Dr Keith Skamp

This paper describes the ongoing journey of six professional scientists (astronomers) who participated as
scientist mentors in a primary school community as it navigated its way from an emerging to a developing
‘community of practice’ around the notion of ‘investigating scientifically’. The aim of this study was to
‘understand’ the meanings that the participants attached to their involvement in a primary science initiative
called MyScience. Their views were determined, in part, by using attributes associated with ‘communities of
practice’ (CoP) and the ‘nature of science’ (NOS) as interpretive lenses.
Mentor interviews about their lived experiences of MyScience participation were deductively and inductively
analysed using NVivo® software to collate and categorise findings, which are presented as six assertions.
Summative findings include: a MyScience CoP was formed; mentors achieved a sense of agency through their
involvement; students showed increasing awareness of the nature of science because of mentor-student
interactions; and that the MyScience educational model influences the development of the community of
practice both through affordances (bringing people with science expertise into the classroom and a guiding
framework) and through barriers (teachers having too much work to do; teachers not sufficiently preparing or
following up students before, during, and after mentor visits; and mentor anxiety about interacting with
primary students during the school visits).