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Fostering Critical Perspectives of Science among Preservice Elementary Teachers: An Empirical Identification of Affordances and Hindrances
Abstract
Although the Next Generation Science Standards and the National Science Education Standards prioritize the production of critical consumers of science as an overarching goal, there is relatively little science education research aimed at fostering critical perspectives among science teachers. The purpose of this theory-generative study is to identify ideas that might serve as affordances or hindrances to the development of critical perspectives of science. Data were collected from 64, preservice elementary-level teachers, over the course of three semesters, using an open-ended survey. In these data, we identified three affordances and five hindrances that might influence our ability to foster critical perspectives. Among the affordances for fostering critical perspectives, we found that students (a) have a clear sense that cultural difference does not suggest inferiority, (b) have a clear sense that human bias influences science work, and (c) regard opinion as a factor shaping the work of scientists. Among the hindrances to fostering critical perspectives we found that students (d) regard Western science as superior to non-Western science, (e) do not have a strong working knowledge of the concept of “culture,” (f) regard science as an objective enterprise, (g) do not have a strong working knowledge of the concept of “objective,” and (h) have a one-sided view of scientific advancement. We conclude with suggestions for future research and for practice.
... As such, we situate our framework within the ongoing conversations in science teacher education research (e.g., Calabrese- Barton et al., 2022;Mutegi et al., 2022) and teacher education research more broadly (e.g., Gist MADKINS AND NAZAR | 1119Souto-Manning, 2019). In offering this framework to the field, we describe efforts with universitybased undergraduate and graduate-level preservice teacher education programs while acknowledging the important work occurring across a range of settings to prepare science teachers. ...
... However, scientific disciplines-and by proxy, science education-are often considered apolitical and culture-free (Cochran et al., 2020;Sheth, 2019). Critical science education scholars resist this apolitical characterization of PK-12 science teaching and learning in their research and practice (Madkins & Morton, 2021;Morales-Doyle, 2017;Mutegi et al., 2022;Patterson & Gray, 2019;Riley & Mensah, 2022;Vossoughi & Vakil, 2018). ...
... Instead, I prioritize PSTs developing understandings about centering social justice issues in science classrooms. Despite the potentially lower course evaluations and other potentially negative consequences, I continue to engage in the risky work of prioritizing justice in my courses like other teacher education Scholars of Color (e.g.,Mutegi et al., 2022;Souto- Manning, 2019).By prioritizing strengths-based perspectives and learners' needs, I aim to implement (re)humanizing approaches to both my research and teaching endeavors(del Carmen Salazar, 2013;Souto-Manning & Winn, 2019). In doing so, I can better support preservice science teachers in disrupting anti-Black and other forms of racism in their future work and provide my colleagues with a model of how to pursue this study agenda. ...
For some time, scholars who are guided by critical theories and perspectives have called out how white supremacist ideologies and systemic racism work to (re)produce societal inequities and educational injustices across science learning contexts in the United States. Given the sociopolitical nature of society, schooling, and science education, it is important to address the racist and settled history of scientific disciplines and science education. To this end, we take an antiracist stance on science teaching and learning and seek to disrupt forms of systemic racism in science classrooms. Since teachers do much of the daily work of transforming science education for minoritized learners, we advocate for preparing teachers who understand what it means to engage in antiracist, justice‐oriented science teaching. In this article, we share our framework for supporting preservice teachers in understanding, developing, and implementing antiracist teaching dispositions and instructional practices. In alignment with other researchers in teacher education who emphasize the importance of anchoring teacher education practice and research in prominent educational theory, we highlight the theories undergirding our approach to antiracist science teaching. We offer considerations for how researchers and science teacher educators can use this framework to transform science teacher education.
... Finally, we look for students' connections about how sensemaking can support future-making for themselves, their students, and the natural world. We see these connections as part of teachers' developing political clarity, helping them recognize social injustices in science and schooling and work to redress some of the harms these systems have caused for minoritized communities (Madkins & Nazar, 2022;Mutegi et al., 2022). ...
