Girls and physics: teaching and learning strategies tested by classroom interventions in grade 11

In this quasi-experimental study various strategies are developed and empirically tested for an approach to physics instruction that should improve girls' and boys' attitudes toward and achievements in physics. Strategies include opportunities to integrate different pre-existing knowledge and the variation of teaching methods to enhance co-operation and communication in the classroom. The core of this study is an intervention in 31 classes of public schools in Switzerland. The intervention, one unit in optics and one in motion (velocity/acceleration), includes the first 40 lessons of the first physics course that all students have to attend at the upper secondary level. Data sources are various student and teacher questionnaires, tests and semi-structured interviews with teachers. Results of the entrance and final survey are presented. The focus will be on some of the applied strategies. Implications for the teaching and learning of physics and for teacher education are discussed.     

Understanding the Language Demands on Science Students from an Integrated Science and Language Perspective

This case study of a science lesson, on the topic thermal expansion, examines the language demands on students from an integrated science and language perspective. The data were generated during a sequence of 9 lessons on the topic of ‘States of Matter’ in a Grade 7 classroom (12–13 years old students). We identify the language demands by comparing students' writings with the scientific account of expansion that the teacher intended the students to learn. The comparison involved both content analysis and lexicogrammatical (LG) analysis. The framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics was adopted for the LG analysis. Our analysis reveals differences in the meaning and the way LG resources were employed between the students' writings and the scientific account. From these differences, we found the notion of condition-of-use for LG resources to be a significant aspect of the language that students need to appropriate in order to employ the language of school science appropriately. This notion potentially provides a means by which teachers could concurrently address the conceptual and representational demands of science learning. Finally, we reflect on how the complementary use of content analysis and LG analysis provides a way for integrating the science and language perspectives in order to understand the demands of learning science through language.     

What is ‘Agency’? Perspectives in Science Education Research

The contemporary interest in researching student agency in science education reflects concerns about the relevance of schooling and a shift in science education towards understanding learning in science as a complex social activity. The purpose of this article is to identify problems confronting the science education community in the development of this new research agenda and to argue that there is a need for research in science education that attends to agency as a social practice. Despite increasing interest in student agency in educational research, the term ‘agency’ has lacked explicit operationalisation and, across the varied approaches, such as critical ethnography, ethnographies of communication, discourse analysis and symbolic interactionism, there has been a lack of coherence in its research usage. There has also been argument concerning the validity of the use of the term ‘agency’ in science education research. This article attempts to structure the variety of definitions of ‘student agency’ in science education research, identifies problems in the research related to assigning intentionality to research participants and argues that agency is a kind of discursive practice. The article also draws attention to the need for researchers to be explicit in the assumptions they rely upon in their interpretations of social worlds. Drawing upon the discursive turn in the social sciences, a definition of agency is provided, that accommodates the discursive practices of both individuals and the various functional social groups from whose activities classroom practice is constituted. The article contributes to building a focused research agenda concerned with understanding and promoting student agency in science.     

The effect of culture on the learning of science in non‐western countries: the results of an integrated research review

Abstract

An increasing number of researchers are investigating the effect of students’ prior knowledge and beliefs on their development of scientific concepts. Much of this research is taking place within the framework of constructivism, and is attracting the attention of science educators in non‐western countries. This integrative research review has been undertaken to help researchers and practitioners to identify issues for further investigation and reflection. The results suggest that ‘cosmetic’ attempts to nationalize western science curricula in non‐western countries are likely to prove ineffective because the problem, from the students’ perspective, is one of poor ‘fit’ between their world‐views, language meanings and prior beliefs and those inherent in the subject. A constructivist paradigm seems to offer good prospects for both understanding the problem and formulating learning strategies in science education which are better suited to non‐western cultures. Nevertheless, constructivist pedagogies imported from the West should be examined for their cultural appropriateness.     

Science teachers’ conceptions of teaching: Implications for teacher education

An analysis of recent science education research on student conceptions of natural phenomena, on science teaching and on science teacher planning carries implications for science teacher education. This suggests that the development of appropriate conceptions of teaching should be an important goal of science teacher education. Drawing the analogy between conceptions of natural phenomena and conceptions of teaching suggests guidelines for designing instruction in science teacher education courses. The importance of these guidelines is enhanced because teachers are likely to hold conceptions of teaching which are in conflict with those considered appropriate.

