Tables of contextual cognition: a proposal for intercultural research in science education

The goal of this paper is to propose tables of contextual cognition as a tool for research and a model to facilitate the intercultural dialogue on science education in schools. The proposal arose from a qualitative case study, involving the use of tables of compared cognition in biology classes in a Brazilian public school. The results indicate that these tables helped students to understand relationships of similarities and differences between their previous knowledge and scientific knowledge and, equally, to delimit the original context and applicability of each of these ways of knowing. However, I perceived the need to expand these tables to gain a new meaning for the practical purposes of research and culturally sensitive science teaching. Finally, tables of contextual cognition considering these changes are proposed and I discuss the possible implications for teaching and research in science education.     

Classroom stories of multicultural teaching and learning

This is the second of three papers based on a 20-month study of teaching and learning in a diverse classroom in a downtown community school in Toronto, Canada. The purpose of the research was to describe the details of teaching and learning in a multicultural classroom and to document successful strategies in working with immigrant and minority students. The three papers detail the process by which this focus on classroom life led to a critique of the literature and to a new way to think about multicultural teaching and learning, which I call 'narrative multiculturalism'. In this paper, I provide a sampling of stories that illustrate what contributed to my changing thinking about multiculturalism. Four short stories focus on a participant teacher in her school, in her classroom and in interaction with her students. The stories illuminate the complexity of multicultural teaching and qualities of narrative multiculturalism. In the analysis of the stories I explore multicultural understandings that developed from the experience of being in the classroom, being in relationship with a teacher participant, and our on-going dialogue.     

高中生物教学中思维可视化技术的实践研究

教师在高中生物教学中利用思维可视化技术,可以给学生呈现完整的知识链条,帮助学生形成良好的知识体系认知,促进学生思维的发展。运用思维可视化技术的策略有:绘画课堂教学板书,构建核心知识体系;设置探究路径,实现思维逻辑的可视化;重视复习课、试卷解题分析,提高学习能力;打造学习共同体,促进合作与对话。     

Inside a beginning immigrant science teacher’s classroom: an ethnographic study

Teaching is a highly personal endeavor shaped by ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching, learning, and students. This case study examines how one Asian immigrant teacher’s personal expectations and beliefs influenced his expectations of students and the teaching and instructional strategies he employed. His expectations of students’ behavior and their failure to conform to his expectations influenced him to utilize more traditional, didactic instructional practices and responses to classroom management dilemmas. It is generally assumed that immigrant and minority students will benefit from exposure to teachers from similar backgrounds, and that ethnically diverse teachers can better prepare minority students for the multicultural workplace and global economy. This study focuses on the role a teacher’s background and experiences play in development of their beliefs about teaching and learning, their expectations of students, and the instructional decisions they make regarding teaching and learning. This study suggests that teachers draw on their personal histories and cultural understandings to create classroom practices which are molded by microcosms of personal ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching and learning. In contrast to conventional wisdom and unquestioned myths, this study emphasizes the importance of knowing that teachers’ cultural backgrounds do not necessarily qualify them to provide the most appropriate instructional environment for students from similar cultural backgrounds. This study suggests that all teachers need to learn to recognize and negotiate the unique social elements culturally diverse students bring to the classroom.     

High school biology evolution learning experiences in a rural context: a case of and for cultural border crossing

Although the concept of “rural” is difficult to define, rural science education provides the possibility for learning centered upon a strong connection to the local community. Rural American adolescents tend to be more religious than their urban counterparts and less accepting of evolution than their non-rural peers. Because the status and perception of evolutionary theory may be very different within the students’ lifeworlds and the subcultures of the science classroom and science itself, a cultural border crossing metaphor can be applied to evolution teaching and learning. This study examines how a teacher may serve as a cultural border crossing tour guide for students at a rural high school as they explore the concept of biological evolution in their high school biology class. Data collection entailed two formal teacher interviews, field note observations of two biology class periods each day for 16 days during the Evolution unit, individual interviews with 14 students, student evolution acceptance surveys, student evolution content tests, and classroom artifacts. The major findings center upon three themes regarding how this teacher and these students had largely positive evolution learning experiences even as some students continued to reject evolution. First, the teacher strategically positioned himself in two ways: using his unique “local” trusted position in the community and school and taking a position in which he did not personally represent science by instead consistently teaching evolution “according to scientists.” Second, his instruction honored local “rural” funds of knowledge with respect to local knowledge of nature and by treating students’ religious knowledge as a form of local expertise about one set of answers to questions also addressed by evolution. Third, the teacher served as a border crossing “tour guide” by helping students identify how the culture of science and the culture of their lifeworlds may differ with respect to evolutionary theory. Students negotiated the cultural borders for learning evolution in several ways, and different types of border crossings are described. The students respected the teacher’s apparent neutrality, sensitivity toward multiple positions, explicit attention to religion/evolution, and transparency of purposes for teaching evolution. These findings add to the current literature on rural science education by highlighting local funds of knowledge for evolution learning and how rural teachers may help students navigate seemingly hazardous scientific topics. The study’s findings also add to the current evolution education literature by examining how students’ religious perspectives may be respected as a form of expertise about questions of origins by allowing students to examine similarities and differences between scientific and religious approaches to questions of biological origins and change.     