... Indeed, students later in the secondary education program, as well as students with racially marginalized identities, were more likely to make these connections (Table 6). These are enduring challenges for preservice teachers' developing critical perspectives of science (Jones & Donaldson, 2022;Mutegi et al., 2022). ...
Preservice secondary science teachers often experience science learning in narrow and marginalizing ways in their science preparation. These experiences cause harm, particularly for preservice teachers of color. They also limit the disciplinary resources they can develop for later teaching science in ways that value and sustain their students' ways of knowing and being in the world. Our research explores possibilities for cultivating new spaces for preservice secondary science teachers to engage in science. In a content‐focused education course, we designed for and studied preservice teachers' engagement in expansive and connective sensemaking, incorporating heterogeneity, power, and historicity in pursuits of explanatory accounts of the natural world. In this article, we examined how this course design can support preservice teachers to attune to heterogeneity in ways of knowing in science and to connect to identity and historicity in scientific sensemaking. Our analysis suggests that students' final projects reflected attunements to diverse knowing, communicating, and relating in science and deep connections with their identities and future‐making, yet had fewer connections to sociohistorical narratives and structures. We developed illustrative case studies of four student projects, highlighting the personal, social, and political possibilities of creating space for future educators to imagine more expansive and connective forms of science. This study contributes a novel model for preservice science teacher education to support teacher learning to value and sustain their students' ways of knowing and being in the world.
... Moreover, it is essential to explore the role of AIEd in STEM teacher education and teacher education more broadly. Preservice educators are capable of acknowledging the influence of human bias on science (Mutegi et al., 2022). Future research can explore how future teachers can be trained to recognize bias in AI-produced text and media within STEM spaces, thereby impacting the future classroom integration of AI. ...
Background, context, and purpose of the study
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly prevalent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, holding promising potential for supporting the design and implementation of quality STEM education. However, there is a lack of data-based research studying the diverse perceptions of AI in STEM education as conveyed on social media, the factors that influence those perceptions, or the change in those perceptions over time among public audiences.
Results, the main findings
The purpose of this study was to examine public perceptions of AI in STEM education by analyzing X posts (Tweets) between 04/28/2020 and 04/27/2023. We used a machine learning-based sentiment analysis to analyze the public’s perception of AI and the factors that influence it. Findings suggest a range of perceptions among X users regarding AI in STEM education, with most sentiments neutral and positive. However, some negative sentiments were also identified, suggesting that some users may be wary of AI’s potential impact on STEM education.
Conclusions
This work will contribute to government, policymakers, and educators in making necessary decisions and improving overall public awareness of AI in STEM education. Additionally, the results of this study suggest that further research is needed to better understand public sentiment about AI in STEM education.
... It requires that preservice teachers work to construct a social justice science teacher identity (Boylan & Woolsey, 2015), including the belief that every student has the right to have access to and learn science, and the commitment to creating learning opportunities that center phenomena based on real social and environmental justice issues. Preservice teachers who make socially just science education the foundation of their classrooms build connections to students' lives, cultures, interests, and experiences (Paris & Alim, 2014); implement curriculum and instruction that is academically rigorous and culturally relevant to students (Ladson-Billings, 2000); examine the historically racist and inequitable aspects of science practices and products (Mutegi et al., 2022); and encourage students to use science as a critical tool in addressing equity and social justice issues (Buxton, 2010;Morales-Doyle, 2017). Because preservice science teachers may not have learned to connect the teaching and learning of science with social justice issues in their own elementary, secondary, and/or university experiences, it is imperative that science teacher education programs provide preparation in social justice frameworks and pedagogies (Chen & Mensah, 2018;Madkins & Nazar, 2022). ...
... Critical teacher educators have made this aspect of teachers' learning an explicit goal in their work with STEM teachers, emphasizing the political nature of disciplinary teaching and learning (Guti errez, 2013;Mensah & Jackson, 2018;Morales-Doyle et al., 2020;Mutegi et al., 2022). ...