Activities in science teacher education which have attempted to identify and influence conceptions of science teaching are described and analysed. While these activities must be regarded as preliminary, they point to a powerful approach to thinking about the education of science teachers.     

Perspectives on learning to teach science: insights and dilemmas from a collaborative practicum project

In this article we discuss the theoretical and practical rationale for establishing a collaborative science practicum project and report on the findings of the first two years. The project was designed to strengthen the communication links among the school‐based educators, the pre‐service teachers, and the university‐based educators, in order to address the seemingly intractable problems associated with initiating new science teachers into the varied social practices of the teaching profession. Our findings are organized and discussed in the form of three dilemmas (Cuban 1992). These dilemmas are associated with the difficulties the pre‐service teachers had in connecting the propositional knowledge presented in the university setting with the procedural knowledge required in the school setting, and the lack of familiarity by the university and school‐based educators of each other's practice setting. We describe results that resonate with similar issues reported in other collaborative projects, and propose an alternative approach for preparing science teachers. This approach is based on conceptualizing learning to teach as a cognitive apprenticeship (Hennessy 1993) which prepares pre‐service teachers to enter the ‘community of practice’ called teaching. We argue that the success of such an approach requires the development of a collaborative community in which all participants engage in meaningful and supportive discourse concerning what, when and how science is taught in the classroom.     

Epistemological commitments in the learning of science: Examples from dynamics

An observation schedule was developed to find out if girls have less interaction with teachers than boys in physics lessons. The schedule was intended to be used by a single observer with pencil and paper. It was also intended that the analysis of the data collected should be as straightforward as possible, without the need for video or audio playback, as all interpretation of the classroom interaction takes place during the live observation.

It was found that boys received more ‘public’ interactions concerning the cognitive content of their physics lessons than girls. This seemed to be related to the higher incidence of boys calling out answers, rather than the teachers initiating more interactions with the boys.     

The search for the complicit native: Epistemic violence,historical amnesia,and the anthropologist as ideologue of empire

This essay analyzes a number of issues surrounding the Menchu/Stoll dispute. In locating Stoll's criticism of Rigoberta within a larger referential arena that includes an attack on the North American academic left and an unbridled anti-Marxism, the authors attempt to reveal how Stoll's ideological agenda is functionally compatible with the larger political agenda of the New Right. The authors also attempt to reveal Stoll's distortions of Guatemalan guerrilla history as well as problems with his analysis and collection of the data.     

Pushing boundaries: An ethnographic study of life in and beyond a feminist classroom

This paper reports on part of an 18-month ethnographic study of students' participation in a residential college. It chronicles sophomores' rites of passage through a seminar entitled, ''Women and Theatre: the Politics of Representation.'' The five narratives vividly present a process whereby an innovative and feminist pedagogy is negotiated and implemented by faculty and students alike. Using a strategy of participant observation coupled with in-depth unstructured interviews and document review, the author examined group members' beliefs and practices and ways in which they conceptualized, lived, and induced their notions of feminism inside and beyond the classroom. Thompson Tetreault's (1989) scholarship focusing on integrating content about women and gender into college curriculum is the primary theoretical lens used to analyze the narratives.     

Linking strategies and interventions in Asian American Studies to K–12 classrooms and teacher preparation

This article documents a series of programmatic strategies developed within an Asian American Studies Program at one urban public university to impact positively the education of K–12 students and teachers—especially, but not exclusively, those who are Asian American. The article first presents four critical challenges facing practitioners in the Asian American Studies field who wish?to intervene more actively within the domain of K–12 education. These include the complex demographic realities of Asian American populations; the exclusion of Asian American Studies content in the K–12 curriculum; the limited flow of Asian Americans into the field of education; and the confounding impact of high-stakes testing across all these areas. The article then describes six specific interventions by a university-based Asian American Studies program that have ecologically supported Asian American teacher education and professional development as well as K–12 curriculum development, parent/family training and high school youth development.