Introduction

Many youth do their schoolwork, comply with their parents, hang out with their friends, and get through the day, but are not invested in paths into the future that excite them or feel like they originate from within. A central question of youth development is how to get adolescents’ fires lit, how to have them develop the complex of dispositions and skill needed to take charge of their lives. (Larson, 2002, p. 171, my emphasis)

[The] duo of school and family, central to the life of every young learner, needs a third element that can complement and supplement what this duo offers. Moreover, for some children and youth this third element fosters a sense of self-worth and a host of talents – particularly linguistic and creative – that classrooms have neither the time nor legal permission to foster.” (Heath, 2001, p. 10, my emphasis)

As Shirley Brice Heath says above, there are valuable opportunities for learning outside of schools and homes: openings that may encourage certain social and academic skills and talents that neither schools nor family, the most researched areas of education, may engender quite so well. Searching for learning opportunities that foster intrinsic motivation in youth, that “get adolescents’ fires lit” (Larson, 2000, p. 171), educational researchers like Heath and Larson have begun to investigate successful educational programs outside of school and home in order to discover what youth gain from these opportunities and how they can help develop intrinsic motivation. Heath’s ten-year study of community youth organizations for youth from low socio-economic backgrounds forms a substantial part of the research on such programs. However, most of the organizations that she has studied focus on service, athletics, or the arts as the driving forces of their organizations. Comparably little inquiry has been done regarding programs that are successful in developing intrinsic motivation in carrying out science, history or math, and this is the opening of research that I pursue in this paper.

The majority of my teaching and educational experience has taken place in informal settings, the “third element” that Shirley Brice Heath (2001) discusses in her work. Such an arena has always seemed to promote opportunities for children and youth not available in school or at home, including unique relationships with adults, longer-term activities and projects, and an unusual sense of community with peers. So it was natural when setting out to choose a master’s project that I look for an educational situation outside of school. This choice was further stimulated by an introduction to the work of Shirley Brice Heath through some of my research on the arts in education during my first semester of graduate school. Her studies of successful community youth organizations, particularly those focused on the arts, and the impact they have on youth intrigued me and aroused my curiosity. The task then became finding a successful educational situation that seemed to light kids’ fires in which I might already have or easily develop a connection, as this would allow me to delve deeper into the program in the shorter amount of time allowed in the scope of a master’s project.

I found such an opportunity surprisingly close to home in the Advanced Astronomy Camp run through The University of Arizona Alumni Association. It is directed by Dr. Donald W. McCarthy, Jr., a man with whom I have had a long and genuine relationship, who had in fact inspired my interest in education: my father. Although I initially questioned whether I should research a program led by a close family member, the pieces began to fit together for researching Camp.[1] Astronomy Camp has an excellent reputation among campers and their parents extending over the fourteen years of its life. Many youth who attend come back to subsequent camps, stay in touch over the years, and speak of Camp’s impact on their lives. Parents also stay in touch, often writing emails and sending letters of thanks to Don for the influence Camp has had on their children. One parent wrote an email to Don after her son returned home after Advanced Astronomy Camp this summer asking, “why your camps are so life-altering.” This enthusiasm, lasting over the years, was a key element that I was looking for in a “successful” out-of-school educational program; it would allow for better relationships and the development of trust with participants and parents that might also in turn provide an opportunity for a longer-term study in the future. The short duration of Camp lent itself to the compass of my master’s project: I could take part in the entire program from beginning to end. In addition, Astronomy Camp seemed analogous to the organizations Heath studied, which meant a lead in comparative study in a somewhat under-researched area of education. I also felt like I had enough background experience in science and astronomy yet enough unfamiliarity with Astronomy Camp itself to be both an insider and an outsider as a researcher (Kondo, 1990). I certainly had a good connection and relationship with the Director and after some conversation it appeared that he was as interested as I in what we might learn from the research. It was also apparent that my participation as a researcher and a counselor might be a positive contribution to Astronomy Camp.

As conversation continued about the specifics of my research, it became apparent that the Advanced Astronomy Camp (versus the Beginning Astronomy Camp) would be more appropriate for two reasons. First, since my primary source of knowledge would be interviews with the campers, older youth (high school versus middle school) would probably be more articulate and willing to share their views, an important advantage as this was a first research project not only for me, but for the Camp as well. Second, the attendance at Beginning Astronomy Camp was fluctuating and very unsure, with cancellations up to the first day, probably in part because of the September 11^th tragedy and parents’ unwillingness to send their children across the country to Tucson, Arizona. So in early June I flew to Tucson, Arizona to help plan, prepare, and assist at the three summer Astronomy Camps (Beginning, Advanced, and Educator) and to collect data for my master’s project.

The purpose of this study is to understand what makes Advanced Astronomy Camp so “successful” in the eyes of the youth and how the staff helps to create this educational experience. More specifically, why do youth come to Advanced Astronomy Camp and how do they perceive its influence on their lives? How do the Director and counselors perceive the campers’ experiences at Advanced Astronomy Camp and how do they see themselves directing and influencing particular aspects of Camp? Narrowing the focus even further, I designed interview questions for the campers (see Appendix B) that followed three themes that I anticipated might be relevant to their experiences: affective aspects (confidence, community, personal interactions), science knowledge (science, math, critical thought), and ways of being in the world (careers, higher education, what scientists do). Interview questions for the counselors and the Director (Appendix B) followed affective aspects (building confidence, supporting community), teaching (goals, techniques), and roles at Camp (fitting into the big picture, being scientists and/or teachers). The Director’s interview also included questions concerning his goals for the counselors as well as the campers and his perspective about the strengths and weaknesses of Advanced Astronomy Camp. I analyzed the interviews for campers and staff separately using a two-step coding process, looking for themes as well as outlying responses.

Advanced Astronomy Camp is a limited program, reaching only thirty-three students during eight days and nights in the summer of 2002. This small scope lends itself to researching what youth find valuable about it in addition to how the staff help create (purposefully or not) such an experience. It is a unique program, not duplicable due to its location at the astronomical facilities on Mt. Lemmon in Tucson, AZ, the important role of the Director (Don) in its design, and the different combination of campers, counselors, weather conditions, and multiple other variables that change from year to year. However, it may provide insight into an unusual and highly reputed science education program outside of school

In this study I seek to understand why high school youth come to Advanced Astronomy Camp and how they perceive its influence on themselves in addition to how the staff helps to create this experience. In the literature review that follows, I attempt to provide a background for my research on Camp by briefly investigating three different areas: science camps and related educational experience, community youth organizations, and scientific inquiry that seeks to more closely imitate what professional scientists do. The section on methodology includes a description of what Advanced Astronomy Camp is like in addition to a detailed account of the methods I used in researching Camp. Analysis of the interviews with the campers and staff reveals several themes in what they thought was valuable about Advanced Astronomy Camp and the ensuing discussion probes the potential relevance of these themes to comparable educational situations.