Climate Education: Empowering Today's Youth to Meet Tomorrow's Challenges

This paper provides an introduction to the concept of pedagogical link‐making in the context of teaching and learning scientific conceptual knowledge. Pedagogical link‐making is concerned with the ways in which teachers and students make connections between ideas in the ongoing meaning‐making interactions of classroom teaching and learning. First of all we draw upon socio‐cultural perspectives to outline why we think that ‘link‐making’ is fundamental to science learning and consequently to science teaching and then we identify three main forms of pedagogical link‐making. The related research literature is then used to specify pedagogical link‐making approaches associated with each of the three main forms. Finally, the resultant framework of link‐making forms and approaches is applied in analysing a teaching sequence taken from a UK secondary school science classroom. Part of this analysis involves identifying specific pedagogical tools/strategies that might be employed in the classroom to support link‐making.     

探究性实验教学模式在高中生物教学中的应用研究

探究性实验教学模式在高中生物课堂教学中占据着重要的地位,对学生学习生物知识也有积极的意义。在高中生物课堂教学中教师要注重引导学生树立正确的探究性实验思维方式,运用科学的实验步骤进行生物实验教学。文章对高中生物探究性实验教学中教师的课堂开展步骤以及模式进行论述。     

Creating Participatory Discourse for Teaching and Research in Early Childhood Science

This paper presents the results of a study conducted with second grade students and pre-service teachers. This study examined the possibilities for engaging children in critical discourse about their classroom science experiences. At the heart of this discussion lies the desire to provide a space for teachers and children to develop relationships and to explore the learning of science together. Themes that emerged include: (1) on-going, focused, critical dialogue between children and teachers supported children in developing agency in the classroom, and (2) on-going conversations created the opportunity for children to reveal their ways of knowing and developing interpretations of the practice of science.     

Towards a pragmatic science in schools

This paper contrasts naive beliefs about the nature of science, with science as it appears from sociological and philosophical study, feminist critique and insights from multicultural education. I draw implications from these informed views to suggest how school science might be modified to project a pragmatic view of science to its students that allows students to know science and its relationships to themselves and society in multi-faceted ways. From these perspectives, pragmatic school science is situated within a values framework that questions how we know. Pragmatic school science also requires that the naive inductivist views that permeate school science inquiry methods at present be modified to recognise that observations and inquiry are guided by prior knowledge and values; that new knowledge is tentative; that some knowledge has high status, as it has been constructed consensually over a long period; but that even high status knowledge can be challenged. For implementation of these reforms, yet still to embrace the need for some students to appropriate understanding of discipline knowledge required for advanced science education, a broad set of aims is required.     

Ways of Knowing beyond Facts and Laws of Science: An Ethnographic Investigation of Student Engagement in Scientific Practices

In this study, an anthropological perspective informed by sociolinguistic discourse analysis was used to examine how teachers, students, and scientists constructed ways of investigating and knowing in science. Events in a combined fourth‐ and fifth‐grade elementary class were studied to document how the participating teacher provided opportunities for students to diverge from the intended curriculum to pursue their questions concerning the behavior of sea animals in a marine science observation tank. Analysis of the classroom discourse identified ways that particular teaching strategies provided opportunities for student engagement in scientific practices. Implications of this study for the teaching of science in elementary classrooms include the value of student‐initiated science explorations under the conditions of uncertainty and for topics in which the teacher lacked relevant disciplinary knowledge. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 237–258, 2000.     

