A Birdsong Program 

The structure of a Birdsong Program is informed by principles of justice-oriented teaching, in which we aim to recognize and question the traditional power dynamics that exist in learning environments. One key component of justice-oriented teaching is giving participants more agency in the learning process. Through enabling learners to play a more active role in science learning, we hope to see increased effort and engagement in learning as well as better communication and rapport between group members (Nag Chowdhuri et al., 2023). 

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In practice, how can this be achieved? A Birdsong Program is designed around participatory design, in which users of a product are the ones who design the product (Axelsen et al., 2014). In this case, we design science outreach content for people with disabilities, in partnership with people with disabilities. This process values peoples' tacit knowledge: knowledge that people have through lived experience (Spinuzzi, 2005). Participatory design is an iterative process, in which we explore and identify interests, workshop ideas, and prototype those ideas. As a result, the structure of the program is extremely flexible to allow for this design process: activities are not decided ahead of time.​

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Nag Chowdhuri, M., King, H., Godec, S., & Archer, L. (2023). Towards justice-oriented science teaching: Examining the impact of the science capital teaching approach on teachers. London Review of Education, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.21.1.37

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Spinuzzi, C. (2005). The Methodology of Participatory Design. Technical Communication, 52(2), 163–174.

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Axelsen, L. V., Mygind, R., & Bentsen, P. (2014). A Participatory Design Framework for Developing Interactive Exhibitions. The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, 7, 1–16.

Affinity spaces are informal social environments in which people with common interests gather and socialize (Gee, 2003). Members of the affinity group are not expected to participate in a given way; participation is voluntary and can vary in form. As opposed to a rigid hierarchical structure, in affinity spaces knowledge is distributed amongst the members of the group. 

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A Birdsong Program is designed as an affinity space in which people interested in birds, animal social behavior, and communication can explore there interests together. We aim to foster a club-like social environment as opposed to a classroom-like one; we achieve this by enabling participants to engage and participate on their own terms, and letting the interests of individuals guide the direction of the group.

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Gee, J. P. (2004). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.

We aim to enrich A Birdsong Program by encouraging a rich communicative environment in the affinity space. Rich communicative environments are ones in which participation is voluntary (i.e., participants are given the freedom to participate as they like), complex (i.e., there are many different forms of communication possible, and encouraged), and optimized (i.e., scaffolded for the specific and changing needs of the individual) (Hengst, 2020). Through fostering rich communicative environments we learn to be much more flexible and effective communicators. 

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Hengst, J. A. (2020). Designing Rich Communicative Environments in Clinical Spaces. In Understanding everyday communicative interactions: Introduction to situated discourse analysis for communication sciences and disorders. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003034537