A Review of Three Types of Literature

Searching for relevant literature that would enlighten the research on Advanced Astronomy Camp was very difficult. As Shirley Brice Heath put it, “The third arena of learning, that which takes place beyond classroom and home, is generally left unattended, minimally supported, and almost completely unexamined” (Heath, 2001). Indeed, not much has been written about the third arena, including science camps. Furthermore, Advanced Astronomy Camp is an unusual situation in that it is unlike most science camps and informal science education in general. Though Camp has elements in common with them, in many ways it has more similarities to the dynamics of the community youth organizations described by Heath and others; additionally it has a distinct philosophy of teaching science, one that might be considered to come closer to the type of inquiry that professional scientists do. So in order to shed light onto this educational program and the experiences of the youth there, this literature review has three primary components: comparative informal science education (particularly science camps), research on community youth organizations, and authentic scientific inquiry.

Informal Science Education and Science Camps

Helping youth “go on” in science is very important to society today, especially those considered to be underrepresented in the field (i.e. girls, specific race and ethnic groups, and those from lower socioeconomic classes). As Kay Andrews (2001) notes about “extra” educational programs in the United Kingdom, “Research suggests that involvement in science clubs provides the ‘little bit extra’ that can be the all-important difference between going on with science or not” (pp. 160-161). Recognizing this, the National Science Teachers’ Association issued a statement describing the ways in which informal science education, whether in the form of camps, museums, field trips, multiple media (such as videos and TV), or learning at home, is relevant and needed. Informal science education, they say, can increase the time students engage in science, extend to “the affective, cognitive, and social realms,” provide opportunities for students to form different sorts of relationships with adults, allow for different learning styles and multiple intelligences, afford the sharing of “moments of intellectual curiosity” between care providers and children, give more direct access to career role models in the sciences, and emphasize creativity and enrichment (NSTA, 1998).

However, although informal science education is a field containing many programs of different natures, it is still a relatively little researched area. Its diversity makes it difficult to draw out common themes and differences in various programs and what makes them successful. Within the field, museums and science centers are by far the most studied (Dierking & Martin, 1997). It is clear from the National Science Foundation’s website dedicated to informal science education just how frequently many museums and associated programs are studied as opposed to longer-term educational programs outside of school. Since this literature focuses to a large degree on the dynamics of one-time visits to science exhibits or presentations, I did not find that it contained much relevance for comparatively extended educational endeavors like the Advanced Astronomy Camp, which lasted eight days and eight nights. Unfortunately the much smaller body of literature on science camps, clubs, and other extended programs contains mostly anecdotal and how-to accounts of how to start your own science program rather than thorough descriptions, program evaluations, or other research on these programs. or leadership dynamics influence the program, and how they assess what children have gained from these experiences is not described in detail. However there are a handful of descriptive articles that provide pictures of what can happen at a science camp or related program and these comprise the focus of the first section of this literature review. The descriptions that follow give basic descriptors about these science programs such as the targeted participants and the programmatic content and length in addition to what is unique about each experience and the research surrounding it.

The GIRLS (gifted, intelligent, real-life scientists) science camp is directed toward fifteen fifth- and sixth-grade girls and the older high school girls that help mentor and teach. It is free for those accepted into the program though no application process is described except that the students “otherwise would not be able to afford a science camp experience” (Zanelli & Smith, 2000, p. 46). The students engage in exploratory, hands-on learning through lessons designed by the participating science teachers and a “select group of female high school science scholars” (p. 46) that mentor the girls and are in turn mentored by the teachers. The camp setting allows students more access to the “great outdoors” and related activities than a typical school setting but generally the lessons appear to be quite similar to what might occur in a middle school science class. The week-long camp (whether residential or day only is not specified) receives high ratings from participants as well as parents who “believed that their daughters’ participation … increased their confidence in understanding science” (p. 47). This article, co-written by one of the science teachers, Zanelli, and the high school student who worked with her, Smith, is an example of the type of two-page article typically written about such science camp experiences. What makes it unusual is the emphasis on older girls mentoring younger campers and the first-person description by one of the high school girls, recounting the meaningful and empowering nature of the camp experience for herself.

KIDS (kids investigating and exploring science), an extended science education program run by the University of California at Irvine, targets “Latino children from lower income families “to provide an engaging and challenging university-based science camp” (Rodriguez, 1998, p. 9). The children range in age from kindergarten through middle school and learn about the program through the Santa Ana Unified School District. Rodriguez, a professor of Environmental Studies and the founder of the program, characterizes it as an “environmental framework with enthusiastic parents, compassionate student assistants, and gifted bilingual teachers” (p. 9) with leaders who also include “distinguished minority faculty, serv[ing] as role models and mentors” (p. 9).[2] The camp emphasizes “project-based learning on topics at the forefront of biology” where “the students actually envision themselves as young scientists” working side-by-side with the multiple leaders (p. 9). Rodriguez cites improved grades in school as well as anecdotal comments from principals about students’ subsequent leadership in science within their school classrooms as evidence of the camp’s positive impact. Although the duration of this day camp and a more detailed description of what actually occurs on a daily basis are not given, a sustained effort is made to support students throughout the school year through tutoring and university faculty visits. This is one of the few camps I found that follows up in some way on students’ subsequent performances in school and whose leader is a professional research scientist.

One example of a formal program evaluation of a science camp is the CPEP Summer Science Camp for upper middle school youth (Bruckerhoff & Bruckerhoff, 1996). The purpose of this five-week day camp is to “increase the number of African-American, Hispanic, Native American, women, and other underrepresented minority students who pursue college study and careers in mathematics, science, engineering, and technology” (p. 6), seeking to provide eighth and ninth graders with a hands-on approach to science and mathematics in addition to language arts, study skills, and career counseling, all in line with the Connecticut state standards. The activities themselves include full lesson plans and homework assignments, designed and taught by school teachers in line with state standards, but with a purposeful element of informal relationships between students and teachers. A few projects take place throughout the duration of the camp, including the newspaper which each student contributes to producing, an example of the emphasis on “collaboration of peers” (p. 50). Evaluations by the students showed a high approval rating but there was no information on how they were affected after they left the camp nor was it apparent that the content and format of the camp was ever questioned, only how much students liked the camp.

