink>]) described a similar combination of positive and negative feelings in children's encounters with and attempts to care for worms. They described both enjoyment in interaction and distress in the ways that children's actions might harm the worms, despite their good intentions. In our data, 6th graders also expressed excitement about taking care of the guppies and anxiety about their potential role in harming the guppies, even if accidentally. This concern prompted pleas for help to the 9th graders (e.g., George's "help me!") that were interpreted by the 9th graders as "stress." In both examples (worms and guppies), there is an instrumental and anthropocentric interest served by the survival of the organism—worms were needed to produce fertile soil to grow food, and guppies were needed to learn about biology and ecology. Yet, students' enjoyment in their interactions with the worms and guppies suggest that their relationship was grounded in more than these anthropocentric ends, blurring the line between care as instrumental and intrinsic.</p> <p>Beyond guppies' survival and protection, the letters demonstrated that some students also attended to guppies' feelings (e.g., happiness, stress). This form of care resonates with the labs described by Osbeck and Nersessian ([<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref138">53</reflink>]) that worked to keep their cells "happy" to collaboratively produce new knowledge with their cells. It is possible that our students also saw fish that were "happy" or "not stressed" as generative collaborators in their assignment (a means to the end of a successful biosphere jar); however, in their letters, they did not explicitly link guppies' feelings to their results. Alongside evidence that students also cared about guppies as individuals (e.g., naming guppies, referring to them as family members, noticing guppies' individual traits), we propose that it is also possible to interpret students' care for guppies' feelings in analogy with McDaid Barry et al.'s (2023) "internal states" as a dimension of recognized personhood (p. 385). In our data, students' expressions of care for their guppies resonate with other dimensions of personhood as well; for instance: imagining guppies' perspectives, including whether they would lay eggs without hiding spaces (perspective taking); asking questions of the guppies, including whether they were happy or stressed (addressivity); and assuming guppies could answer their questions, including by observing guppies' behavior as an answer to their questions (answerability). While the students did not explicitly recognize guppies as people, their impulses to name their guppies and to celebrate their lives (e.g., Larry's funeral) demonstrates a depth of intrinsic care for the guppies. In this way, our data responds to McDaid Barry et al.'s call "regardless of our cultural backgrounds" to acknowledge "personhood and the respect, care, and dignity that all beings should be afforded." Though our design was not grounded in Indigenous axiologies, ontologies, or epistemologies of kinship, and though our curriculum was not designed to acknowledge guppies' personhood, by focusing our analysis on students' expression of care, we see students in our data positioning guppies as inherently valuable beings worthy of care beyond their role as objects of study in the biosphere assignment.</p> <p>In summary, our data suggests that students' care for guppies was both instrumental and intrinsic—a dynamic that echoes the tensions felt both in intuitive and naturalistic settings (Taylor & Pacini‐Ketchabaw, [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref139">81</reflink>]) and in professional science (Lopez & Gillespie, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref140">40</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref141">93</reflink>]). Our data also illustrates the ways that students' care work was deeply intertwined with their epistemic work of sensemaking and practice, as their excitement and concern about the guppies motivated the questions they asked in their letters, the design of their jars, and their negotiation about what is ethically allowable in the context of their project (e.g., death of guppies, cannibalism, stress).</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-17">Caring for pen pals</hd> <p>The pen pal letters were designed to offer students space for emotions, such as care, as part of their investigations. We anticipated that students would demonstrate care for their guppies; however, we found that students also demonstrated care for their pen pals in their letters (64/102 letters, 63%). Almost all students, including all 9th graders, demonstrated a form of care for their pen pals in at least one of their letters (40/44 students, 91%). These expressions of care also illustrated the way students' epistemic and care work was intimately entwined, especially in 9th graders' work to help the 6th graders engage in and learn about science as a discipline.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-18">Building personal relationships</hd> <p>In almost one‐third of the letters, students worked to build relationships with their pen pals that went beyond the guppy and terrarium projects (33/102 letters, 32%). Students' accounts of their experiences confirm this interpretation. Of the nine 6th grade students who participated in end‐of‐quarter interviews, five described enjoying the experience of connecting with their pen pals. Katherine explained, "it was really fun to have your own little personal people to write with and you could add fun little questions and things to the note that just made it really interesting to hear about their opinions." Katherine's statement suggested that she considered pen pal interactions not only instrumental to completing the letter‐writing assignment or getting help and advice about other assignments but also intrinsically valuable ("fun" and "interesting"). Of the 23 9th graders that completed written reflections, 15 also described enjoying the pen pal activity because they liked getting to know their 6th grader. In addition, seven of the 9th graders suggested improving the activity by exchanging more letters throughout the quarter. They argued that this would further build personal connections between pen pals. Flora explained: "I would try to make the letters more frequent because I think that would help both sides form a better friendship." It is not clear in our data whether 9th graders, like Flora, saw a "better friendship" as in service of epistemic or social goals; regardless, such statements demonstrate the caring relationships that the pen pals established in their letters.