Hybrid discourse practice and science learning

In this article, we report on a study of how creative linguistic practices (which we call hybrid discourse practices) were enacted by students in a fifth-grade science unit on barn owls and how these practices helped to produce a synergistic micro-community of scientific practice in the classroom that constituted a fertile space for students (and the teacher) to construct emergent but increasingly legitimate and dynamic disciplinary knowledges and identities. Our findings are important for the ways in which they demonstrate (a) how students use hybrid discourse practices to self-scaffold their work within complex curricular tasks and when they are not completely sure about how to enact these tasks (b) how hybrid discourse practices can promote inquiry orientations to science, (c) how hybrid discourse practices index new and powerful forms of science pedagogy, and (d) how hybrid discourse practices are relevant to more global issues such as the crucial roles of language fluency and creativity, which are known prerequisites for advanced science learning and which aid students in developing skills that are necessary for entry into science and technology careers.     

Investigating and theorizing discourse during analogy writing in chemistry

Explanations of the role of analogies in learning science at a cognitive level are made in terms of creating bridges between new information and students' prior knowledge. In this empirical study of learning with analogies in an 11th grade chemistry class, we explore an alternative explanation at the “social” level where analogy shapes classroom discourse. Students in the study developed analogies within small groups and with their teacher. These classroom interactions were monitored to identify changes in discourse that took place through these activities. Beginning from socio‐cultural perspectives and hybridity, we investigated classroom discourse during analogical activities. From our analyses, we theorized a merged discourse that explains how the analog discourse becomes intertwined with the target discourse generating a transitional state where meanings, signs, symbols, and practices are in flux. Three categories were developed that capture how students intertwined the analog and target discourses—merged words, merged utterances/sentences, and merged practices. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 771–792, 2011     

Connecting Soccer to Middle School Science: Latino Students’ Passion in Learning

Building on a pedagogical model designed to support the teaching and learning of the language of science investigation practices with middle school emergent bilingual learners, we developed a series of soccer and science investigations to promote interest and engagement in science learning. We used assemblage theory to study how students engaged in and acted within this bilingual curriculum situated in an afterschool soccer practice context. We found that soccer, a passion for several Latino students, can be used as a cultural tool for science teachers to support the emerging bilingual students’ learning process. Implications for educators and researchers considering ways of integrating diverse students’ cultural practices and passions with culturally sustaining pedagogies for science teaching and learning are discussed.     

“Maestro,what is ‘quality’?”: Language,literacy, and discourse in project‐based science

Recent curriculum design projects have attempted to engage students in authentic science learning experiences in which students engage in inquiry‐based research projects about questions of interest to them. Such a pedagogical and curricular approach seems an ideal space in which to construct what Lee and Fradd referred to as instructional congruence. It is, however, also a space in which the everyday language and literacy practices of young people intersect with the learning of scientific and classroom practices, thus suggesting that project‐based pedagogy has the potential for conflict or confusion. In this article, we explore the discursive demands of project‐based pedagogy for seventh‐grade students from non‐mainstream backgrounds as they enact established project curricula. We document competing Discourses in one project‐based classroom and illustrate how those Discourses conflict with one another through the various texts and forms of representation used in the classroom and curriculum. Possibilities are offered for reconstructing this classroom practice to build congruent third spaces in which the different Discourses and knowledges of the discipline, classroom, and students' lives are brought together to enhance science learning and scientific literacy. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 469–498, 2001     

Cultural, Discursive Psychology: A Sociocultural Approach to Studying the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics

From a sociocultural perspective an object of research on mathematics teaching and learning can be seen as a particular moment in the zoom of a lens. Researchers focus on a specific part of a complex process whilst taking account of the other views that would be obtained by pulling back or zooming in. Researching teaching and learning mathematics must be seen in the same way. Thus in zooming out researchers address the practices and meanings within which students become school-mathematical actors, whilst zooming in enables a study of mediation and of individual trajectories within the classroom. In each choice of object of research the range of other settings have to be incorporated into the analysis. Such analyses aim to embrace the complexity of the teaching-learning process. This article will present a cultural, discursive psychology for mathematics education that takes language and discursive practices as central in that meanings precede us and we are constituted within language and the associated practices, in the multiple settings within which we grow up and participate.     