A science camp in Taiwan for seventh graders “gifted” in math and science had a purposeful research and curriculum design directed to finding whether students’ conceptions of the nature of science (NOS) would change over the course of six days (Liu & Lederman, 2002). Twenty-nine gifted students participated for six hours each day in “intensive science inquiry-based activities” (p. 115) led by university science educators, graduate students, and experienced teachers. Interestingly enough, there were apparently no significant changes in students’ understanding of the nature of science. One explanation offered for this was that “apparently the participants did not have enough time to be engaged in more reflective activities and in-depth discussions that have been shown to help students construct more informed understanding of NOS” (p. 121). Another possibility was that the presence and regular intervention of the students’ middle school teacher in all aspects of the camp may have impacted their willingness to engage in new types of thinking and understanding. Unlike the other literature described thus far, Liu and Lederman systematically pursued a specific research question rather than engaging solely in a descriptive account of the camp. They also had a clear philosophy for the design of science teaching and inquiry-related activities.

An extended informal science education program that is not a camp is the Young Scholars Program at The Ohio State University, directed toward “academically talented, economically disadvantaged minority students” with the primary goal of “increasing their agricultural literacy” (Jones, 1997, p. 663). This six-year program takes place during the regular school year and primarily includes field trips, presentations, and interactions with university faculty from the field of agriculture, culminating in research groups in twelfth grade. Unlike previous years of the program, the design during the year described by Jones was changed to be more informal and responsive to students’ interests, exposing students to “aspects of our field that we hoped would be interesting, culturally pertinent, and as aesthetically pleasing as possible” (p. 664). This attention to student interest (leaders responded directly to students’ comments on what they would like to learn) and especially to aesthetic elements is quite unusual in the literature on informal science education. In addition, purposeful interactions between university students and faculty who were “all female and men of color” (p. 663) were emphasized so that students could have positive role models that broke the image of agriculture being a white male discipline. Evaluations were done through student essays reflecting on their experiences, another unusual element, designed to be less intrusive than the familiar questionnaire or typical evaluation form. Unlike Liu and Lederman, Jones found that “the relaxation of the content of this educational experience seemed to allow students to interpret the demonstrations in ways that were more meaningful” (p. 676), demonstrating that the changes made in the program were successful.

The only description of a well-documented residential camp that I could find was of the Fairbanks American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) Science Camp, a camp designed to promote relationships between Alaskan Native American elders and high school students interested in science (Bradley & Reyes, 2000). This article carefully related the philosophy of the Director and camp activities. Unlike almost all the other camps described here, student activities consisted of self-chosen research projects “required to be scientifically sound and to incorporate elders’ knowledge” (p. 44). Another unusual characteristic was the requirement of a significant application in order to attend, including the student’s academic record, teacher recommendation, and written essay. Significant resources, primarily in the form of computers and teachers, were provided for the students’ research so that beyond their own observations or experiments and discussions with the elders, they could perform comparative research. The primary goals of the camp were to perform solid science and connect with students’ native cultures, addressing both the students’ “academic and developmental needs” (p. 42). Indeed, the feedback from students and elders in the form of interviews confirms that cultural connections were made and valued by both generations, and success of student science projects at local and state science fairs demonstrates the quality of some of the projects. In many respects this camp comes closest to the Advanced Astronomy Camp in that students send in a serious application for the camp, stay for both nights and days, and research self-chosen projects with the assistance of the adults present.

In even this smattering of six science camps and related educational programs, it becomes evident how different the programs are and how sparse the literature of this field is in demonstrating what can be successful about short-term informal science education. The participants range in age from fifth to twelfth grade, varying in the degree to which different age groups interact. Only one camp mentioned any social dynamics between students and then only in the context of the older students formally mentoring the younger (Zanelli & Smith, 2000). The content varies from pre-chosen teacher-directed experiments to field trips responsive to student input to completely student-chosen research projects. Seemingly the programs provide opportunities to further science learning in school but the activities and who chose them were remarkably similar to school when descriptions were given except in the case of the Fairbanks AISES Science Camp. The time allotted for the programs ranged from 1-5 weeks to select days over the course of the school year. The article describing the only residential camp, the Fairbanks AISES Science Camp, did not clarify whether this aspect of the camp was intentional or integral to the philosophy of the camp nor what impact it may have had on students, teachers, and elders.

However, there were some commonalities among the camps. In almost all of the descriptions, there was an emphasis on informal relationships between students and teachers and on cooperative relationships among students. In a few cases there was also an interest in drawing students into university settings (Rodriguez, 1998; Jones, 1997; Liu & Lederman, 2002) or at least into contact with university science faculty in order to provide better role models. With the exception of the camp for gifted seventh-grade students (Liu & Lederman, 2002), all the other educational programs were directed toward populations that might not otherwise have access to science outside the classroom.

It would be difficult from these descriptions to say what elements might make for better informal science programs or how one might decide what to include in the design of a new camp, except for Jones’ (1997) evaluation that giving students choice as to the program content was positive and Bradley and Reyes’ (2000) conclusions that students benefited from interactions with Native Alaskan elders in their science research. It might be informative to know what students perceived that they gained from the programs, how their knowledge and understanding of science grew, what drew them to the programs in the first place, and how interactions between peers and leaders affected their experiences. As a high school student, Kelly Smith could clearly articulate what she found positive about her experiences teaching chemistry to younger girls (Zanelli & Smith, 2000). Why not discover the perspectives of more students on what they find interesting or positive about informal science situations?

Clearly there are gaps in the literature on longer-term informal science education programs. Valerie Crane (1994) asserts that informal science learning research has focused on the stimulus rather than the learner, paid little attention to the context in which learning takes place, ignored the complex interactions of informal learning, and overlooked the influence of social mediators on learning (p. 186), but these learning dynamics have begun to be researched in other areas, namely community youth organizations and adventure camps.

Community Youth Organizations

Studies of community youth organizations, while not necessarily dealing with science, have much in common with the general situation of a residential camp in that they examine some of the dynamics that make certain organizations more successful than others. Noting that the primarily studied aspects of learning in children’s lives are the “duo of school and family,” Shirley Brice Heath, R.W. Larson, and several others have begun to look more closely at what they term a “third element,” the arena outside of school and home. Larson’s (2000) interest in this arena began as he searched for situations that helped to develop intrinsic motivation in adolescents, which he defines as having two components: wanting to be doing an activity and being invested in it. He found that while such dual interest and high concentration was lacking in schoolwork and unstructured leisure time, it was very present in “structured voluntary activities, such as sports, arts, and participation in organizations, in which youth experience the rare combination of intrinsic motivation in combination with deep attention” (p. 170). Studies on adventure camps are also relevant to this field because of shared social dynamics and activities. Hattie, Marsh, Neill, and Richards (1997) found that the overall effects from participating in an adventure program not only lasted but increased over time; something which should draw the attention of any educator. While small in breadth and primarily stemming from the work of Shirley Brice Heath and her associates, the research of the past decade concerning not-often-looked-to community youth organizations and adventure camps has found commonalities amongst some that suggest what makes some programs more successful than others: their voluntary nature, youth-centeredness, a temporal arc of activity with real-world constraints, informal cross-age relationships, and opportunities for youth to play multiple roles.