Teachers can play critical roles in challenging or reinscribing dominant narratives about what counts as STEM, who is seen within STEM disciplines, and how these disciplines should be taught. However, teachers have often experienced STEM in limited ways in their own education and are thereby provided with few resources for re-imagining these disciplines. While teacher educators have designed learning environments that engage teachers in new forms of disciplinary activities, there have been few accounts that describe how teachers make connections between these experiences and dominant narratives that impact their own and their students’ learning. In this study, I report on the experiences of Alma, a white, working-class, female elementary teacher in an online graduate certificate program for K-12 engineering educators. Through her engagement in engineering design in the program, Alma appropriated—transformed and made her own—discourse of the engineering design process in ways that trouble some of the narratives that restrict her, her family, and her students in STEM and in school. Alma’s experiences emphasize the need to consider not just what teachers learn about disciplinary tools and discourses, but how they transform these for their own purposes and contexts.
Informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning (ISL) can remain inequitable when discourse and practices in ISL spaces position youth as temporary guests by implicitly or explicitly sidelining youths' experiences, community wisdom, cultures, and histories. The framework of rightful presence problematizes guest–host relationalities that delimit youths' rights in learning spaces. It calls for educators' disruptive and transformative practices in support of youths reauthoring rights toward co‐creating equitable learning opportunities. This study explored how such practices emerge from educators' routine ISL instructions. Using comparative constant analysis of data generated from a larger research–practice partnership project in regional ISL settings, we identified three practices that differed in how educators supported rightful presence through engaging youths in ISL design: (1) educator‐designed space making; (2) taking‐up youths' disruption and reorganizing ISL opportunities; (3) co‐creating new ISL opportunities. Practice 1 primarily focused on fostering disciplinary and social engagement, often prompting educators to further enact Practice 2 or 3. Practice 2 or 3 made space not only for youths' equitable access to educator‐designed ISL but also for reconfiguring power relationalities with youths for reauthoring ISL opportunities. Our findings suggest that support for rightful presence can begin from ordinary educator‐designed ISL practices but should also seek to disrupt the ordinariness with youths. We discuss findings, including how Practices 2 and 3 can be more purposefully enacted in the ISL curricular and structural planning phase, moving beyond their emergence as a follow‐up on Practice 1. Implications are considered regarding the role of STEM education research and practice in support of youths' presence as rightful participants, re‐organizers, and constructors of their ISL opportunities and futures.
As current research centers on investigating the motivations, beliefs, and experiences of Black students in STEM and factors that influence Black STEM teachers' career decisions. She has also collaborated actively with researchers in other fields to study how informal STEM learning experiences affect Black girls. Abstract Black teachers have been known to provide positive experiences and outcomes for students, especially Black students. Nevertheless, Black science teachers are marginally represented in public classrooms across the United States, and Black students are marginally under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Black science teachers provide an inherent value to the education of Black children, including their ability to make science meaningful and relevant, contribute to the community where they live and work, and relate to students' experiences more intimately. Further, All levels of education should prioritize Black science teacher recruitment, and educational researchers should provide more evidence of recruiting, teaching, and learning best practices as it relates to teachers of African descent.
https://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/jri/vol7/iss3/11
In this article, the authors draw on their experience in an international, cross-cultural visit to ponder similarities and differences in educational systems in both the USA and Kenya. During the visit, one feature of Kenyan society that stood out and became a frequent topic of discussion was the existence of the Jua Kali. Presenting their ponderings through the metaphor of windows and mirrors, the authors use the Jua Kali to (a) muse about the impact of school structure and science curriculum on Kenyan society and (b) reflect on the impact of school structure and science curriculum on US society. Through these muses and reflections, the authors suggest that science curriculum in the USA is structured to be irrelevant and inefficient, and it does not yield the results that it promises. The authors conclude by drawing from the history of the science, technology, and society movement to advocate for small-scale, local reform efforts.
Background
Although there has been a pronounced growth in hip-hop-based pedagogy (HHBP) scholarship in recent years, there has not been a concomitant critique of this growing body of work. As a consequence, much of this scholarship is best characterized as advocacy of HHBP.