Using cogenerative dialogues to improve coteaching for language learner (LL) students in an inclusion science classroom

This paper presents findings from a study conducted in an urban elementary school in the United States with an English language learner (ELL) student and two teachers engaged in collaborative teaching in an inclusion science classroom. This study examines the efficacy of utilising cogenerative dialogues between an ELL student and his science teacher and English as second language teacher to improve instructional practices enacted during coteaching. Drawing from field notes, teacher and student interviews, and video captured during cotaught science lessons and during cogenerative dialogues between the student and his coteachers, we examined the ways in which cogenerative dialogue expands teachers’ agency to adapt curriculum and implement instructional strategies that can better meet the needs of their students. At the same time, we examined the ways in which participation in cogenerative dialogues with his teachers expanded this student’s agency as a science learner and a language learner.     

探究性学习在高中生物教学中的应用

新课程改革的实施,为高中生物课堂教学提出了全新的要求,教师在开展高中生物课堂教学的时候,不仅要重视生物知识教学,还要注重培养学生的探究精神和综合素养,进而促使学生在生物知识探究中,提升自身的综合素质,最终获得长远的发展。文章以高中生物教学为中心,对探究性学习模式在其教学中的具体应用进行了详细的研究和分析。     

Features of an Emerging Practice and Professional Development in a Science Teacher Team Collaboration with a Researcher Team

This study concerns teaching and learning development in science through collaboration between science teachers and researchers. At the core was the ambition to integrate research outcomes of science education—here ‘didactic models’—with teaching practice, aligned with professional development. The phase where the collaboration moves from initial establishment towards a stable practice is investigated. The study aims to identifying features of formation and exploring consequences for the character of contact between research and teaching. Specific questions are “What may be identified as actions and arrangements impacting the quality and continuation of the emerging practice?” and “What and in what ways may support teacher growth?” The analysis draws on practice architectures as a theoretical framework and specifically investigates the initial meetings as a practice-node for a new practice, empirically drawing on documented reflections on science teaching, primarily from meetings and communication. The results take the form of an analytical-narrative account of meetings that focused planning, enactment and reflection on teaching regarding the human body. We identify enabling actions such as collaborative work with concrete material from the classroom and arrangements such as the regular meetings and that the collaborative group had a core of shared competence—in science teaching and learning. Constraining were actions such as introducing research results with weak connection to practical action in the school practice and arrangements such as differences between school and university practice architectures and the general ‘oppression’ of teachers’ classroom practice. The discussion includes reflections on researchers’ roles and on a research and practice base for school development.     

Different People in Different Places

This article presents the results of an exploratory study of students’ knowledge about scientists and countries’ contributions to science, aiming at answering two research questions: “In which ways are students aware of the history of scientific development carried out by different people in different places of the world? What can be influencing and shaping their awareness?” Thus, this study aimed at depicting students’ knowledge about History of Science (HOS), focusing on what they know about science being done by people and communities from different parts of the world and on how this knowledge is constructed through their engagement with school science. An exploratory research was carried out at two multicultural state secondary schools in London, UK, involving 200 students aged 12–15 (58.5% girls, 41.5% boys) and five science teachers. The method involved an initial exploration of students’ knowledge about HOS through an open-ended survey, followed by classroom-based observations and semi-structured interviews with the participants. Results showed a disconnection between remembering scientists and knowing about their work and background, hinting at an emphasis on illustrative and decontextualised approaches towards HOS. Additionally, there was a lack of diversity in these students’ answers in terms of gender and ethnicity when talking about scientists and countries in science. These findings were further analysed in relation to their implications for school science and for the fields of HOS, science education and public perception of science.     

Describing students of the African Diaspora: Understanding micro and meso level science learning as gateways to standards based discourse

In much of the educational literature, researchers make little distinction between African-American students and students of the African Diaspora who immigrated to the United States. Failing to describe these salient student differences serves to perpetuate an inaccurate view of African-American school life. In today’s large cities, students of the African Diaspora are frequently learning science in settings that are devoid of the resources and tools to fully support their success. While much of the scholarship unites these disparate groups, this article details the distinctive learning culture created when students from several groups of the African Diaspora learn biology together in a Brooklyn Suspension Center. Specifically this work explains how one student, Gabriel, functions in a biology class. A self-described black-Panamanian, Gabriel had tacitly resigned to not learning science, which then, in effect, precluded him from any further associated courses of study in science, and may have excluded him from the possibility of a science related career. This ethnography follows Gabriel’s science learning as he engaged in cogenerative dialogue with teachers to create aligned learning and teaching practices. During the 5 months of this research, Gabriel drew upon his unique lifeworld and the depth of his hybridized cultural identity to produce limited, but nonetheless important demonstrations of science. Coexistent with his involvement in cogenerative dialogue, Gabriel helped to construct many classroom practices that supported a dynamic learning environment which produced small yet concrete examples of standards based biology. This study supports further investigation by the science education community to consider ways that students’ lifeworld experiences can serve to structure and transform the urban science classroom.