Dialogic teaching and students’ discursive identity negotiation in the learning of science

This study sought to understand how dialogic teaching, as enacted in everyday classroom interaction, affords students opportunities for identity negotiation as learners of science. By drawing on sociocultural and sociolinguistic accounts, the study examined how students’ discursive identities were managed and recognized in the moment and over time during dialogic teaching and what consequences these negotiations had for their engagement in science learning. The study used video data of classroom interactions collected from an elementary science learning project and placed a specific analytic focus on four students in particular. The results reveal evidence of a rich variety of discursive identities exposed during dialogic teaching, thus demonstrating how the students’ identity negotiations were configured according to the social architecture of classroom discourse. Addressing the temporal dimension of dialogic teaching points out critical shifts in the students’ discursive identities, of which identification is argued to be pivotal when creating equitable science learning opportunities.     

Space,relations, and the learning of science

In the literature on the situated and distributed nature of cognition, the coordination of spatial organization and the structure of human practices and relations is accepted as a fact. To date, science educators have yet to build on such research. Drawing on an ethnographic study of high school students during an internship in a scientific research laboratory, which we understand as a “perspicuous setting” and a “smart setting,” in which otherwise invisible dimensions of human practices become evident, we analyze the relationship between spatial configurations of the setting and the nature and temporal organization of knowing and learning in science. Our analyses show that spatial aspects of the laboratory projectively organize how participants act and can serve as resources to help the novices to participate in difficult and unfamiliar tasks. First, existing spatial relations projectively organize the language involving interns and lab members. In particular, spatial relations projectively organize where and when pedagogical language should happen; and there are specific discursive mechanisms that produce cohesion in language across different places in the laboratory. Second, the spatial arrangements projectively organize the temporal dimensions of action. These findings allow science educators to think explicitly about organizing “smart contexts” that help learners participate in and learn complex scientific laboratory practices.     

Knowing and Learning about Science in Primary School ‘Communities of Science Practice’: The Views of Participating Scientists in the MyScience Initiative

MyScience is a primary science education initiative in which being in a community of practice is integral to the learning process. One component of this initiative involves professional scientists interacting with primary school communities which are navigating their way towards sustainable ‘communities of practice’ around the ‘domain’ of ‘investigating scientifically’. This paper describes the ongoing journey to date of eleven scientists (six astronomers and five engineers) who actively participated in MyScience over an extended period. Their views of interactions with teachers and students were analysed using attributes associated with both ‘communities of practice’ and the ‘nature of science’. Findings reveal new understandings about the evolving characteristics associated with the development of such school-community collaborations as well as affordances and barriers that may influence their further growth. The influence of these scientists’ own ‘community of science practices’ may account for some of the findings. Implications for science teaching and learning in primary school community of practice settings are discussed.     

Ciencia en Nepantla: the journey of Nepantler@s in science learning and teaching

This paper presents a new approach to science education that takes a path through sociocultural theory and into the ideas of Gloria Anzaldúa. We apply Anzaldúan theory to science education by illustrating it in action through various examples which explore the multidimensionality of teaching science with Latin@ students in various contexts including dual language settings. We present what it is to journey through transformation using examples from educators at various levels of science within the world of teaching science with Latin@ students in the U.S. Our examples illustrate how Latin@ students cross many cultural borders in Spanish, English, Latin@ home culture, school culture, and the world of scientific dialogue and content, and in doing so, go through tensions and transformations between dominant and non-dominant worlds, which should be acknowledged and better understood through Anzaldúan theory. Fundamentally, we present a transformative notion of Latin@ science learning as “living on the bridges” of many dialogic and cultural practices, and having to negotiate these in-between spaces, or “nepantla” (Anzaldu´a and Keating in Interviews, Psychology Press, London, 2000), where Latin@ students must contend with the fragmented and sometimes painful struggle of living in racialized reality amidst the demands of a dominant culture, and where transformation and healing are possible through the path of conocimiento. We advocate for teachers to become science teacher nepantler@s, who guide their students through nepantla, and into a new mestiz@ consciousness of science education.     