Community youth organizations are organized around their being voluntary: youth choose to come and select in which activities to participate. While some might certainly come because of their parents’ admonitions, leaders involved in the organizations assert that it is students’ choices that bring them and keep them engaged. Looking at after-school study support programs in the United Kingdom, MacBeth, Kirwan, and Myers (2001) found:

Choosing whether or not to participate and what to participate in opens access to a range of benefits. Having the option to choose from a number of different pleasurable learning activities is itself empowering and likely to increase self-esteem, even if simply by virtue of being trusted to make choices. (p. 50)

Bently and Gurumurthy (1999) reached similar conclusions about the importance of activities reaching youth in the United Kingdom being voluntary. Another reason why voluntarism is essential is because “effective youth organizations situate their curricula within the youth and not within external rules or mandates” (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994, p. 484). Because the organizations are voluntary, they must tailor their activities to youth’s interests although they are not unstructured or without restraints. This can lead to a sense of greater autonomy for the youth, as their interests are sought after and met.

When educational programs for adolescents are youth-centered, “young people learn quickly in these groups that they are needed resources and not problems in need of fixing” (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994, p. 486). This means that teens’ input into the choice of activities and consequent participation in them is seen as essential to the success of the group. This high involvement in planning and leading activities can have positive consequences like changes in youth’s language use as Heath (1999) documented:

When an organization’s adults view youth members as part of the group and as vital to accomplishment of the group’s work, young learners become embedded in ever widening frames for building future scenarios … Language development follows from activity and roles that legitimate membership and the overarching purpose of the group. (p. 72)

Some of the language changes Heath (1999) found were the use of conditionals (if-then statements), modals (could, should, and would), strategies to get clarification from others, and varied genres and voices (youth playing multiple roles and giving multiple perspectives). She points these out as important attributes of the type of problem-solving talk essential to contemporary work places. Similarly, MacBeth et al. (2001) discovered that students taking a more active role in shaping and evaluating the study support programs “increased their identification with, and ownership of, study support” (p. 68). Centering educational programs on youth also leads to more challenging activities, another key element in successful programs.

Heath (2001) describes common dynamics that community youth organizations share with scientific research laboratories:

Work takes place within a “temporal arc,” with phases that move from planning and preparation for the task ahead, to practice and deliberation along with ample trial-and-error learning, to final intensive readiness for production or performance; and, ultimately, to a culminating presentation of the work that has gone before. Evaluation by outsiders, peers, and professional critics follows along with some “down time” before the next cycle of work begins. (p. 13)

In a school classroom there is often little time for such extensive projects where students participate from beginning to end and have the added challenge of receiving feedback from professional outsiders, augmenting the risk involved in the activity. In their meta-analysis of adventure programs in Australia and North America, Hattie et al. (1997) also found that one significant aspect of adventure camps is “the planned transfer of experience and decisions encountered during the earlier parts of the course to critical decisions later in the program” (p. 57), so that participants experienced the consequences of decisions made early at the camp. Their analysis also pointed to the challenging, yet reachable goals that were set for participants, similar to longer-term risky endeavors that teens face in youth-centered community organizations. Further, they point out that “feedback is the most powerful single moderator that improves affective and achievement outcomes” (p. 58), finding in their meta-analysis of over 300 adventure programs, that “the most powerful effect was related to feedback” (p. 58).

This element of feedback by leaders, outside experts and peers helps provide real-world constraints to youth activities. Similarly, in many youth organizations the continuation of the program relies on the youth’s abilities to draw in funding or audiences for their exhibits or plays; the decisions they make determine the future of the organization just as they would in “real-life” workplaces. So the feedback serves a very real need, both in the process of working through a project, and in the success of final presentations.

Another strength of community youth organizations and arguably some informal science programs is the opportunity for informal relationships between adults and students and between different ages of students to form. MacBeth et al. (2001) assert that such informality eased the ability of adults to offer “both praise and criticism without the social sanction” that is often associated with being singled out in school (p. 63). Heath (1999) points out that times when youth and adults work together are rapidly decreasing along with the inherent language development that used to occur in such contexts. She found that in community organizations where adults and youth “worked” together on a common task:

[Adults help] enable youth to be self-conscious in their use of language, reflective and self-critical about what their discourse does and does not accomplish, and gradually comfortable and habituated in their language forms. Rather than learned helplessness in language, the youth take on a learned helpfulness approach to oral and written language and to the type of information, argumentation, and presentation that accomplish work. (p. 71)

Also significant are the opportunities for youth of different ages to work with each other. “Cross-age communities of practice enhance everyone’s role, since everyone has an opportunity to be both apprentice and expert, teacher and learner” (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994, p. 485). This is similar to real work places such as science laboratories where “members range in age and experience, and novices work along with older more experienced scientists and artists, and often with experts who have outside professional identities” (Heath, 2001, p. 13). In community youth organizations where students participate for several consecutive years, there are many opportunities for youth to learn from each other, whether formally designated as teachers, or simply passing on experiences from one to another.

Within this community youth assume “real” roles in the planning, organization, and management of the program, and usually move to fill more than just one role, whether it is calling for travel arrangements, leading a dance class for younger students, providing constructive criticism to a peer on a piece of art, or brainstorming ideas with the group. Filling these sorts of roles is crucial to equip youth for future opportunities in other workplaces, in developing the sorts of language abilities discussed earlier (Heath, 1999), and in making educational programs intrinsically “youth-centered.”

Speaking specifically to the uniqueness that arts-based organizations provide, Heath and Roach (1999) articulate the following:

Young people in arts-based organizations gain practice in thinking and talking as adults. They play important roles in their organizations; they have control over centering themselves and working for group excellence in achievement. Their joint work with adults and peers rides on conversations that test and develop ideas, explicate processes, and build scenarios of the future. (p. 26)

The categorization of the characteristics important to successful youth organizations described above is artificial but hopefully useful. It is interesting to note some of the differences between these organizations and the informal science programs described earlier. While they both stress informal relationships between youth and adults, there is a stronger emphasis on collaboration of peers, choice, and high involvement of youth in leading and contributing to activities. Also fascinating is the comparison Heath (2001) draws between the youth organizations and professional science laboratories. If the collaboration, talk, work, and inquiry found in science labs is desirable, what positive outcomes might similar scientific communities for youth provide? Might science camps incorporate the temporal arcs of activity, aesthetics, constraints, and sense of community found in community youth organizations and professional work places?