Purpose/Objective
The objective of this article is to promote critical discourse around the conceptualization and implementation of HHBP by (a) identifying a set of challenges presented in the conceptualization of HHBP scholarship, (b) describing the narrative that these challenges converge to support, and (c) suggesting an alternative narrative aimed at fostering a more empowering use of HHBP.
Research Design
To accomplish this objective, we provide an in-depth critique of Emdin and Lee's (2012) article, “Hip-hop, the ‘Obama effect,’ and urban science education.” Through this critique, we first identify eight challenges posed by the authors’ argument, as well as the narrative that is the foundation of this argument.
Conclusions/Recommendations
We conclude by presenting an alternate narrative of hip-hop as an instrument of systemic racism and offering suggestions as to how HHBP can be used in both research and practice to both avoid and counter systemic racism.
The underachievement and underrepresentation of African Americans in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines have been well documented. Efforts to improve the STEM education of African Americans continue to focus on relationships between teaching and learning and factors such as culture, race, power, class, learning preferences, cultural styles and language. Although this body of literature is deemed valuable, it fails to help STEM teacher educators and teachers critically assess other important factors such as pedagogy and curriculum. In this article, the authors argue that both pedagogy and curriculum should be centered on the social condition of African Americans – thus promoting mathematics learning and teaching that aim to improve African communities worldwide.
Although there is a significant body of work that underscores the importance of pedagogy aimed at being responsive to students' unique racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, there is relatively little work that helps science practitioners to understand what this pedagogy looks like in practice. Drawing on Mutegi's (2011) description of socially transformative mathematics and science curriculum and Ladson-Billings' (1995) framing of culturally responsive pedagogy, this article describes a four-week summer science camp for African American adolescent males. The article employs the methodological approach of Critical Race Theory in order to illustrate for the reader what socially transformative and culturally relevant science instruction might look like in practice.
The purpose of this study was twofold. First, to describe the undergraduate student ratings of teaching effectiveness based on the traditional 36-item end-of-course evaluation form used in the College of Education (COE) at a southeastern Research Extensive predominantly White institution. Second, using critical race theory (CRT) to compare the teaching effectiveness for the tenure-track faculty in this study based on race (White, Black, and Other racial groups including Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans). Three academic years of undergraduate level courses were used to analyze student ratings for 28 items (26 multidimensional, which address specific topics or a single aspect about instruction and 2 global/overall, which address value of course and teaching ability) on the end-of-course evaluation form. Eight of the 36 items request demographic information from the student. The findings showed that of the three faculty racial groups, Black faculty mean scores were the lowest on the 26 multidimensional items. On the two global items, which are used in making personnel decisions, Black faculty mean scores were also the lowest of the faculty groups analyzed.
This article discusses a number of aspects of the nature of science that can be illustrated by considering the development of pangenesis, a principle proposed by Charles Darwin to describe the rules of inheritance, explain the source of new variation, and solve other natural history puzzles. Pangenesis - although false - can be used to illustrate important nature of science ideas such as the need for empirical evidence, the use of inductive reasoning, the creative component of science, the role of bias and subjectivity, social and personal influences on science, and the notion that scientific knowledge is tentative but durable, yet self correcting.
This paper presents a new approach to science education that takes a path through sociocultural theory and into the ideas of Gloria Anzaldúa. We apply Anzaldúan theory to science education by illustrating it in action through various examples which explore the multidimensionality of teaching science with Latin@ students in various contexts including dual language settings. We present what it is to journey through transformation using examples from educators at various levels of science within the world of teaching science with Latin@ students in the U.S. Our examples illustrate how Latin@ students cross many cultural borders in Spanish, English, Latin@ home culture, school culture, and the world of scientific dialogue and content, and in doing so, go through tensions and transformations between dominant and non-dominant worlds, which should be acknowledged and better understood through Anzaldúan theory. Fundamentally, we present a transformative notion of Latin@ science learning as “living on the bridges” of many dialogic and cultural practices, and having to negotiate these in-between spaces, or “nepantla” (Anzaldu´a and Keating in Interviews, Psychology Press, London, 2000), where Latin@ students must contend with the fragmented and sometimes painful struggle of living in racialized reality amidst the demands of a dominant culture, and where transformation and healing are possible through the path of conocimiento. We advocate for teachers to become science teacher nepantler@s, who guide their students through nepantla, and into a new mestiz@ consciousness of science education.