Pathway Towards Fluency: Using ‘disaggregate instruction’ to promote science literacy

This study examines the impact of Disaggregate Instruction on students’ science learning. Disaggregate Instruction is the idea that science teaching and learning can be separated into conceptual and discursive components. Using randomly assigned experimental and control groups, 49 fifth‐grade students received web‐based science lessons on photosynthesis using our experimental approach. We supplemented quantitative statistical comparisons of students’ performance on pre‐ and post‐test questions (multiple choice and short answer) with a qualitative analysis of students’ post‐test interviews. The results revealed that students in the experimental group outscored their control group counterparts across all measures. In addition, students taught using the experimental method demonstrated an improved ability to write using scientific language as well as an improved ability to provide oral explanations using scientific language. This study has important implications for how science educators can prepare teachers to teach diverse student populations.     

高职院校英语语篇教学中的跨文化意识培养

语言与文化是紧密联系在一起的,学习一门语言,就必须要了解该语言的文化。语篇教学是学习语言的重要途径,语篇大都是讲述一个情景,或生活交往、或商务交往、或社会现象等,都包含了一些文化在里面。尤其是对外语的学习,通过外语语篇教学,有针对性地对学生的跨文化意识进行培养,已经成为学习外语的绝佳途径。文章就高职院校英语语篇教学中的跨文化意识培养做几点探讨,希望能给广大高职院校学习英语的师生们带来一些帮助。     

Developing Digital Literacy in the Middle School Classroom

Students are growing up in a digital world where technology is constantly changing and evolving. However, their use of these technologies is often more social rather than academically as a way to advance their understanding of key concepts or skills as it relates to instructional content. Teachers know how to teach, and our students are definitely not afraid of digital tools, so our job as teachers is to merge good, sound teaching practices with media that helps students tap into the digital world in which they live. This article shares the process that was followed as 36 Grade 7 and Grade 8 students participated in a 9-week digital media course. The framework of the course used a highly scaffolded format that incorporated various technology tools while also exposing students to aspects of language arts and process writing. Throughout the 9-week course, the role of teacher and students constantly shifted as new roles were taken on by “experts” (the students) who emerged as part of the process.     

THE INTERACTIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT OF NOT KNOWING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS: IMPLICATIONS FOR CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT PRACTICES

The day-to-day business of being a science or mathematics teacher involves the continuous assessment of students. This, in turn, is an inherently discursive process. The aim of the present study is to examine some of the specific discursive practices through which science and mathematics knowing is jointly produced through classroom interaction. In particular, we examine the coproduced nature of two students’ not knowing—one in an outdoor elementary school science lesson and the other in an elementary school mathematics lesson. Our analysis is based on ideas in discursive psychology and challenges conventional interpretations of students’ academic performance in school science and mathematics.     

Student teachers and cultural diversity in an Australian regional university

This article examines student teachers' discursive constructions of difference, cultural diversity and race as they write and talk about their cultures and identities in relation to teaching and learning in the first year of a Primary Teaching Degree in a regional Australian university.
The qualitative case study which informs this paper considered the discursive resources that students bring to teacher education from their past experiences and contact with cultural differences in communities, families and schools. It examined various discourses around cultural diversity that are available to them in the teacher education course and how their discursive practices are mediated and reconstructed in the particular university context. A major goal was to explore how universities in largely homogeneous settings might firstly work with the resources that students bring to teacher education and, secondly, assist students to consider the implications of cultural and linguistic diversity for teaching language and literacy.     