A Glance at Scientific Inquiry

So far in this paper I have reviewed recent literature available on science camps and presented some of the dynamics of successful community youth organizations in order to provide a framework of comparison for research on Advanced Astronomy Camp. Yet while these programs give a backdrop of comparable education situations they do not supply much in the way of thinking about the scientific content of the Camp. Since one of the primary agendas of Advanced Astronomy Camp is to facilitate youth-designed astronomy research projects, delving into recent literature concerned with the scientific inquiry in schools is relevant to the scope of this review. However, it is not within the differences between the thought and activities of professional scientists to current science curricula in schools. It is common knowledge that the practices of professional scientists are different than the experiences of youth in science classes. How are these experiences different? How important is it that youth understand or experience the thought processes of professional scientists?

Many researchers are attempting to design and research science curricula that come closer to how professional scientists think about and perform research. “The way science is taught in most schools doesn’t help students understand what scientists do and how they think” (James Stewart as quoted in Black, 2002, p. 4). One group of science education researchers attempting to do this is Stewart, Cartier, and Rudolph (2001), who have been part of a large project through the National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science (NCISLA) to use scientific modeling to help students develop the type of complex and tentative thinking that professionals use. They found that “when models have been a focus of classroom attention, students have learned that they are tentative constructions that explain the natural world and that their usefulness is dependent upon the kinds of questions they enable scientists to ask and answer” (p. 7). This type of instruction differs from simple “hands-on” curricula because of the critical thinking students must develop in order to explain and predict their data and be consistent with other relevant models. When this type of thought happens, Lehrer and Schauble have found “increased student interest, ownership of their work, and deeper understanding of content” (as quoted in Foster, 1998, p. 3), characteristics not unlike those found in successful community youth organizations researched by Heath and others.

Assuming that thinking like professional scientists is a positive goal, Chinn and Malhotra (2002) analyzed the complexity of thought that professional scientists use to do their research in contrast to that encouraged by both textbook-driven inquiry and curricula developed by science education researchers. Analyzing simple inquiry projects in textbooks, including experiments, observations and illustrations, in comparison to specific research projects of various scientists, they found that the textbook inquiry projects differed in the ways they approached generating research questions, designing studies, making observations, explaining results, developing theories, and studying research reports (pp. 183-186). More specifically, some of the complex scientific reasoning not often a part of school science tasks included:

· postulating unobservable mechanisms that could explain existing results

· looking for flaws in experiments

· finding ways to verify the validity of new methods

· making indirect inferences

· choosing between two or more theories that each have some explanatory success

· devising indirect procedures to address questions of interest.

(p. 186, bullets added)

They concluded that “simple inquiry tasks may not only fail to help students learn to reason scientifically, they may also foster a nonscientific epistemology in which scientific reasoning is viewed as simple, certain, algorithmic, and focused at a surface level of observation” (p. 190).

In addition, Chinn and Malhotra (2002) also found differences between research-driven curricula and what they termed “authentic scientific inquiry.” In their comparisons most research-developed tasks, while building greater depth and self-generated thought in students than the textbooks, do not attain all of the complexity of thought found in their analyses of professional scientists. For instance, one significant aspect of being a scientist is generating your own research question. While none of the selected textbook tasks included this, only 12% of the 24 researcher-generated activities studied did so. In only 2% of the textbook activities and 50% of the researcher-developed tasks did students choose their own variables to investigate and only activities included this. Some other areas of significant difference between research-generated scientific inquiry and professional scientific inquiry included consideration of methodological flaws, developing relatively complex controls, making multiple observations, using analog models, and studying expert research reports (pp.201-203). However, each characteristic of “authentic scientific inquiry” that Chinn and Malhotra identified was met by one of more of the twenty-six research-developed tasks they studied.

Chinn and Malhotra (2002) conclude that “much work remains to be done to transform schools into places that nurture epistemologically authentic science inquiry” and call for the creation of curricula that will support and develop that complexity of thought (p. 214). Their study can serve as a starting point for comparison and evaluation of whether students are really being taught to think like scientists when this goal is considered desirable. While many efforts are being made to nurture this complexity of thought in schools, there remain opportunities outside of school that might be used to further the development of scientific thought in children and youth. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the literature on science camps above, many current programs primarily consist of the same simple inquiry tasks done in schools that educational researchers are trying to move away from. In his theory of alchemy, Thomas Popkewitz (1998, 2002) has noted the way academic disciplines as done by professionals in universities or workplaces become transformed into very different, often simplistic school subjects that are seen as more palatable for children and youth. “Whereas disciplines involve competing sets of ideas about research … school subjects tend to treat knowledge as uncontested and unambiguous content for children to learn or solve problems with” (1998, p. 27). Popkewitz asserts that this alchemy of disciplines can promote a limiting psychologizing and managing of students’ souls in school. If the inquiry tasks generally encouraged in schools both teach a simplistic epistemology to students and limit them in the ways Popkewitz discusses, is it any accident that one of the strengths of community youth organizations is that they encourage youth to take full responsibilities in carrying out activities of importance to the local community with real limits and constraints? How can we make more of these equipping and mentally challenging opportunities available in areas outside of arts, sports, and service, the primary makeup of youth organizations? Granted, the “alchemy” of disciplines is inevitable in classrooms and informal educational programs, but what would be the effects of developing activities that include the type of reasoning that Chinn and Malhotra (2002) identified as part of scientific thinking?

An Opening for Further Research

Clearly many educators see the importance of developing such scientific reasoning in students. Yet how this is to be done is still a question. Significant in Chinn and Malhotra’s research (2002) is their conclusion that research-driven inquiry, while a definite improvement on standard textbook tasks, does not go far enough in schools. And even these curricula are probably far less common in instructional activities than the simple inquiry tasks propounded in standard science textbooks. Indeed, most of the science camps described above did not come near to the type of curricula that science education researchers are designing. Could not a “third arena” provide an additional opportunity for pursuing more complex science inquiry? Might more time or access to professional equipment and technology provide the opportunity for students to generate their own questions, design their own experiments, choose multiple variables, deal with methodological flaws in design and equipment, develop theories for what happens and why, and make sense of comparisons with other relevant research? Might this not only better equip students academically but also empower them in the way Lehrer and Schauble (as quoted in Foster, 1998) described? Chinn and Malhotra (2002) call for “research that develops and tests instructional approaches for fostering the development of such complex strategies” (p. 213). Researching the Advanced Astronomy Camp is just such an opportunity as the campers create research questions, develop proposals, and with help from the professional and student scientists at their disposal flesh out theories for how their data makes sense with what the rest of the scientific world is saying.