</p> <p>To build a personal relationship, some pen pals asked about each others' interests (e.g., sports, music, food, favorite colors), and some exchanged drawings, creating characters that reappeared in their letters. For example, Figure 3 shows a portion of a letter from Keki and Odis (9th graders, letter 3). They asked their pen pal, Ryder, a personal question about his preferences: "Are you a pancake or a waffle kid?" This question demonstrates an effort to get to know more about Ryder as a person, cultivating a caring relationship between the pen pals. In their written reflections, both Keki and Odis described wanting even more interaction to get to know and "understand" their pen pal, potentially "through a zoom meeting or an in‐person meeting." Instead, working within the constraints of the letters, Keki and Odis used other strategies to build a relationship with Ryder. For instance, they asked, "how do you pronounce your name?" offering two different phonetic spellings. Within the pen pal assignment, Keki and Odis would never need to pronounce Ryder's name. Thus, beyond politeness, this question showed respect for Ryder as an individual, again cultivating a reciprocal caring relationship between the pen pals. In addition to these questions, they also drew an axolotl—a character that Ryder had first drawn in his second letter. The axolotl appeared in each subsequent letter between the pen pals (drawn by both Ryder and by Keki and Odis). In the video Ryder made for Keki and Odis at the end of the quarter, he held up a drawing of the axolotl before flinging it aside to reveal his own face. We found similar drawings and recurring characters in other students' letters, including in the letters between Katherine (6th grade) and her pen pals (Chobi and Nowhere, 9th grade), who exchanged drawings of and information about Gerald the Duck and Jerald the Jellyfish. Rae (9th grade) also exchanged drawings with her pen pal (Tiger) and explained, "me and my partner tried to be super kind to them, like how we would write good luck messages (and how when we got doodles from Tiger I would doodle some back!)." In her letters, Rae made a special effort to convey genuine support in a way that was individualized for each of her pen pals (e.g., doodling back and forth with Tiger). With personal messages and drawings, pen pals built a shared interest and story that connected them beyond the biosphere and terrarium projects. Yet, we do not consider these connections ancillary to the students' work; rather, we argue that such personal connections built a meaningful foundation for students' emotionally vulnerable disciplinary work.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01nov24/sce21894-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21894-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 Letter from Keki and Odis (9th grade, letter 3) to Ryder (6th grade)." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0181569385-20">Working with collaborators</hd> <p>In some of the letters, students demonstrated care by positioning their pen pals as collaborators (13/102 letters, 13%)—they exchanged information and asked questions to learn together about the guppy and terrarium projects. In the 6th grade letters, students accomplished collegial care by offering resources to the 9th graders for their terrariums, such as websites. In his first letter, Pete (6th grade, letter 1) positioned his own project as a potential resource for the 9th graders, writing, "in my class we're trying to keep a guppy alive in an Ecosystem. Do you have an[y] tips on how to make them survive longer. Maybe something in this Experiment can relate to your Terrium experient." Pete's suggestion implied a reciprocal care by offering his findings as a resource for his pen pals' terrariums. Pete's pen pals noticed his care; in her written reflection, Artemis wrote, "he also tried to reach out and asked what we were doing in return and if it related to his project ... although I have never seen Pete, I know he is a caring and fun person with a lot of curiosity about the world." In this case, positioning his pen pals as collaborators helped Pete establish a caring relationship with his pen pals, in addition to supporting a generative relationship focused on exchanging information about the students' respective projects.</p> <p>Another way that 6th graders positioned 9th graders as collaborators was by hearing their advice, weighing it against their own information and ideas, and making a different decision. For instance, Tiger (6th grade, letter 3) wrote, "the guppy project is soon, and our budget is $5. We were thinking but didn't know if we should buy a female and a male, or just 1 of them. What do y'all think?" Her pen pals, Buzz and Rae (9th grade, letter 3), responded, "We think that you should probably stick with one fish. Guppies are okay being solidary and having one fish will make sure that it has enough space and resources." The tension between adequate resources and companionship for the guppies has been a common conversation across all implementations of the unit. The letters enabled Tiger to discuss her options for addressing this tension with collaborators outside of the classroom. Later, in her video, Tiger explained that despite Buzz and Rae's suggestions, her group decided to include two guppies in their jar. They had decided there were adequate resources, and they were more concerned about the guppies' loneliness, demonstrating how they balanced care for the guppies' survival with care for their emotional wellbeing. This example illustrates how Tiger considered her pen pals' advice without taking it as absolute or apodictic, positioning her pen pals as collaborators whose opinions she valued rather than as authorities. With her response, Tiger dignified her pen pals' suggestion; while sharing her reasoning was not necessary to achieve the epistemic ends of her project (designing the biosphere jar), Tiger still chose to honor her relationship with her pen pals by justifying her decision to include two fish; in this way, her collaborative relationship with her pen pals motivated her to justify scientific and design choices in her biosphere jar. Thus, Tiger demonstrated care for her pen pals not only as resources for completing her assignment, but also as collaborators invested in her biosphere jar.