“微课”在初中生物实验教学中的应用研究

为了解决当代初中生的生物综合学习能力不足的问题,在生物实验教学中,广大生物教师开始进行以普通的口头教学向翻转课堂教学的转变。在初中生物实验教学中引入微课翻转,可以保证实验教学课前与课后的衔接性,使学生在学习生物知识的过程中,不断提高学习质量与学习效率。因此,以微课翻转为基础的初中生物实验教学研究至关重要。     

启发式教学法在高中生物课堂中的有效应用探析

高中生物课程是高中阶段的重要学科之一,其具有知识点繁杂、内容抽象性强、理解难度大等特点,单纯的理论讲解很难达到理想的教学效果.启发式教学法是一种快速有效的教学方法,能够有效激发学生对生物课的兴趣,强化学生对生物知识的理解,进而有效提升生物课堂的教学效果.文章在教学实践的基础上,对启发式教学法在高中生物课堂中的应用难题、...     

Narrative multiculturalism

This is the first of three papers based on a 20-month study of teaching and learning in a diverse classroom in a downtown community school in Toronto, Canada. The purpose of the study was to examine teaching and learning in a multicultural classroom and to document successful strategies in working with immigrant and minority students. The three papers detail the process by which this focus on classroom life led to a critique of the literature and to a new way to think about multicultural teaching and learning that I call 'narrative multiculturalism'. In this paper, I explore the place of multiculturalism in education and describe several limitations of the traditional ways of examining the issue. I also outline the understanding with which I began the study and describe the nature of my inquiry. I use my autobiographical experiences of multiculturalism and multicultural research to reflect on the literature of multicultural education. The narrative of my relationship with a teacher participant provides a conceptualization of the field and suggests the nature of narrative multiculturalism.     

Discussion of Socio‐scientific Issues: The role of science knowledge

This paper considers the relationship between science knowledge and the ability to engage in reasoned discussion of the social consequences of science. Through a study of over 200 school students aged 14–16 we show that the ability to engage in reasoned discussion of applications of gene technology is strongly influenced by the ability to recognize key issues, and that ability to recognize key issues requires some understanding of the relevant science. It is also influenced by the specificity of the context under discussion and personal experience. The requisite scientific knowledge base is relatively modest and can be effectively taught through brief teaching interventions that are well designed and contextualized. The implications for classroom practice are considered     

A sociocultural perspective on mediated activity in third grade science

This ethnographic study of a third grade classroom examined elementary school science learning as a sociocultural accomplishment. The research focused on how a teacher helped his students acquire psychological tools for learning to think and engage in scientific practices as locally defined. Analyses of classroom discourse examined both how the teacher used mediational strategies to frame disciplinary knowledge in science as well as how students internalized and appropriated ways of knowing in science. The study documented and analyzed how students came to appropriate scientific knowledge as their own in an ongoing manner tied to their identities as student scientists. Implications for sociocultural theory in science education research are discussed. John Reveles is an assistant professor in the Elementary Education Department at California State University, Northridge. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Before pursuing his Ph.D., he worked as a bilingual elementary school teacher for 3 years. His research focuses on the development of scientific literacy in elementary school settings; sociocultural influences on students' academic identity; equity of access issues in science education; qualitative and quantitative research methods. Within the Michael D. Eisner College of Education, he teaches elementary science curriculum methods courses, graduate science education seminars, and graduate research courses. Gregory Kelly is a professor of science education at Penn State University. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer and physics teacher. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1994. His research focuses on classroom discourse, epistemology, and science learning. This work has been supported by grants from Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Education. He teaches courses concerning the uses of history, philosophy, sociology of science in science teaching and teaching and learning science in secondary schools. He is editor of the journal Science Education. Richard Durán is a Professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and publications have been in the areas of literacy and assessment of English Language Learners and Latino students. He has also conducted research on after school computer clubs, technology and learning as part of the international UC Links Network. With support from the Kellogg Foundation, he is implementing and investigating community and family-centered intervention programs serving the educational progress of Latino students in the middle and high school grades.