Bilingual teaching for multilingual students? Innovative dual-medium models in Slovene-German schools in Austria

Traditional bilingual education programmes in regional linguistic minority contexts face major challenges within the recent paradigm of linguistic diversity against a background of increasing migration, mobility and trans-locality. Based on three case studies, the authors of this paper focus on how particular dual-medium models are applied in Slovene-German schools in Carinthia, Austria. They examine not only how these schools provide for a balanced bilingual teaching and learning environment, but also how they deal with their students?? multilingual realities and support their identification with bi- and multilingualism. The authors regard schools as institutional sites where linguistic dispositions are subject to discursive power relations and where language policies and educational goals are negotiated by teachers, parents and students alike. Drawing on speaker-centred and ethnographic approaches in sociolinguistic research, the authors seek to document experiences of all actors involved as well as spatial and discursive practices. Through this the authors show how these dual-medium schools achieve particular profiles in multilingual education which are potentially regarded as innovative examples of best-practice and as being of interest for students and families with heterogeneous linguistic backgrounds.     

Engaging elementary students in learning science: an analysis of classroom dialogue

Research over a long period of time has continued to demonstrate problems in the teaching of science in school. In addition, declining levels of participation and interest in science and related fields have been reported from many particularly western countries. Among the strategies suggested is the recruitment of professional scientists and technologists either at the graduate level or advanced career level to change career and teach. In this study, we analysed how one beginning middle primary teacher engaged with students to support their science learning by establishing rich classroom discussions. We followed his evolving teaching expertise over three years focussing on his communicative practices informed by socio-cultural theory. His practices exemplified a non-interactive dialogical communicative approach where ideas were readily discussed but were concentrated on the class acquiring acceptable scientific understandings. His focus on the language of science was a significant aspect of his practice and one that emerged from his professional background. The study affirms the theoretical frameworks proposed by Mortimer and Scott (Meaning making in secondary science classrooms, 2003) highlighting how dialogue contributes to heightened student interest in science.     

Thinking beyond the score: Multidimensional analysis of student performance to inform the next generation of science assessments

Conventional assessment analysis of student results, referred to as rubric-based assessments (RBA), has emphasized numeric scores as the primary way of communicating information to teachers about their students’ learning. In this light, rethinking and reflecting on not only how scores are generated but also what analyses are done with them to inform classroom practices is of utmost importance. Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics and Latent Dirichlet Allocation analyses, this study utilizes an innovative bilingual (Spanish–English) constructed response assessment of science and language practices for middle and high school students to perform a multilayered analysis of student responses. We explore multiple ways of looking at students’ performance through their written assessments and discuss features of student responses that are made visible through these analyses. Findings from this study suggest that science educators would benefit from a multidimensional model which deploys complementary ways in which we can interpret student performance. This understanding leads us to think that researchers and developers in the field of assessment need to promote approaches that analyze student science performance as a multilayered phenomenon.     

“I love foreigners’ attitudes towards life”: Reproducing lifestyles in an Iranian English language teaching context

An important aspect of learning a foreign language is encountering the sociocultural orientations associated with it. The present qualitative study focuses on an Iranian setting of English language teaching (ELT) to explore the potential reflection and reproduction of certain cultural attitudes and lifestyles in this context. A total of 200 hours of 10 ELT classes with 62 students were observed and/or recorded in 4 months, and 20 teachers and students were interviewed. Based on a grounded theory approach, the bodies of data were explored through coding procedures and the emerging thematic structure was used to illustrate aspects of the possible reproduction of lifestyles. The context of concern appeared to provide a potential arena of naturalising aspects of imported lifestyles associated with the foreign language. Although students show various extents of adherence to their own culture, prolonged involvement in ELT discursive practices may contribute to the subtle alteration of their lifestyle orientations.