</p> <p>In the 9th grade letters, students positioned themselves as collaborators by asking genuine questions and by using phrases like "I'm not a fish expert" (Finn and Barbie, 9th grade, letter 1). In her written reflection, Barbie explained, "we mainly wanted for them to trust themselves and their decisions and provide reassurance," because "we didn't know much about the topic." The 9th graders also positioned themselves as collaborators by expressing surprise about 6th graders' experimental results and asking for more information. For example, Chobi and Nowhere (9th grade, letter 2) responded with surprise when Katherine shared information about her plant investigation, reporting that a seed sprouted without soil. They responded, "We are glad to hear that you were able to see those surprising results! We were surprised by the no‐soil growth ... could you please give more information on the plants next time because the results were unexpected?" With this letter, Chobi and Nowhere positioned themselves as learning alongside the 6th graders. Their curiosity was genuine; in her written response, Chobi explained, "I would've liked to have heard more about how the experiment went. I learned some of the details regarding the experiment, but not enough to understand how it completely played out." By asking genuine questions and expressing surprise, 9th graders helped establish reciprocal caring relationships with their 6th grade pen pals, in addition to encouraging sensemaking by asking 6th graders to reflect on and articulate their own understanding of their findings.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-21">Mentoring 6th graders</hd> <p>Both 6th and 9th graders saw their relationship as a form of mentoring, which we define as 9th graders taking a pedagogical stance toward 6th graders to support their learning about guppies or ecosystems specifically or science as a discipline generally. In their interviews, almost all 6th grade students described the pen pal exchange as a good experience because their pen pal provided them with information and helped them make decisions (eight out of nine students). In their written reflections, all 23 9th graders positioned themselves as helping the 6th graders by sharing information, providing feedback, or helping them understand science. Beyond sharing information, mentoring required significant care work: taking responsibility for contributing to the 6th graders' learning and also attending to and responding to their specific needs. In written reflections, 9th graders described writing letters as "fun" and also as "stressful," expressing their emotional investment in this work. Moreover, two 9th graders (Holmes and Jester) expressed concern to a researcher that they had responded too flippantly to CJ's dilemma ("my teacher says that failure isn't bad, but what if a life is on the line?"), and set CJ on what they called a "dark road" that could have led to his plan for cannibalism as a back‐up food source, explicitly raising ethical concerns about the effects of their own mentoring.</p> <p>We identified instances of care as mentoring in more than half of the 9th grade letters (38/51 9th grade letters, 75%). Some 9th graders worked in their letters to frame students' investigations in a positive way. Some aimed to understand and respond to 6th graders' feelings of concern. In addition, some 9th graders demonstrated care for the 6th graders as emerging scientists, working to support their developing identities and competencies as scientists by sharing information about science as a discipline, assuaging their concerns, and affirming their ideas.</p> <p>Most often, 9th graders aimed to support 6th graders' learning in their projects by asking questions to guide the 6th graders' investigations (18/51 letters, 35%). For example, when Ben (6th grade, letter 1) asked about diseases, Buzz and Rae (9th grade, letter 1) responded:</p> <p>If the water gets contaminated by something, this can lead to the fish getting sick, which is not good. In order to prevent this from happening, you clean your jar ... What are some things you can do to make sure your fish doesn't get sick? Are there other things that might cause the fish to get a disease?</p> <p>While it is plausible that Buzz and Rae were motivated here by concerns for the fish, it also appears that they were following the directions of the assignment (to ask open pedagogical questions). Beyond the compliance with the assignment, Rae explained in her written reflection that she also attended to her pen pals' feelings: "we tried to make them more confident in themselves and their project by answering their questions, giving them questions, and giving them things to think about, while also trying to be kind to them." Asking questions like these indicates that the 9th graders cared not only about the assignment but also supporting 6th graders' competence and confidence as emerging scientists.</p> <p>Another way that 9th graders worked to support 6th graders as emerging scientists is by explicitly describing what science involves (8/51 letters, 16%). For instance, when CJ (6th grade, letter 1) raised concerns about "failure," Jester and Holmes (9th grade, letter 1) responded, "Failure is completely okay. It is actual[ly] a big part of science and learning in general." Jester explained in his written reflection, "we wanted to communicate that the possible death of the fish was simply part of the project." Responses like these aimed to convey to the 6th graders what science entails (from the 9th graders' perspectives), but also to comfort them in the event of what was, from the 9th graders' perspective, a potentially negative outcome (the death of a fish).