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The Colorado SCience and ENgineering Inquiry Collaborative for Rural K12 Outreach (SCENIC Colorado) is investigating an educational infrastructure for supporting engineering and science learning and identity formation as part of an outreach program with rural Colorado high schools. This research takes the rural context into careful consideration. While rural places are often described by their deficits (Reagan et al., 2019), this study operationalizes place-based pedagogy and the theoretical framework of rural cultural wealth (Crumb et al., 2022) to conceptualize and engage rural places from an asset-based perspective. We believe rural places can be rich environments for engineering and science learning. Therefore, we aspire to support high school students with the development of soil or air quality inquiry projects that are relevant to their local rural communities. Situated within a larger study on the SCENIC outreach program and its impact on student participation in and identification with engineering and science, this paper focuses more narrowly on place-based engineering with students in the rural context. The research questions are: What aspects of the outreach program's educational infrastructure enable place-based science and engineering inquiry? What aspects of place—their locality's history and culture—inform rural students' selection of environmental monitoring topics to investigate? How does conducting place-based environmental monitoring projects contribute to rural students’ engineering and science identity development? 

BACKGROUND: Natureculture (Haraway, 2003; Fuentes, 2010) constructs offer a powerful framework for science education to explore learners’ interactions with and understanding of the natural world. Technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) designed to reveal pets’ sensory worlds and companionship with pets can facilitate learners’ harmonious relationships with significant others in naturecultures. METHODS: At a two-week virtual summer camp, we engaged teens in inquiring into dogs’ and cats’ senses using selective color filters, investigations, experience design projects, and understanding how the umwelt (von Uexküll, 2001) of pets impacts their lives with humans. We qualitatively analyzed participants’ talk, extensive notes, and projects completed at the workshop. FINDINGS: We found that teens engaged in the science and engineering practices of planning and carrying out investigations, constructing explanations and designing solutions, and questioning while investigating specific aspects of their pets’ lives. Further, we found that teens checking and taking pets’ perspectives while caring for them shaped their productive engagement in these practices. The relationship between pets and humans facilitated an ecological and relational approach to science learning. CONTRIBUTION: Our findings suggest that relational practices of caring and perspective-taking coexist with scientific practices and enrich scientific inquiry.