I happen to think that the issue of immigration is one of the most significant facing schooling at the moment. The cultures of schools are so diverse and this presents wonderful opportunities and overwhelming challenges to learners and teachers. I hope we are up to it. Immigration as it relates to science education surely is a fertile area for research in science education.

In the article, Developing a Deeper Involvement with Science: Keith’s Story, the authors Kozoll and Osborne (2006) discuss how Keith’s interest in science became his “part of a broader worldview…identity, self, and development” (p.183). This paper is based on narrative form of research, interviews with Keith. The authors concluded that, Keith at a very young age was able to see nature as a source of “wonder” leading him to ask questions, and make discoveries that generated more questions. The authors argue that, nature, family, and life in Canada and North America shaped Keith’s being, living, and how he viewed the world. As an adult, Keith wants to share his beliefs and sense of nature with others by becoming a science teacher.
As an emigrated teacher from Poland with no teaching or school experience in the United States, I relate to Keith’s story. I have lived in New York for twelve years. During that time I have dedicated my professional life to learning and claiming the educational ladder. I began as an English language learner, moved on earn associate degree, then a bachelor degree, and a masters in special education. I continued, my education by earning a post-master degree in administration and supervision, and presently I am taking my first steps at perusing a doctorate in Urban Education. My professional path took me into special education where I have been teaching for the last six years.
Keith’s story made me think of how I became a teacher? The authors claim that Keith’s childhood had a significant input on his identity and choice of profession. Is my identity also shaped by past experiences which include transactions with many different people, living in many places; or is it my childhood, young years of being expose to certain surroundings that made me become a teacher? In fact, it is the combination of all factors that prepared me to become a special education teacher. Keith wanted to be a science teacher because he grew up surrounded by nature. I became a special education teacher because I grew up surrounded by children and adults who were visually impaired or on wheel chair bound. My decision of becoming a teacher was not so conscious as Keith’s was, but after reading his interviews I see similarities between us. I will elaborate on Keith’s story, by looking at the relation between identity and school. Using Keith’s story as a lens I will also examine the effectiveness of my teaching practices.
Lets assume, that being interviewed for the research helped Keith to verbalize his identity. Keith mentioned many times the significant moments he spent with his father exploring nature, asking questions, and having the safety net of finding out the answers. For Kozoll and Osborne there are not just memories, they are memories of science that provide Keith with guidance for profession as a teacher. Science also shapes Keith’s essential worldview in “full[y] becoming himself, independent and responsible…” (p.182). I wonder how Keith’s identity becomes stable over time and across fields?
One of the ways Hall (1994) describes identity is as “a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’”(p.394). Based on Hall’s definition, I see the formation of identity as a continual process that changes based on the events that happen and the transaction with people in one’s life world. Very often, I ask myself, would I become a teacher if I would stay in Poland? Would Keith be a teacher as well if he would continue living in Jamaica?
Keith’s identity is shaped by his childhood experiences with nature. The process of “becoming” is reflected on his perspective of nature and choosing a profession as a science teacher. Keith sees nature as a part of the world where he is able to explore, take risk and find answers for himself. His view is developed from transactions with nature and his father during childhood. In contrast, nature is often portrayed in urban life as esthetics and a subject where students are thought science from a teacher centered point of view. In Keith’s reflections he mentions an incident in a science class where the teacher acknowledges Keith’s observation by saying, ”exactly” (p.173). Keith is astounded by the teacher’s expression. This is an example of how a teacher might achieve his goal, to see his students being enlightened by their discoveries. Continuing the interview, Keith says, “I can’t remember him [Keith’s teacher] ever saying that [to me before]!” (p.173). For me this is the culminating moment, where Keith links his “becoming” identity with “being” by realizing the different ways of learning and teaching science in formal school. He verbalizes his thought and says, “Its just because I’ve started to just notice things a lot more and I’ve started to think about things a lot more. I just make connections I’ve never thought of before.” (p.173). Making the connections between his childhood, the culture he grew up and went to school permit Keith to form his identity as a science teacher.
The authors emphasized that, from a young age Keith was exposed to questions and sought answers form the world around him. His eagerness to know the answers embodied him to observe the world around him. His strong memories and influence of his father made him to feel safe in asking questions and taking the risk in finding the answers. The quest for knowing more and answering questions moved him towards knowledge that he wants to share with youngsters in his classroom by relating the whole to part relation in the world. The authors imply that Keith wants his students to “have these same types of experiences and see science happening around them” (p.177). I do not think Keith will be able to imbed these same experiences as he had as a youth teaching science. However, Keith will be able to transformation these feelings and experiences through his teaching. I admire Keith’s enthusiasm to teach science using questions, observations and finding the answers verses teaching to the test, and implementing the curriculum that urban schools are structured by. As Kozoll and Osborne implied that Keith has the understanding of the type of teacher he wants to become as “one who pedagogically embraced questioning, understanding, holism, critical thinking, and interest” (p.179). Keith would be even more successful in teaching by sharing with his students the rich cultural capital he has in perceiving nature by using coteaching and cogenerative dialogue.
The coteaching with another teacher will allow Keith to develop his teaching skills and strategies and provide opportunities for students to learn (Tobin & Roth, 2006). Using cogenerative dialogue, Keith and his students will increase communication and design more meaningful lessons. Keith perspective on teaching reflects his learning for enjoyment, discoveries and questions that allow him and students to be free and feel safe as Keith did during the long walks with his father.
As a teacher with immigrant descent, I share many characteristics with Keith as a teacher. I also, want to make a difference in the school system and most importantly allow the students to view the world around them from different perspective, but how effective am I in doing so, I don’t know?