</p> <p>In addition to letters reassuring 6th graders by explaining that "failure" was a part of science, 9th graders also worked to assuage 6th graders' concerns in other ways (15/51 letters, 29%). For instance, when Kendall (6th grade, letter 1) said that she did not "want the fish to become stressed," Slash and Mars (9th grade, letter 1) worked to reassure her by considering probabilities and suggesting actions she could take to monitor and care for her fish. They wrote:</p> <p>Don't worry too much about your fish. There is a slim chance your guppy will pass out because there isn't anything in the jar that will stress them. If you would like to study their stress levels, you could spend time observing their swimming patterns and if they have any erratic movements. If you provide a nice environment with clean water and healthy plants, your guppy should do fine.</p> <p>In this letter, Slash and Mars worked to support Kendall emotionally by considering her feelings (which they described in their written reflections as "worried" and "nervous"). They also appealed to reasoning (probability, "slim chance"), and suggested specific practices (observation) that she could use to move forward with her investigation. Mars explained that she hoped this would let Kendall "know how to properly care for their guppy so that no problems would occur"—a way of protecting the guppy, but also protecting Kendall's feelings.</p> <p>The 9th graders also worked to build 6th graders' confidence as scientists by affirming their ideas. For instance, Chobi and Nowhere (9th grade, letter 2) ended their letter with "you had great observations!" This approach was also used to preface suggestions; for instance, Pineapple (9th grade, letter 2) wrote, "I think your hypothesis is definitely heading in the right direction, but many of the variables which you can't see, such as natural sprouting temperature, humidity, and soil type will affect which seed will sprout." In this case, Pineapple worked to protect his pen pal's feelings by offering critical feedback along with affirmation. This was a delicate and intentional balance; in his written reflection, Pineapple explained, "I was also cautious in responding to these questions as I did not want him to keep his fearful mentality, but I also did not want to shield him completely from the natural things that may occur." Here, Pineapple described helping his pen pal build cautious confidence as a scientist, thinking "proactively" to address issues that might emerge.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-22">Discussion: Caring for pen pals</hd> <p>Almost all students (and all 9th graders) demonstrated at least one form of care for pen pals in their letters by: (a) building personal relationships, (b) working with collaborators, or (c) mentoring. Although we initially planned to focus our analysis on students' care for guppies, we found that caring for pen pals was also intertwined with students' epistemic work. For instance, motivated by their care for 6th graders' feelings, 9th graders encouraged 6th graders to identify solutions to stressors (e.g., Slash and Mars' suggestion to prevent guppy stress by providing a clean jar), and they explained what science entails (e.g., Holmes and Jester's "failure is ... part of science and learning in general"). These findings resonate with studies of professional science that underscore the importance of caring not only for the object of study (e.g., guppies), but also for other humans in a lab setting (Williams, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref142">93</reflink>]). Attending to care for both more‐than‐humans <emph>and</emph> humans is responsive to calls in science education research (e.g., Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref143">35</reflink>]; McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref144">44</reflink>]) to consider social and epistemic goals side‐by‐side, rather than positioning social goals as merely instrumental to epistemic goals. Below, we use studies of professional science and science education as a lens to consider the ways that students cared for their pen pals, acknowledging that professional and classroom relationships are necessarily distinct (developmentally and due to their respective contexts: professional labs and K‐12 classrooms).</p> <p>While 6th graders primarily focused on building personal relationships with their pen pals as individuals and as experts (resources for learning), 9th graders also took on substantial care work in the form of mentoring. We found that students cared for pen pals as instrumental to their assignments: from 6th graders' perspectives, caring about 9th graders as expert resources for learning about guppies; from 9th graders' perspectives, caring about 6th graders as science learners. But beyond the assignment, many students cared for pen pals intrinsically by building personal relationships, and most 9th graders cared for 6th graders by attending to their pen pals' feelings and by supporting their development as emerging scientists. Consistent with Williams' ([<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref145">93</reflink>]) account of scientists expressing care in different ways (e.g., some researchers took on distressing tasks to protect technicians, whereas others delegated these tasks to build technicians' skills), pen pals also expressed and enacted care in different ways. Some expressed care by exchanging drawings and personal questions, whereas others offered each other help on their assignments (e.g., Pete offering to share biosphere findings that might help with the 9th graders' terrarium). Rather than basing their approach to relationship building on their own personal preferences, some 9th graders (like Rae) engaged in ways that were responsive to the ways that the 6th graders reached out to them—for instance, exchanging doodles—demonstrating 9th graders' attention and effort in responding to 6th graders' personalities and interests. We conjecture that these personal relationships established a foundation for students' discussion of emotionally vulnerable scientific work; for instance, their fears about guppies dying, guppies feeling stressed, and cannibalism.