This study examined the connections elementary preservice science teachers made among various aspects of nature of science (NOS). Totally, 45 preservice science teachers who were enrolled in the Laboratory Application in Science II course participated in the study. The course provided meaningful and practical inquiry-based experiences, as well as explicit and reflective instruction about NOS. Each week, instructors targeted a specific NOS aspect related to the laboratory investigation. The design of the study was qualitative and descriptive in nature. Data sources included preservice teachers’ responses for the VNOS-B, semi-structured interviews, and preservice teachers’ weekly written reflections about NOS. Data analysis focused on preservice teachers’ ability to connect their understandings of the various aspects of NOS to one another. 43(96 %) of preservice teachers made connections among NOS aspects and generally, these connections were emphasized at the end of the semester following the intervention. The findings support the notion that the reflective component of explicit-and-reflective instruction provides opportunities for preservice teachers to revisit their ideas about NOS aspects throughout instruction in such a way that fosters building of connections across aspects of NOS.
Recent criticisms of the goal of “science for all” with regard to minority students have alluded to the onerous culture of school science characterized by white, middle-class values that eschew personal everyday science experiences and nontraditional funds of knowledge, in addition to alienating science instruction. Using critically-oriented, sociocultural perspectives, this article explores the sixth grade classroom of a male, white, science teacher in an urban school that serves only minority students. Using Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain's (2001) notion of figured worlds, we look at what learning science looks like in Mr. M's classroom and how he provides the structural support to increase student participation by creating different figured worlds of sixth grade science. In these different figured worlds, we discuss the pedagogical strategies Mr. M uses to purposefully recruit nontraditional funds of knowledge of racial minority and low-income students, thereby positioning them with more authority for participation. Through this case study of Mr. M and the racial minority and low-income students he teaches, we discuss the role science teachers play in urban school science education and the agency and achievement racial minority and low-income students are capable of with appropriate support.
This article reports on two types of resistance by preservice science teachers: resistance to ideological change and resistance to pedagogical change. The former has to do with the feelings of disbelief, defensiveness, guilt, and shame that Anglo-European preservice teachers experience when they are asked to confront racism and other oppressive social norms in class discussions. Resistance to pedagogical change has to do with the roles that preservice teachers feel they need to play to manage conflicting messages about what they are expected to do from their cooperating teachers (cover the curriculum and maintain class control) and from their university supervisors (implement student-centered, constructivist class activities), and about what they desire to do as emerging teachers. Although these two forms of resistance are closely linked, in the literature they are extensively reported separately. This study suggests a sociotransformative constructivist orientation as a vehicle to link multicultural education and social constructivist theoretical frameworks. By using this orientation, specific pedagogical strategies for counterresistance were found effective in helping preservice teachers learn to teach for diversity and understanding. These strategies for counterresistance were primarily drawn from the qualitative analysis of a yearlong project with secondary science preservice teachers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 589–622, 1998.