This is not the only reason for studying Advanced Astronomy Camp. Clearly there is little research on science camps, though many claim to be beneficial for students’ affective and academic development. Heath (2001) also calls for more research in the third arena: “Processes of community youth organizations need studies that will detail how the people who participate learn, what they acquire by way of skills and knowledge” (p. 15). My research of Advanced Astronomy Camp has the potential to be just such an opportunity, adding a unique viewpoint by interviewing the youth directly about what they feel they learned and found valuable in the Camp. Larson (2000) too appeals for research on the processes of learning that occurs in structured youth activities and is also interested in how leaders of such programs can best facilitate the development of youth: “Leaders face the fundamental problematic of allowing participants’ actions to be self-directed, voluntary, and intrinsically motivated, yet also structured and challenging enough that participants are stretched into new domains of complexity” (p. 16).

Interviewing the Director and counselors of Advanced Astronomy Camp may help to answer this question, at least as it pertains to this particular program that is purported to be very positive by the youth. Camp is potentially closer to professional astronomy in its access to scientists, telescopes and related technology, and student-designed research than many school opportunities and science camps allow and therefore poses a chance to begin to pursue the questions Chinn and Malhotra (2002) raise. This research on Advanced Astronomy Camp has the potential to fill in one more gap in the research on informal science education, third arena programs for youth, and scientific inquiry.

Methodology

In this section I begin by giving a sketch of Advanced Astronomy Camp in order to set the stage for how I chose to research it. This is followed by a description of the campers and counselors who attended Camp followed by an explanation of how I chose the subjects of this study. Finally, there is an account of the data collection process and the interview analysis.

Description of Advanced Astronomy Camp

Although it may be unusual to include a background description in a methodology, it is pertinent to describe something of what happens at Advanced Astronomy Camp in order to give some context for the study and the interviews. The structure of Camp and my experience during it influenced the interview process and certainly colored all of the data. However, giving a brief description of Camp is a somewhat difficult task as there is no typical day at Camp and the schedule is more of a guide than a pre-set directive for activities. If I could create a sense of a typical day at Camp, it would include the following. After a full night of observing, the first activity of the day is brunch at noon with counselors preparing the food (with some help from campers) and set teams of campers cleaning up after meals. Each meal is usually accompanied by a movie, such as the episode of The Simpsons where Bart discovers a comet or a portion of Cosmos with Carl Sagan. The afternoon includes different groups’ stories from the previous night’s observing, a daily Fermi problem (an estimation problem such as “at any given time how many flat tires are there in the United States?”), one or more lectures delivered by Don or a counselor (Spectroscopy & Light, Lives & Deaths of Stars, The ~Ologies of Mars), and time to work on projects or debates with team members. Dinner is usually around 6pm (or whenever the pizzas are fully cooked given the high altitude) followed by watching the sunset and competing to see who can find Venus, Jupiter and the stars first. Then it is “To the observatories!” (a favorite quote from The Simpsons episode) for a night of observing. “Night lunch,” astronomers’ nickname for their night-time snack, is around midnight while teams move among observing, gazing at the stars outside, conversing about religion, science, books, and philosophy in the warm rooms, and working on computers. Some campers stay up until dawn, others hit the sack around midnight or 1am. For the most part staff stay up until the telescopes close.

Two activities ran throughout the Camp and shaped the time there: research projects and Mars debates (See Appendix D for descriptions of these projects). From the first day campers begin designing their own research projects in teams, writing their proposals and submitting them to the Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC). The TAC, made up of the entire staff, determines which projects receive priority on certain nights depending what time of night objects are visible, which scopes campers requested, and how much telescope time is needed for each project. Just as in professional astronomy, research teams face limitations on telescope time. Campers were required to be a part of at least one research team but some belonged to as many as five. Each team met throughout the day and night, collected data, found background research, analyzed data with counselors’ help, and developed a presentation for the last night of Camp. Projects experienced a range of success due to equipment difficulties, atmospheric conditions, and human error. One group mistakenly left the shutters of their electronic camera closed for eight ten-minute exposures! The finale of Camp was the last night when each group presented their research and interpretations and answered questions about their project.

The other activity that shaped Advanced Astronomy Camp was the Mars Sample Return Debates where pre-determined groups of campers decided on a specific debate topic regarding whether to bring back materials from Mars, a current topic of debate in NASA. The teams then decided who would take pro and con and did some basic research to prepare for a formal debate mid-week. While some youth hated this debate because they felt it took too much time from their research projects or they had studied more than enough about Mars at Camp the previous year, most campers said that they really enjoyed the opportunity to formally argue with their peers and delve into the practical logistics of space missions they might not think about.

Of course within each day packed with lectures, large group gatherings, and time with teams or individual work, campers also enjoyed several hours of free time. This was a time when they could choose to pursue optional activities that included taking apart disposable cameras and adapting them for timed exposures, building an accelerometer for the liquid nitrogen cannon, and measuring the rotation of the sun. Campers also took advantage of the pool table, the gym, the lovely outdoors, and the astronomy and space exploration movies.

Observing took place at five different telescopes, each with its own instrumentation. The 40-inch was used for photometry and became well-known for the group of campers who hung around singing silly songs all night. The 12-inch had an electronic camera called a charge-coupled device (CCD) used for imaging and a sophisticated computer program for finding objects. The 60-inch employed a CCD spectrometer and contained the warm room on Mt. Lemmon that housed a couple of computers, which were in constant use. A short drive away on Mt. Bigelow was the 61-inch, one of the best imaging telescopes in the world, with a CCD utilized for imaging. Finally, the 10-inch made by one of the counselors served as the outdoor “point and shoot” telescope where campers could became familiar with the night sky without much technical equipment. During the first two nights at Camp youth rotated to each of the telescopes, becoming familiar with what each had to offer in order to plan their own projects. From the beginning the staff had the campers operating the telescopes: opening the dome and mirrors, pointing, running the computers, and occasionally making mistakes.

Who Attended Advanced Astronomy Camp Summer 2002

There are two primary requirements for attending Advanced Astronomy Camp: math experience and an application. Campers must have taken both algebra I and either algebra II or geometry. They also need to send in an application that includes a teacher recommendation and an essay response to one of three questions, each of which included both elements of creative writing and science knowledge. Youth who have previously attended the Advanced Astronomy Camp must write a detailed proposal for a research project together with an explanation of how their project will incorporate other youth at Camp. However, although the Director may send essay or project proposals back to youth for revisions, no youth who turns in an application is turned down. Scholarships are available based on financial need.