</p> <p>Beyond the instrumental and intrinsic expression of care for pen pals, we found other unexpected parallels between students' care for guppies and 9th graders' mentoring of 6th graders. For instance, across contexts, many scholars have acknowledged tensions (e.g., enjoyment, distress) experienced by children and scientists caring for animals (e.g., Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref146">21</reflink>]; Lopez & Gillespie, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref147">40</reflink>]; McGowan & Bell, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref148">45</reflink>]; Taylor & Pacini‐Ketchabaw, [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref149">81</reflink>]). Ninth graders expressed similar feelings about their interactions with 6th graders, which they described as "fun" and "stressful." Yet, many 9th graders took on a broader role, attempting to comfort the 6th graders when they felt concerned (Rae) and build their "confidence" (Chobi and Nowhere) to "trust themselves" (Barbie). Some 9th graders aimed to help 6th graders learn about science more generally, mentoring them into disciplinary norms, practices, and experiences. For instance, several 9th graders described a balance between protecting 6th graders from, and preparing them for, the potentially distressing realities of science, such as Pineapple's attempts to steer his pen pal away from his "fearful mentality" without shielding him from "natural things that may occur," and Holmes and Jester's concern about setting their pen pal on a "dark road" by telling him that "failure is okay." These tensions resonate with accounts that describe care as complex and even violent (e.g., Bartos, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref150">7</reflink>]; Lopez & Gillespie, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref151">40</reflink>]; Puig de la Bellacasa, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref152">66</reflink>]).</p> <p>Although the pen pal assignment prompted students to focus only on epistemic aims, we found that students still recognized the "personhood" of their pen pals (McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref153">44</reflink>]) through care work. By broadening our analysis to recognize and understand the variety of commitments of care that students expressed, we found that students felt an impulse—whether motivated by their values, their interests, or social norms—to build caring relationships with pen pals that recognized other dimensions of their intrinsic humanity (for instance, internal states—feelings). The 9th graders in particular demonstrated care for 6th graders by imagining their experiences of the investigation (perspective taking), including their "stress" about the guppies, either as living beings or as a component of their assignment. Despite the substantial care work that 9th graders in particular took on as mentors to the 6th graders, studies of professional science emphasize that care work is often taken‐for‐granted and invisibilized (Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref154">18</reflink>]). Indeed, this theme surfaced in our analysis, though it was not initially our focus. Reflecting on our project in the context of Fletcher's ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref155">18</reflink>]) findings raises questions about how care work is distributed in classrooms (e.g., Sengupta et al., [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref156">75</reflink>]) and informal settings (McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref157">44</reflink>]).</p> <p>In summary, our data demonstrate that students' care for pen pals went beyond the epistemic requirements of the pen pal assignment (exchanging ideas about the biosphere jars and terrariums; instrumental care) to include the development of caring relationships that considered multiple dimensions of pen pals' personhood (intrinsic care). These commitments of care resonate with the often invisibilized care work documented in professional settings (e.g., Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref158">18</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref159">93</reflink>]). Analyzing these commitments of care responds to calls in science education research to consider care as a part of science learning (e.g., Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref160">35</reflink>]). Our data illustrates the ways that care for pen pals was deeply intertwined with students' science sensemaking and practice. Specifically, their intrinsic care for their pen pals may have supported science learning in ways that are typically not recognized in science education—their personal relationships built a foundation for emotionally vulnerable learning, their collaborative relationships motivated further articulations of their sensemaking, and their mentoring not only shaped learning about guppies and ecosystems but also about science as a discipline.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-23">IMPLICATIONS</hd> <p>Existing research shows that care is a generative part of science learning across contexts, including in professional science (e.g., Fox Keller, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref161">21</reflink>]), informal learning environments (e.g., McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref162">44</reflink>]; Parekh et al., [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref163">55</reflink>]), and science classrooms (e.g., Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref164">35</reflink>]; McGowan & Bell, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref165">45</reflink>]). Our findings build on this work by analyzing students' care in the context of their classroom investigations. Taking students' expressions and interpretations of care as a starting point, we identified two categories of expressions of care: caring about guppies and caring about pen pals. Within each, students demonstrated both instrumental and intrinsic care. Following from studies of professional science (e.g., Williams, [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref166">93</reflink>]) and science education (e.g., Krist & Suárez, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref167">35</reflink>]), we propose that classroom investigations demand attentiveness to both categories.