Helping students develop informed views of nature of science (NOS) has been and continues to be a central goal for kindergarten through Grade 12 (K–12) science education. Since the early 1960s, major efforts have been undertaken to enhance K–12 students and science teachers' NOS views. However, the crucial component of assessing learners' NOS views remains an issue in research on NOS. This article aims to (a) trace the development of a new open-ended instrument, the Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire (VNOS), which in conjunction with individual interviews aims to provide meaningful assessments of learners' NOS views; (b) outline the NOS framework that underlies the development of the VNOS; (c) present evidence regarding the validity of the VNOS; (d) elucidate the use of the VNOS and associated interviews, and the range of NOS aspects that it aims to assess; and (e) discuss the usefulness of rich descriptive NOS profiles that the VNOS provides in research related to teaching and learning about NOS. The VNOS comes in response to some calls within the science education community to go back to developing standardized forced-choice paper and pencil NOS assessment instruments designed for mass administrations to large samples. We believe that these calls ignore much of what was learned from research on teaching and learning about NOS over the past 30 years. The present state of this line of research necessitates a focus on individual classroom interventions aimed at enhancing learners' NOS views, rather than on mass assessments aimed at describing or evaluating students' beliefs. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 497–521, 2002
This article discusses the negative impact that teaching antiracism can have on teaching careers when students evaluate their efforts and abilities. The published literature abounds with anecdotes about negative student reactions to antiracism teaching, particularly when it involves teaching White students about White privilege. Students often reject both message and messenger, projecting their frustrations and emotions about this topic onto instructors. Therefore, the authors believe that student evaluations for some courses (e. g., psychology, sociology, geography, political science) should include items about whether students have acquired a less racist, more multicultural perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conceptual change is simple idea. If students are given an opportunity to construct scientifically orthodox conceptions, if they then come to see that these conceptions are more intelligible, plausible, and fruitful than other conceptions, the students will change their conceptions for scientific ones. This rationalistic view is embedded in a narrowly conceived notion of the role knowledge plays in an individual's life and fails to recognize that students' everyday conceptions differ from science because they serve a different purpose. Conceptual change instruction is intended to foster a scientific view of the world. This goal is wrong-headed. Science needs to be joined with the other school disciplines in the common goal of developing student world-views of which science is one articulated component. Conceptual change should become more plausible for students when they have been invited to a discourse on what are the important questions of life, what are the various answers, and what does science have to contribute to the common human quest for a meaningful life. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
In April 2018, after years of controversy, New York City removed a statue of Dr J. Marion Sims from Central Park across from the New York Academy of Medicine. For decades, Sims had been a polarizing figure. He was praised as a “father of modern gynecology” for his pathbreaking surgical treatment of vesico-vaginal fistula, but vilified because he developed the technique by experimenting on enslaved women in Alabama in the 1840s.
Longstanding inequities in science education across the lines of race and class remain the most intractable problem in the field. Justice-centered science pedagogy is introduced as a theoretical framework built on the traditions of critical pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy to address these inequities as components of larger oppressive systems. This study examines how a justice-centered advanced chemistry class in an urban neighborhood high school supported students to succeed academically while taking up urgent issues of social and environmental justice identified by their communities. The findings include evidence that curriculum organized around an issue of environmental racism supported academic achievement that exceeded the expectations of a typical high school chemistry course. The findings also document how the curriculum provided opportunities for students to move beyond academic achievement to position themselves as transformative intellectuals. As transformative intellectuals, students demonstrated complex thinking about science and social justice issues, cultivated their commitment to their communities and cultures of origin, and developed credibility as local youth knowledgeable in science. These findings have implications for teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers who wish to engage with science education as a catalyst for social transformation.
Although Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been applied to teacher education, it has yet to be meaningfully integrated into the core of urban teacher education programs. The reticence to embrace CRT is largely due to the overwhelming presence of Whiteness, despite Sleeter's (2001) demand for diversification. This theoretically interpretative article employs CRT's methodology of counterstorytelling to interrogate how Whiteness manifests itself in emotional ways, like fetishism and sentimentalization, and how such emotions are the root of resistance toward CRT in teacher education. Drawing from Black feminism and Critical Whiteness Studies, we utilize emotionally-based theories to illustrate the importance of CRT in teacher education, to identify barriers to CRT, and to recommend how teacher education can more genuinely reinvest in antiracism.
