In this paper, we examined data collected as part of a 5-year project designed to foster reform-based urban science teaching through teachers' communities of inquiry. Drawing upon a distributed leadership framework, we analyzed teacher 'talk' during professional learning community (PLC) meetings. This analysis yielded five elements: teacher learning and collaboration, community formation, confidence in knowledge of content and guided inquiry, concerns about the impact of accountability measures on teaching and learning, and sustainability of reform. Follow-up interviews with participants
This study explores how activities developed by science experts in partnership with middle school teachers were employed and interpreted. The goals of this partnership were to (a) help the science teacher meet earth science content standards in new ways, (b) expose students to 'real world' experiences outside their school setting, and (c) positively impact teacher practice by providing a program to be used as a catalyst for future learning. Over 300 sixth graders mostly underrepresented science students attended activities at an aquarium serving an urban West Coast urban context. Science
This paper is birthed from my lifelong experiences as student, teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban science classrooms. This includes my years as a minority student in biology, chemistry, and physics classrooms, 10 years as science teacher and high school science department chair, 5-years conducting research on youth experiences in urban science classrooms, and current work in preparing science teachers for teaching in urban schools. These experiences afford me both emic and etic lenses through which to view urban science classrooms and urban youth communities. This paper, both
Science education researchers increasingly focus on the use of controversial science topics in the classroom to prepare students to make personal and societal decisions about these issues. However, researchers infrequently investigate the diverse ways in which students learn about controversial science topics outside the classroom, and how these interact with school learning. Therefore, this study uses qualitative, ethnographic research methods to investigate how 20 high school students attending a New York City public school learn about a particular controversial science topic-HIV/AIDS-in
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A place-based approach to an inquiry unit on watersheds created opportunities for the development of student conceptions of the human and natural components of urban watersheds. Through direct inquiry experience in the natural environment, student learning and attachment to place was observed.
This study is relevant to educators seeking to expand science practices and discourse in their programs for youth. The author finds that a lack of understanding of everyday communication patterns of African-American students leads many science teachers to shut down students just as they are beginning to express interest and active involvement in the science classroom. The result may be orderly looking classrooms, but the youth have in fact “checked out” and are merely following procedures. This paper presents a framework for analyzing various levels of authentic involvement in the science
Teachers of English language learners face the dual challenge of helping students to learn the academic content of science and to acquire English language proficiency. Elementary teachers, meanwhile, face the additional challenge of responding to new teaching requirements outlined within reform initiatives with an often limited understanding of science and its practices. The study reported in this paper sought to examine these issues (and also a comparison of teacher’s knowledge and practice between grade levels) as part of the analysis of a long-term professional development initiative for