REFERENCE:
Kozoll, R., & Osborne, M. (2006). Developing a Deeper Involvement with Science:
Keith’s Story. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 1,161-187.
Tobin, K., & Roth, W.M. (2006) Teaching to Learn: A View from the Field. Sense Publishers.
Hall, S. (1994). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Eds.), Identity: Community, culture, difference (pp. 222-237). London: Lawrence & Wishart.

I feel a certain affinity to Keith, since I am also Caribbean born now domiciled in the United States. We are different in three ways: a) He is in science, I am in mathematics; b) He is in High School, I am in Middle School; c) He is from Jamaica, I am from Trinidad and Tobago. As I read the article, a flood of memories returned to me. I could easily relate to his experiences with the ants, the fruits, the sugar-cane and the freedom to explore. Thus I was completely happy, that is before I was introduced to science.
The conflict of Western science with Indigenous Knowledge has always been a problem for me. My maternal grandmother (God Bless Her Soul) had a medicine for all the common ailments that affected us as children. The local people called it ‘bush medicine’ because her concoctions resulted from the boiling of various herbs or extracting their juices. When I entered school and started ‘doing science’ I stoutly refused to accept my grandmother’s remedies. I found them to be unscientific and I would have no part of them.
Today, in the Twenty first century, to my great surprise my grandmother’s remedies are being touted as herbal medicine in health food stores. How could this be?
Has science failed? Or is there a comfortable place where they both meet? I find myself being one of those students who Taylor speaks about whose “natal worldview is shaped strongly by a non-Western culture and who encounter the press of formal schooling to construct a dominant Western science worldview and congruent cultural identity.�? At first a British education, followed by American educational beliefs created havoc with my cultural identity and left me wondering who I am and what to believe.
I note that the ‘comfortable place’ of which I spoke is referred to as the “Third Space.�? It may not always be very easy to find the Third Space. The dominance Western science and culture tend to hinder its development. Linda Smith says, “Differences between Western and indigenous countries of the world have always provided stark contrasts. Indigenous beliefs were considered shocking, abhorrent and barbaric and were prime targets for the efforts of missionaries.�? (Smith 1999, p43) I want to suggest that it is difficult to negotiate that state where Western science and indigenous worldviews flourish. The dominance of Western cultural forms in education is well documented in the literature and has caused Kincheloe to comment that the “official ways of seeing in schools are constructed realities which benefit some groups and not others.�? (Kincheloe 2003, p 58)
The fact that Keith appears to be comfortable in the Third Space is simply because from the age of five he was exposed to North American culture, first in Canada, then in the United States. Hence by adulthood the Jamaican cultural influence has all but disappeared, even the accent. It is clear therefore that the science education obtained by Keith in Jamaica was at a very early age and was influenced by the formal schooling which he received in North America. I humbly suggest that while Keith is a success as a teacher in the United States, to be able to teach in Jamaica he would have be re-calibrated.
WORKS CITED
Kincheloe Joe L. Teachers as Researchers, London, Routledge-Falmer, 2003
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai Decolonizing Methodologies, Dunedin, New Zealand,
University of Otago Press, 1999