Teaching about nature of science (NOS) is considered as an important goal of science education in various countries. Extensive empirical research about how some aspects of NOS can be effectively taught is also available. The most widely adopted conceptualization of NOS is based on a small number of general aspects of NOS, which fall into two groups: aspects of the nature of scientific knowledge (NOSK) and aspects of scientific inquiry (SI). This conceptualization of NOS will be described in this article as the “general aspects” conceptualization of NOS. Proponents of this conceptualization have concluded from empirical research that particular general aspects of NOS can be effectively taught at various K-12, undergraduate, and teacher preparation courses. Yet, this conceptualization has been criticized as being insufficient and even as misrepresenting science. Critics suggest that a more complete picture of science should be communicated to teachers and students, rather than a list of general aspects of NOS. In this article, I suggest that the “general aspects” conceptualization of NOS provides an effective starting point for teaching about NOS and for addressing students’ preconceptions about science. Once this is done, teaching could include more complex aspects and attend simultaneously to multiple contexts, as the critics suggest. This might be achieved along a learning pathway, in which the “general aspects” conceptualization of NOS might nicely pave the way for the “family resemblance” conceptualization of NOS, espoused by several of the critics because of explicit continuities between them. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach
Recent arguments in science education have proposed that school science should pay more attention to teaching the nature of science and its social practices. However, unlike the content of science, for which there is well-established consensus, there would appear to be much less unanimity within the academic community about which “ideas-about-science” are essential elements that should be included in the contemporary school science curriculum. Hence, this study sought to determine empirically the extent of any consensus using a three stage Delphi questionnaire with 23 participants drawn from the communities of leading and acknowledged international experts of science educators; scientists; historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science; experts engaged in work to improve the public understanding of science; and expert science teachers. The outcome of the research was a set of nine themes encapsulating key ideas about the nature of science for which there was consensus and which were considered to be an essential component of school science curriculum. Together with extensive comments provided by the participants, these data give some measure of the existing level of agreement in the community engaged in science education and science communication about the salient features of a vulgarized account of the nature of science. Although some of the themes are already a feature of existing school science curricula, many others are not. The findings of this research, therefore, challenge (a) whether the picture of science represented in the school science curriculum is sufficiently comprehensive, and (b) whether there balance in the curriculum between teaching about the content of science and the nature of science is appropriate. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 692–720, 2003
In this article, Donaldo Macedo presents a provocative critique of the current educational system and challenges educators to examine potentially dangerous educational practices that privilege specialization while ignoring the need to make linkages using critical literacy. Recent events such as the Gulf War and the first Rodney King verdict are presented as compelling evidence that, without the ability to read the word and the world critically, Americans are subject to political manipulation. Macedo links this current political climate to the state of many of our nation's schools, which operate under a pedagogy that perpetuates the inability to think critically.
This article shows the potential usefulness of applying Kegan’s constructive-developmental model to White teacher education students’ difficulties in understanding racial dynamics in US society. The data for this analysis come from a study examining the evolution of White teacher candidates’ understandings and practices related to diversity as they experienced different parts of an undergraduate teacher education program over a two-semester period. We describe the case of one of the students, Michelle, focusing on the contradiction between Michelle’s intense engagement, hard work and enjoyment in her required Foundations course and her simultaneous rejection of core ideas of the course. We show how Kegan’s model is helpful in explaining this contradiction and discuss implications for teacher educators.
The body of research aimed at explaining the science teaching and learning of African Americans has identified myriad factors that correlate with African American's science career choices and science performance generally. It has not, however, offered any satisfactory explanations as to why those factors are disproportionately racially determined. This article argues that the sociocultural construction of race, which has roots in antebellum Western society, has endured to the present day; and that there is sufficient historical tradition and empirical evidence to warrant a research agenda that accounts for the sociocultural construction of race in explaining African American science education. The article concludes by suggesting a set of research questions and theoretical perspectives that considers the sociocultural construction of race to guide future research. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:82–103, 2013
Class discussions of White privilege can increase sociocultural and international awareness in our students. Therefore, instructors should be encouraged to teach this topic in introductory college survey courses (e.g., psychology and sociology), although negative reactions by White students can affect student evaluations of an instructor’s teaching skills. We decided to further explore college students’ cognitive and emotional reactions to this topic. Principal components analysis revealed four factors. Agreement with items related to the factor Societal (e.g., American society is not a meritocracy) was associated with understanding White privilege. Agreement with items associated with the factor Personal (e.g., feeling personally attacked) was associated with failure to understand this concept. The remaining two factors, Denial and The Bad Guys (feeling like one of “the bad guys” in society), were not significantly associated with understanding White privilege. These findings are discussed in the context of successfully teaching antiracism.
