The Feature Focus Forum to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 2 is Unraveling the power of creolized ontologies to strengthen science learning

In this Forum, Sonya Martin is joined by scholars Gillian Bayne and Ed Lehner to explore hybridized identity and creolized science as two newly emerging theoretical frameworks in urban science education. Situated in a conversation about urban students of color learning science, this Forum examines the relationship between student and teacher identity and the teaching and learning of science by raising salient questions to generate discussion focused on the use of these new frameworks.

*Note For ease of access, the feature focus article and forum are available in the same PDF download. The Forum begins on page 21 of the document. Click on title of Forum to access PDF.

Sonya Martin is an assistant professor in science education at the Drexel University School of Education. Having completed a master’s degree in both elementary education and secondary chemistry education at the University of Pennsylvania, she has taught science at many levels within the school district of Philadelphia. She received her Ph.D. from Curtin University of Technology in Australia. Currently, her research focuses the use of cogenerative dialogues and video analysis as tools for introducing University faculty, and both inservice and pre-service teachers to effective means of examining classroom teaching and learning practices.

Gillian Bayne is an assistant professor in science education at Lehman College, City University of New York. She has extensive teaching experience in secondary science education and has taught in the New York City Public Schools system for over ten years. Currently, her research is focused on the utilization of cogenerative dialogues to improve science teaching and learning.

The Feature Focus article to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 2 is Describing students of the African Diaspora: Understanding micro and meso level science learning as gateways to standards based discourse

*Note For ease of access, the feature focus article and forum are available in the same PDF download. Click on title of article to access PDF.

This paper attempts to focus researcher on students of the African Diaspora who immigrated to the United States by describing salient student differences between students of the African diaspora and African-American students. 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.

Ed Lehner is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Lehner was a New York City Public School Teacher and he received his doctoral degree in Urban Education at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. His current research examines how cogenerative dialogues can be used to improve academic achievement across the curriculum. Specifically, his research interest includes inclusive approaches to special needs students and science education.

by Seiler, Gale

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9080-y
Online Date: 11/24/2007
Print publication date: 4/1/2008
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by Lee, Yew-Jin

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9082-9
Online Date: 11/23/2007
Print publication date: 4/1/2008
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by Dhingra, Koshi

In this essay review, four studies around the themes of identity and globalization are summarized and analyzed. The researchers’ perspectives are generally grounded in Brown and Campione’s ideas on situated knowledge (Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229–270). Cambridge: The MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1994) and Lave and Wenger’s definition of learning as an activity fostered through participation in communities of practice (Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991). Questions about the goals of science education spaces, the nature of globalization in relation to practices in schools, the role of identities-in-practice in relation to participation in communities of practice such as classrooms are explored. Recommendations for key design features in effective science educational spaces, based upon the findings presented in the collection of four studies, are offered. School, it is suggested here, functions best as a clearing house for the myriad science-related stories student participants generate in their various communities of practice (e.g., within popular culture, family, community, informal educational sites). In this way, school has the potential to construct bridges between multiple student experiences and identities-in-practice.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9077-6
Online Date: 11/23/2007
Print publication date: 4/1/2008
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by Brandt, Carol B.

Despite completing undergraduate degrees in the life sciences, few Indigenous women choose to pursue careers in scientific research. To help us understand how American Indian students engage with science, this ethnographic research describes (1) how four Navajo women identified with science, and (2) the narratives they offered when we discussed their experiences with scientific discourse. Using intensive case studies to describe the experiences of these women, my research focused on their final year of undergraduate study in the life sciences at a university in southwestern US. I point to the processes by which the participants align themselves with ideas, practices, groups, or people in science. As each participant recounted her experiences with scientific discourse, they recreated for me a discursive geography of their lives on the reservation, at home, at community colleges (in some cases), and on the university campus. In the construction and analysis of the narratives for this research, mapping this geography was critical to understanding each participant’s discursive relationship with science. In these discursive spaces, I observed productive “locations of possibility” in which students and their instructors: valued connected knowing; acknowledged each other’s history, culture, and knowledge; began to speak to each other subject-to-subject; and challenged normative views of schooling. I argue that this space, as a location of possibility, has the power to transform the crushing impersonalized schooling that often characterizes “rigorous” scientific programs in a research institution.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9075-8
Online Date: 11/23/2007
Print publication date: 9/1/2008
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by Parsons, Eileen Carlton

This article highlights the transformative contributions of Mary Monroe Atwater to the field of science education. Influenced by worldviews shaped by a segregated macro-society and the privileges of a micro-society, Mary stood against oppression in the early years of her academic career by desegregating academic settings and being the first and only African American in varied arenas for many years. As an aspiring academic, Mary challenged dominant paradigms and as an activist academic, she changed the landscape of science education. She broadened the knowledge base through scholarship and praxis and diversified the science education community through personal and professional efforts that were pioneering in nature.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9078-5
Online Date: 11/22/2007
Print publication date: 4/1/2008
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by Rahm, Jrène

In what ways do urban youths’ hybridity constitute positioning and engagement in science-as-practice? In what ways are they “hybridizing” and hence surviving in a system that positions them as certain types of learners and within which they come to position themselves often as other than envisioned? To answer these questions, I draw from two ethnographic case studies, one a scientist–museum–school partnership initiative, and the other, an after-school science program for girls only, both serving poor, ethnically and linguistically diverse youth in Montreal, Canada. Through a study of the micro dialectics from the perspective of youth, I show what we can learn from examples of doing science in a formal and informal educational context supportive of marginalized science practices resembling in part, at least, science-as-practice. Through an integration of the findings with current discourses of relevance in science education such as funds of knowledge and youth centered, co-opted science, I contribute to the formulation of a global pedagogy of science education and in particular, what such may imply in the eyes of youth in French Canada.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9081-x
Online Date: 11/22/2007
Print publication date: 4/1/2008
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by Rivera Maulucci, Maria S.

This study reports a subset of findings from a larger, ongoing study aimed at exploring interactions between teacher identity, learning, and classroom practices in a social justice teacher education program at a selective liberal arts college in New York. This case-study explores the journey of Elena, as an immigrant, a student, and a pre-service teacher candidate towards becoming a social justice educator. Elena reflects upon her school language experiences as an immigrant youth, her learning in a social justice teacher education program, and her field experiences in an international high school. The analysis spans macro-, meso-, and microlevels to explore the ways globalization, particularly immigration, as well as schooling policies for English language learners interact with aspects of Elena’s core identity, particularly in school settings. The findings show some of the ways language and literacy verified and/or denied aspects of Elena’s core identity; specific instances where second language proficiency was cast as power and privilege versus disadvantage according to ethnic, language, and class categorizations; and the struggles Elena, and other immigrant youth may face given the focus on English language acquisition and high stakes accountability in schools, at the expense of students’ primary language proficiency and affirmation of core identity markers.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9074-9
Online Date: 11/7/2007
Print publication date: 4/1/2008
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