</p> <p>Our findings offer methodological and practical implications. In our analysis, using a lens of commitments (Pierson, Brady, Clark, et al., [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref168">60</reflink>]), we worked to compare our interpretations of care in students' letters with (a) students' heterogenous accounts of their experiences and (b) accounts of care from literature. While we initially considered this practice as <emph>triangulation</emph> (using multiple sources to identify and confirm the presence of a phenomenon), we later understood this practice also as an approach to valuing and <emph>recognizing</emph> students' care. We see our work to recognize students' care as responding to three concerns from the literature: (a) care work is devalued in technoscientific professions and classrooms because, in professional contexts, it is disproportionately performed by women (Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref169">18</reflink>]), (b) conceptions of caring prevalent in education literature are susceptible to biased lenses (Antrop‐González & De Jesús, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref170">2</reflink>]), and (c) research is needed to identify resources and opportunities to support caring relations to humans and more‐than‐humans as a part of science learning (McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref171">44</reflink>]).</p> <p>Rather than focusing solely on students' letters, we also sought students' own interpretations by casting a wider net in terms of data (e.g., interviews, reflections). These data sources enabled us to see expressions of care that we would have otherwise missed, and they also increased our awareness of heterogeneity in students' care work. For instance, we initially aimed to analyze students' care for their guppies, and we saw the letters to the 9th graders as offering a context for 6th graders to express and explore this care. From the 9th graders' written reflections and discussion of their reflections, we realized we had been overlooking the significant mentoring work the 9th graders were taking on, because we initially saw this work as distinct from the ecosystem investigations (similar to how care for colleagues is overlooked and devalued in disciplinary contexts; Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref172">18</reflink>]). These reflections helped us to recognize the sustaining and generative role the 9th graders took on as mentors, as well as the emotional and ethical labor involved.</p> <p>In addition to recognizing the care work of 9th graders, this approach enabled us to recognize commitments of care from students' perspectives that we initially interpreted as a <emph>lack</emph> of care. For instance, we initially interpreted Jester and Holmes writing "failure is okay" as a form of callousness and distance from the guppies; our later interactions, however, helped us understand that "failure is okay" was an enactment of care for their 6th grade pen pal, whom they were trying to protect from negative feelings in the event of a perceived failure. Similarly, we initially interpreted CJ's plan to have adult guppies eat baby guppies as a <emph>lack</emph> of care for guppies; however, interacting with CJ in class and discussing his plan in the interview helped us realize that CJ's plan was in fact a form of caring for the adult ("main") guppies in the jar.</p> <p>As we increasingly acknowledge the importance of care in science, both researchers and educators will need to be able to recognize the commitments of care that drive and sustain classroom investigations. Because each group of students will have unique understandings of care (Antrop‐González & De Jesús, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref173">2</reflink>]), this process must be continued across contexts. And while this process is a step toward seeing and valuing students' care, researchers and educators will always overlook and misinterpret some aspects of students' care. In light of this challenge, a path forward might also include helping students recognize and articulate their own understandings of care and implications for their investigations so that these interpretations of care can become an explicit and recognized component of classroom science learning.</p> <p>Our findings also offer insight about how educators might create classroom environments in which students express and value care. We emphasize that pen pal letters are only one approach for fostering care, and that this approach could yield different results in other contexts. Given this, we do not advocate that all classrooms design pen pal activities; rather, we present design conjectures about specific features of the pen pal letters that could be included in other designs for learning. Specifically, we focus on the letters as (a) creating a somewhat private context, (b) providing an authentic audience, (c) introducing a genre distinct from typical classroom activities, and (d) offering students multimodal forms of expression.