Thirty-three youth attended Advanced Astronomy Camp in summer 2002 along with ten staff members (including myself). About to go into grades 9-12 or freshman year of college the following Fall, the campers ranged in age from14-18. They learned about Camp from many different sources (internet search, gifted & talented booklets, Astronomy or Sky & Telescope magazines, a teacher, or a friend). Of the thirty-three campers there were 17 males and 16 females coming from twenty different states and one foreign country (in Southeast Asia). Race and ethnicity were difficult to determine as this dimension of identity was not solicited on the application. However, twenty-eight (85%) campers clearly appeared Euro-American, with five apparently from Latino, African-American, Asian-American, and Asian descent. Ten of the campers attended the Beginning Astronomy Camp once in the summers of 1999-2001, and three attended the Advanced Camp in 2001. Six of the campers had assistance (four full and two partial scholarships) in meeting the $600 fee.

The eight counselors working and teaching at Advanced Astronomy Camp, not including the Director or myself who were also a part of the staff, were connected by strong interests in and knowledge of astronomy and related sciences and by a personal connection to the Director. Equally divided between men and women, they ranged in age from early twenties to late thirties and had anywhere from 0-11 years of prior experience at Camp. Two were completing undergraduate degrees with strong backgrounds in physics and astronomy, two had bachelor’s degrees in geology or astronomy, three were pursuing graduate studies at the University of Arizona in various subfields of astronomy, and one was a post-doc with a Ph.D. in astronomy from the same university. Only one counselor had formal training in education and was about to pursue his student teaching. The Director, a research professor in astronomy at The University of Arizona, has led multiple Astronomy Camps for teenagers, educators, and adults since 1989.

The Subjects of the Study

I decided before Advanced Astronomy Camp began to interview one-third of the campers (eleven) and half of the staff (originally four, but later five), choosing the subjects through random sampling that accounted for a few different variables meant to select a range of participants roughly reflective of the population of Camp. The number of campers would allow me to get a breadth of opinion and experience of the youth within the scope of a master’s project. In order to include a diverse spectrum of campers in the interviewing, I tried to get a reasonable range in campers’ age (going into the first two years of high school or the latter two years), gender, and previous Astronomy Camp experience, in rough proportion to the actual population at Camp. As recording difficulties eliminated one of the interviews, there were a total of ten camper interviews. Table 1 shows the distribution of age, gender, and experience among the ten interviewees:

Table 1:

Camper	Entering grades 9&10 or 11&12	Male or Female	Prior Attendance at Astronomy Camp
Pam	11&12	Female	11&12	Female	No
Kris	11&12	Female	No
Sarah	9&10	Female	Yes
Adrienna	9&10	Female	Yes
Kevin	11&12	Male	No
James	11&12	Male	No
Ralph	11&12	Male	No
Todd	9&10	Male	Yes
Brian	9&10	Male	Yes

The distribution of the campers among their age, gender and prior Camp experience may raise questions, but there are explanations for why they are not evenly spread. I had originally thought that one of the campers was in his first half of high school but he corrected this misinformation during his interview. This explains why the distribution of age is not equal (6 older and 4 younger campers). In addition, I did not try to group the youth according to combinations of age, gender, or experience due to the complexity of that process, so there are no young males or females who had not attended Camp previously in the subjects of this study. Actually, this is reflective of the thirty-three campers: there were no women going into their first two years of high school who had not attended Camp before and only a few of the young men were new to Camp. It may be that prior experience at Beginning Astronomy Camp influences youth, especially women, to attend Advanced Camp at a younger age.

Except for the Director and myself, I initially randomly selected half of the six staff to interview. However two more counselors were added to the staff during the week before Camp, so I chose to select one additional counselor in order to include half of the staff in the study. Conveniently, the originally selected counselors and the Director were evenly distributed among four of the five telescope stations at Camp. Since only one telescope station was not represented in my original random selection, I chose the counselor situated at the final site as my final staff interview. The counselors interviewed are shown in Table 2.

Table 2:

Counselor	Educational Experience	Prior Experience at Astronomy Camp
Amanda	graduate or post-doc	four to eleven years
Paris	graduate or post-doc	four to eleven years
Ben	undergraduate or B.S.	zero to three years
Mike	undergraduate or B.S.	zero to three years

Informational letters and permission forms (see Appendix A) were mailed to campers’ parents several weeks before Camp began, with thirty-two of thirty-three campers granting permission to be interviewed. Similar letters and permission forms (see Appendix A) were also given to the Director and the four selected counselors in person after informal discussions about my research. The Director was kept abreast of all developments and was asked for advice and perspective throughout the entire process.

Data Collection

Originally conceived as a small-scale program evaluation, my study draws on two primary theoretical sources that inform the data collection: illuminative evaluation as envisioned by Parlett and Hamilton (1972) and constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000). Because of the limits and scope of the study I did not aim to completely understand and evaluate every aspect of Advanced Astronomy Camp as an educational program but rather chose to focus on the perceptions of the campers and staff, believing that their opinions and experiences could enlighten why Camp has a reputation for success with the youth who attend. Although I had a few ideas of what might make Camp successful, semi-structured interviews were designed to let the participants give their own perspectives and tell their own stories about Advanced Astronomy Camp, “giving voice to [the] respondents” (Charmaz, 2000, p. 510). Drawing on the idea of simultaneous collection and analysis of data (Charmaz, 2000) from grounded theory, I eventually added two questions to the camper interviews with based on themes that I perceived were arising. The two questions I added concerned campers’ thoughts and evaluations of the Mars Sample Return Debates and their interactions with staff members. The first three campers I interviewed spoke to these themes without my questioning them directly, and they had such strong opinions on them that I made sure that I asked every subsequent camper about them, so all campers spoke to the additional questions.

Though interviews served as my primary data for analysis, I also collected data by serving as a counselor and taking field notes at Advanced Astronomy Camp. Reminded by Parlett and Hamilton (1972) that “the researcher is concerned to familiarize himself thoroughly with the day-to-day reality of the setting or setting he is studying” (p. 18) and that it is important to situate qualitative research in historical and cultural context (Charmaz, 2000), I sought to immerse myself in the world of Astronomy Camp. To this purpose I also assisted as a counselor at the Beginning and Educator Astronomy Camps, which preceded and followed the Advanced Astronomy Camp in June 2002. This heavy involvement allowed me to develop a level of trust and relationship with the campers and counselors I interviewed as I served alongside them cooking, cleaning, teaching, and helping with observing. This also afforded me many additional opportunities for conversation with all of the participants and a sense of common language, openness, and co-constructing of meaning during the interviews.

