In this Article, Koshi Dhingra offers an essay review of four studies around the themes of identity and globalization. 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, Dhingra aruges, school has the potential to construct bridges between multiple student experiences and identities-in-practice..

You can download this review essay as a PDF document by clicking on the title above.

In this Forum, NARST_A lived history.pdf nineteen different authors construct a history of the National Association for Research in Science Education (NARST) through the analysis of documents and through the personal perspectives of individuals. The history of NARST is inseparable from the biography of the individuals through whose lives it was produced and reproduced. The history of NARST is a living history that both shapes and was shaped by the biographies of its members.

You can download this multi-authored, multiple perspective Forum as a PDF document by clicking on the title above.

The Feature Focus Forum to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 3 is Learning without belief-change?
In this Forum, Michael H.G. Hoffman raises some questions in relation to El-Hani and Mortimer’s central thesis that science education should “avoid” the idea of changing students’ beliefs and explores the necessity of enabling students to be able to participate in discourse that both challenges their beliefs as well as their teachers’ beliefs. In response, El-Hani and Mortimer engage in a refocused discussion of some of Hoffman’s key arguments.

*Note For ease of access, the feature focus article and forum are available in the same PDF download. Hoffman’s contribution to the Forum begins on page 32 of the document and the response by El-Hani and Mortimer begins on page 39 of the document. Click on title of Forum to access PDF.

Michael H.G. Hoffman Michael H. G. Hoffmann is Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology (e-mail: m.hoffmann@gatech.edu). His research interests include semiotic and epistemological foundations of learning theories and of conflict research theories. His recent publications include ‘Signs as means for discoveries. Peirce and his concepts of ‘‘Diagrammatic Reasoning,’’ ‘‘Theorematic Deduction,’’
‘‘Hypostatic Abstraction,’’ and ‘‘Theoric Transformation’’’ (2005); ‘How to Get It. Diagrammatic Reasoning as a Tool of Knowledge Development and its Pragmatic Dimension’ (2004); and ‘Learning from people, things, and signs’ (2007).

The Feature Focus article to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 2 is Multicultural education, pragmatism, and the goals of science teaching.

*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.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we offer an intermediate position in the multiculturalism/universalism debate, drawing upon Cobern and Loving’s epistemological pluralism, pragmatist philosophies, Southerland’s defense of instructional multicultural science education, and the conceptual profile model. An important element in this position is the proposal that understanding is the proper goal of science education. Our commitment to this proposal is explained in terms of a defense of an ethics of coexistence for dealing with cultural differences, according to which social argumentative processes—including those in science education—should be marked by dialogue and confrontation of arguments in the search of possible solutions, and an effort to (co-)live with differences if a negotiated solution is not reached. To understand the discourses at stake is, in our view, a key requirement for the coexistence of arguments and discourses, and the science classroom is the privileged space for promoting an understanding of the scientific discourse in particular. We argue for “inclusion” of students’ culturally grounded ideas in science education, but in a sense that avoids curricular multicultural science education, and, thus, any attempt to broaden the definition of “science” so that ideas from other ways of knowing might be simply treated as science contents. We expect this paper can contribute to the elaboration of an instructional multicultural science education approach that eliminates the forced choice between the goals of promoting students’ understanding of scientific ideas and of empowering students through education.

Charbel Nin˜o El-Hani is Professor of History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching at the Institute of Biology, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, and Researcher of the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). He is affiliated with the Graduate Studies Programs in History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching (Universidade Federal da Bahia and Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana) and in Ecology and Biomonitoring (Universidade Federal da Bahia). His research interests are in science education research, philosophy of biology, biosemiotics, and animal behavior.

Eduardo F. Mortimer is Professor of Education at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Researcher of the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development). He is a former high school chemistry teacher. His research interests focus on science learning, classroom discourse and professional development of science teachers. He is President of the Brazilian Science Education Research Association (2005–2009), editor of ‘‘Educac¸a˜o em Revista’’, a Brazilian journal of educational research, and member of editorial boards of Brazilian and international journals in education and science education.

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.

The Forum article accompanying the Feature Focus article for Volume 2 Issue 1 is entitled Forum: Pigs and Packers. In this Forum, Katherine Richardson Bruna is joined by scholars Angela Calabrese Barton and Jaime Grinberg to discuss a number of issues that add complexity to the taken-forgranted practices of teaching immigrant children in the US.

Angela Calabrese Barton is an associate professor of science education at Michigan State University. Drawing from critical and feminist theories, her research focuses on high poverty urban middle school youths’ scientific literacies in and out of school and on the preparation of teachers to teach science in high poverty urban communities. Jaime Grinberg is a professor of educational foundations at Montclair State University in New Jersey, USA. He obtained his doctorate from Michigan State University and has taught and lectured at numerous institutions in the USA, Mexico, Argentina, and Israel among other places. He teaches undergraduate classes on global issues and on the history and philosophy of eEducation, as well as teaches masters and doctoral classes on issues of language, culture and power, and on the history and politics of curriculum and teaching.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-006-9042-9-x
Online Date: 12/22/2006
View article on SpringerLink

The first Feature Focus article to be selected from Volume 2 Issue 1 is On pigs and packers: Radically contextualizing a practice of science with Mexican immigrant students.

This paper reports on instructional practices observed in a high school English Learner (EL) Science course serving newcomer Mexican immigrant youth. The school is located in a rural Midwestern meatpacking community in which labor at the hog plant is economically- and racially-segmented; it is the town’s Mexican residents, many of them undocumented, who comprise most of the unskilled labor force. The general purpose of the paper is to document how the economic and racial context of this community influences science instruction in the EL Science course and to describe how this presents particular challenges in achieving equitable science instruction for Mexican immigrant youth in these rural, globalizing places.

The authors of this feature article are Katherine Richardson Bruna and Roberta Vann. Katherine Richardson Bruna is an Assistant Professor of Multicultural and International Curriculum Studies at Iowa State University. She is a former bilingual instructional aide and ESL teacher. She has a long-standing interest in issues related to the education of Mexican immigrant children in U.S. schools. Her most recent research on the science-learning experiences of these youth has taken her into schools, communities, and households of rural central Mexico. Roberta Vann is a Professor in the Program of Teaching English as a Second Language and Applied Linguistics at Iowa State University where she teaches sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and methods. Prior to her current position, she taught in Ethiopia and was a Fulbright lecturer in Poland. She later served as a consultant on second language learning in Syria, Slovakia, Peru, and Thailand. Her most recent research combines her interests in discourse analysis and pedagogy.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-006-9041-x
Online Date: 01/12/2007
View article on SpringerLink