</p> <p>Comparing the letters to other classroom activities (described in the methods section above) highlights other potentially generative features of the letters. In comparison to the biosphere journals, the letters offered students an authentic audience for sharing ideas and feelings, a feature that has been demonstrated to promote learning and care through perspectival shifts (e.g., Blumenfeld et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref174">9</reflink>]; Papert & Harel, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref175">54</reflink>]; Sengupta et al., [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref176">75</reflink>]). In comparison to the pen pal videos, the letters may have offered students more freedom of expression. The videos followed the format of class presentations, perhaps influenced by the researchers' participation in the filming. In contrast, for the letters, students did not have a familiar classroom script to follow. Few students had experience exchanging letters. Moreover, because the letters were most often handwritten, students were able to communicate beyond text using multiple modes like drawing to build caring relationships. A wealth of research describes the affordances of multimodality for learning (e.g., Ainsworth et al., [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref177">1</reflink>]; García & Kleifgen, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref178">22</reflink>]; Lehrer, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref179">37</reflink>]; Rowe, [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref180">72</reflink>]; Rowe & Miller, [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref181">71</reflink>]; Vogel et al., [<reflink idref="bib89" id="ref182">89</reflink>]). Our data suggests that the flexibility and fluidity afforded by multimodality supported students in expressing and fostering care.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-24">LIMITATIONS</hd> <p>Beyond implications, it is important to discuss the limitations of this work, which also suggest directions for future research. First, while our analysis drew on critical perspectives of care (e.g., Antrop‐González & De Jesús, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref183">2</reflink>]), we acknowledge that our curriculum was not designed to foreground these critical perspectives or other political or ethical‐historical approaches to learning (for an example of such approaches, see Bang et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref184">4</reflink>]; Vossoughi et al., [<reflink idref="bib91" id="ref185">91</reflink>]). This is a limitation of our work pedagogically and methodologically, as it constrained the expressions of care present in classroom discourse and the expressions of care that we as interpreters were able to recognize and describe in our analysis. Furthermore, Sengupta et al. ([<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref186">75</reflink>]) points out that marginalized learners disproportionately take on care work in STEM and computing education, yet this care work is often devalued and disappeared. Our analysis did not take into account the <emph>distribution</emph> of care work within the classrooms, and we did not consider the ways that students' identities interacted with the distribution and perception of care work in these spaces. Moving forward, we see a focus on care as one of many possible approaches for future designs for learning that can more explicitly orient researchers', teachers', and students' attention to the voices and languages of learners from nondominant backgrounds—voices and languages that are often de‐legitimized or rendered invisible in disciplinary spaces (Kayumova & Sengupta, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref187">30</reflink>]; Takeuchi, [<reflink idref="bib79" id="ref188">79</reflink>]; Vossoughi et al., [<reflink idref="bib91" id="ref189">91</reflink>]).</p> <p>Second, our analysis most often identifies hierarchical expressions of care, in which humans care for more‐than‐humans, and older students (9th graders) care for younger students (6th graders). Moments in our data point to reciprocal dynamics of care (for instance, Pete offering a YouTube channel as a resource for the 9th graders, or 6th graders referring to their guppies as "family"). However, our analysis more often reinforces an image of older humans as carers, and animals and children as recipients of care—an image described and critiqued by Indigenous scholars who instead offer an image of humans and nature as interconnected and intertwined (e.g., McDaid Barry et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref190">44</reflink>]; Taylor & Pacini‐Ketchabaw, [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref191">81</reflink>]). In future research, we hope to better recognize and support mutual care in the context of STEM classrooms.</p> <p>Third, our study took place in a single pair of classrooms. While both classrooms had a degree of sociocultural and linguistic diversity, they also are different in a number of ways from what might be considered "typical" classrooms. The 6th graders participated in a STEM related arts class. While this class was intended to support science standards, Ms. Shuler had more instructional freedom than other science teachers experience. Similarly, the 9th graders participated in an enrichment program outside of the scope of their school district's standard curriculum. Again, this offered their instructors significant flexibility, and it fostered a unique community. Given the small size and unique context of our study, our findings do not allow us to predict how learning activities like pen pal letters would interact with the wide range of interpretations and enactments of care. Our findings can, however, help the field consider pedagogical and analytic approaches for recognizing students' caring in different communities.</p> <p>Fourth, our study would have been strengthened by focusing on all dimensions of students' work. We chose to focus on data related to the pen pal activity—a new design element in this implementation of the unit. Focusing on these data means that we likely overlooked other enactments of care. For instance, our data almost overlooked the common practice of students naming their fish. Other important moments, like creating a "grave" for Larry, were only captured because of Ms. Shuler's ongoing presence as the teacher. Future studies could explore how commitments of care are integrated into students' learning across activities.