Lasting 15-40 minutes each, the semi-structured interviews with the campers were tape-recorded over several days both in person and by phone. Campers were informed of their random selection for interviewing on the fifth day of Camp and given the list of interview questions. Since the Camp was packed with activities, I interviewed as many of the selected campers as possible during the last three days of Camp at times that best fit their needs and desires. Interviews were conversational as I followed the interview questions, pursued answers for better description, and clarified questions. As mentioned above, after the first few interviews I noted a couple of themes arising in camper remarks and added them in as questions: relationships with the staff and reactions to the Mars Sample Return Debates. All but two interviews were conducted in person; these took place over the phone within two days of Camp.

The five semi-structured interviews with the counselors and the Director were recorded in person at their convenience over the month following Advanced Astronomy Camp in order to give them time to catch up on sleep and think about the questions. Each counselor had access to the questions before his or her interview, which lasted 30 to 65 minutes.

After the interviews were complete, I transcribed them and mailed the transcriptions to the interviewees for any corrections and additions they would like to make. In a few cases participants sent back small additions or clarifications in parts where mechanical quirks with the recorder or background noise interfered with the transcription process.

Analyzing the Interviews

Influenced by grounded theory, I used a two-step open coding process (Charmaz, 2000) to analyze the interviews. After transcribing the interviews I had a few ideas of what the some of the categories ensuing from them might be, so I coded the interviews of the campers and staff separately under those initial categories. The categories for campers were the importance of peer relationships, a sense of responsibility and empowerment with equipment and with choice, a changing understanding of science, and positive informal relationships with staff. The initial categories for staff were teaching science that mirrored professional science, developing campers’ confidence, filling a niche at Camp, being scientists, and demonstrating a general awareness of what campers took away from Camp. In the process of coding both camper and staff interviews, the categories grew more defined as sub-categories arose within them and outlying responses began to become clear. After outlining these new sub-themes I went back to the transcripts for a second coding to see how these held with the interviews. While the interview questions were originally directed toward several ideas I had about what campers and staff might find valuable about Camp, the themes growing from the conversations did not necessarily stem from particular questions. For instance, campers shared about the importance of their peers at Camp in answer to questions about what they took away from Camp, what the best aspects of Camp were, and what they learned about science as well as direct questions about their peers. Therefore instead of showing themes of answers to specific interview questions, the analysis proceeds from one theme to another.

In analyzing the interviews, I counted how many campers or staff members spoke to each theme and sub-theme. All of the campers and staff interviewed said something related to each over-arching theme. In discussing the sub-themes and outlying responses I use “all” when every camper or counselor spoke to an issue, “most” for 80-90%, “several” for 40-70%, and “a few” for 30%. Hopefully this will clarify the analysis.

Analysis

In this analysis I discuss the major themes, sub-themes, and outlying responses stemming from the interviews. The overarching themes arising from camper interviews were the importance of peer relationships, a sense of responsibility and empowerment with equipment and with choice, a changing understanding of science, and positive informal relationships with staff. The initial categories for staff were teaching science that mirrored what professional scientists do, developing campers’ confidence, filling a niche at Camp, being scientists, and demonstrating a general awareness of what campers took away from Camp. In sharing quotes from camper and staff interviews I have tried to let each person’s voice come through as clearly as possible, even when they have used incorrect grammar, repeated words, or long pauses. I chose not to use the designator [sic] because I feel it interrupts the flow of the reading, but have checked quotes multiple times for accuracy to ensure that no typographical mistakes are present. In addition I use [laugh] or [laughter] to indicate when the person quoted was laughing, a sign that I hope will convey something of their tone of voice.

Why Come to Advanced Astronomy Camp?

The first part of my research question concerned the campers’ motivations for coming to Advanced Astronomy Camp. I wanted to know why they came as a starting point for understanding what they liked about Camp. While the underlying motivation was some kind of interest in astronomy, there were several different answers to this question. Two students, Pam and Stacy, said they were very interested and good in science at school, and their teachers recommended Camp to them. Brian and Kevin heard about it through one of their parents, who found out about Camp from the internet and Sky & Telescope. Ralph and Todd came across Camp themselves either through a booklet of activities for gifted and talented students or through Astronomy magazine. James and Kris actively searched the internet looking for a summer camp that would allow them to do astronomy; James because he wanted to find peers he could talk with about science and Kris because she desired something less expensive than Space Camp but just as interesting. The students who had been to an Astronomy Camp before each wanted to further their experiences and continue learning; the appeal of Advanced Camp was increased time on the telescopes and the lure of interesting projects.

I also asked the counselors why they came to Advanced Astronomy Camp. Their answers were rather similar. They discovered Camp through contact with Don and each wanted to give back something to the youth. One counselor experienced Advanced Camp as a camper years previously and wanted to see another side of it. Another found the experience lots of fun and the opportunity to do something meaningful for teens. One said it was a way to give back to the community and another just loved sharing astronomy. Each felt Advanced Camp could be meaningful in campers’ lives and wanted to contribute to that.

Analysis of Camper Interviews

The Importance of Peer Relationships

Peer relationships played an important in the campers’ positive experiences at Advanced Astronomy Camp. In their interviews, youth described three elements of these relationships: a positive atmosphere, a sense of commonality, and learning from other campers.

All interviewees spoke about the generally positive and fun atmosphere created by their peers and most specified that this atmosphere was produced by the application process to be accepted into Advanced Astronomy Camp Camp: all the youth wanted to be there.

Sarah: The kids who come here are all kids who want to be coming here and who like have an interest in astronomy and who aren’t going to spend the entire night, just, well waiting for kids to do something all night…it’s a lot of fun to be learning stuff with kids who think along the same patterns as you.

Kevin: I was a little, not sure I wanted to come, because every camp I’ve been to before this has been just terrible, and uh, but, I thought this, this one sounded different than those, because, since you actually had to write an essay to get in and it would be kids who wanted to be here rather than parents forcing kids to be here.

Most of the campers also expressed a profound sense of commonality they felt with their Camp peers, mostly due to similar interests in astronomy. They spoke of relief, shared interests, and thoughtful conversations, contrasting these relationships with their peers back home. In answer to the question, “What are some of the most significant things that you’re going to take with you from this week?” Kris said:

Probably the understanding that there are people out there like me… Like I’m kind of known as the resident nerd.