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-25">CONCLUSIONS</hd> <p>Despite these limitations, our study offers promising directions for future work. The task of recognizing students' care will be an important feature of this work, along with exploring design conjectures about learning activities that cultivate care. Although both of the classroom settings involved in this study were familiar to the collective research team, we still found that our analysis questioned and problematized our initial understandings of how care infused students' actions—both in composing their letters and in their broader scientific work. The failure of our habitual interpretations of students' work measures both the challenges involved in analyzing care and the opportunities for new insights when this line of research is pursued.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-26">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DRL#1742138.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-27">CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT</hd> <p>The authors declare no conflict of interest.</p> <hd id="AN0181569385-28">DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT</hd> <p>Research data are not shared.</p> <p>GRAPH: Supporting information.</p> <p>GRAPH: Supporting information.</p> <p>GRAPH: Supporting information.</p> <ref id="AN0181569385-29"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref177" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Ainsworth, S., Tytler, R., & Prain, V. (2020). Learning by construction of multiple representations. In P. Van Meter, A. List, D. Lombardi, & P. 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  Data: Intrinsic and Instrumental Care in Pen Pal Letters: Recognizing Care in STEM Classrooms
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ashlyn+E%2E+Pierson%22">Ashlyn E. Pierson</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2893-5126">0000-0003-2893-5126</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Corey+E%2E+Brady%22">Corey E. Brady</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Sarah+J%2E+Lee%22">Sarah J. Lee</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Deborah+Shuler%22">Deborah Shuler</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Pratim+Sengupta%22">Pratim Sengupta</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Douglas+B%2E+Clark%22">Douglas B. Clark</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Science+Education%22"><i>Science Education</i></searchLink>. 2024 108(6):1608-1636.
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  Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
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  Data: 2024
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  Data: National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
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  Data: 10.1002/sce.21894
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  Data: 0036-8326<br />1098-237X
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  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: Studies of both professional science practice and children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice. In science education research, however, students' care is often overlooked. In this paper, we describe the expression of care across two STEM classrooms (6th and 9th grade) studying biology and ecology and participating in a pen pal exchange. We analyze artifacts from the pen pal exchange as well as students' retrospective interviews and written reflections. Two ways of expressing care surfaced in students' letters: caring for guppies and caring for pen pals. We describe each form of care using examples from our data. We find that students' care for guppies and pen pals was both instrumental (in service of their investigations) and intrinsic (positioning guppies and pen pals as inherently valuable). We then connect these findings to studies of care in children's science learning and in professional science. We discuss methodological and practical implications for recognizing and analyzing how students' care manifests in classrooms and for designing learning activities that cultivate care.
– Name: AbstractInfo
  Label: Abstractor
  Group: Ab
  Data: As Provided
– Name: DateEntry
  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2024
– Name: AN
  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1443289
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1443289
RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1002/sce.21894
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 29
        StartPage: 1608
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: STEM Education
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Letters (Correspondence)
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Caring
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Grade 6
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Grade 9
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Biology
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Science Instruction
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Ecology
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Intrinsic and Instrumental Care in Pen Pal Letters: Recognizing Care in STEM Classrooms
        Type: main
  BibRelationships:
    HasContributorRelationships:
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Ashlyn E. Pierson
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Corey E. Brady
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Sarah J. Lee
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Deborah Shuler
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Pratim Sengupta
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Douglas B. Clark
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          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 11
              Type: published
              Y: 2024
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 0036-8326
            – Type: issn-electronic
              Value: 1098-237X
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 108
            – Type: issue
              Value: 6
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Science Education
              Type: main
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