In, this paper, I explore the need for particular types of interdisciplinarity, which I refer to as technical heteroglossia, in the face of neoliberal political and economic disenfranchisement. I examine the case of a group of medics (EMTs, nurses, and lay medical practitioners) known as street medics and their efforts to provide a working set of medical protocols for protesters, victims of natural disasters, and, more generally, communities resisting neoliberalism, militarism, and corporate power. To function, this network has had to explicitly embrace multiple medical traditions: allopathic (sometimes called Western), Chinese, herbalist, naturopathic, etc. Being able to speak within multiple traditions (medical heteroglossia) is deeply valued. I also recount the history of the medics and discuss at length the contextual forces that pull medics in different directions: allopathic medicine and more varied and unorthodox practices.
This study examines the impact of Disaggregate Instruction on students’ science learning. Disaggregate Instruction is the idea that science teaching and learning can be separated into conceptual and discursive components. Using randomly assigned experimental and control groups, 49 fifth‐grade students received web‐based science lessons on photosynthesis using our experimental approach. We supplemented quantitative statistical comparisons of students’ performance on pre‐ and post‐test questions (multiple choice and short answer) with a qualitative analysis of students’ post‐test interviews. The results revealed that students in the experimental group outscored their control group counterparts across all measures. In addition, students taught using the experimental method demonstrated an improved ability to write using scientific language as well as an improved ability to provide oral explanations using scientific language. This study has important implications for how science educators can prepare teachers to teach diverse student populations.
The authors use critical race theory (CRT) and critical race feminism (CRF) as a lens for analyzing and grappling with White students’ resistance to learning about and deconstructing systems of oppression. The authors build on the work of critical scholars whose work exposes the ways in which White pre‐service teachers resist counter‐hegemonic pedagogical approaches and subject matter. In the so‐called ‘post‐racial’ era, these ways of resisting have become more virulent and structural in nature, thereby institutionalizing racism. Included in the article are excerpts from the authors’ end of the academic year teaching evaluations. The excerpted comments serve as evidence that students use evaluations as weapons to speak back to and against, not only to anti‐racist philosophies, but counter‐hegemonic narratives that represent the diversity of their future teaching experiences. Both faculty members are formally trained in social work, multicultural education, and educational policy. Finally, using CRT and CRF the authors argue that cultural hegemony is institutionalized when White students are afforded the privilege to evaluate Black female professors without academic departments and universities critically assessing the role that racism and sexism play in student feedback. Our use of CRT and CRF make transparent the ways in which White students’ resistance as cultural hegemony is institutionalized in their evaluations of experiences in social foundations courses. The article has implications for teacher education programs, higher education policy, and social foundations of education.
This study examined the nature of science (NOS) views of lower elementary grade level students, including their views of scientists. Participants were 23 third-grade African American students from two Midwest urban settings. A multiple instrument approach using an open-ended questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, a modified version of the traditional Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST), and a simple photo eliciting activity, was employed. The study sought to capture not only the students' views of science and scientists, but also their views of themselves as users and producers of science. The findings suggest that the young African American children in this study hold very distinct and often unique views of what science is and how it operates. Included are traditional stereotypical views of scientists consistent with previous research. Additionally, participants expressed excitement and self-efficacy in describing their own relationship with science, in and outside of their formal classrooms. Implications for teaching and learning NOS as it relates to young children and children of color are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 1–37, 2012
In recent years, emphasis in multicultural education has shifted from an approach in which the primary concern is coping with the learning problems thrown up by cultural diversity (thereby assisting children to be assimilated into the dominant culture) to an approach that accepts and actively promotes cultural diversity. However, some have argued that celebration of diversity is no more than patronizing tokenism unless it is accompanied by a vigorous antiracist approach. Antiracism is concerned to reveal and combat racist attitudes and practices which disadvantage and discriminate against some minority groups, and which result in an unequal distribution of opportunity, wealth and power. This paper claims that the history of science and technology has a special role within a curriculum that seeks to celebrate diversity and to combat racism.
This mixed-methods investigation compared the relative impacts of instructional approach and context of nature of science instruction on preservice elementary teachers' understandings. The sample consisted of 75 preservice teachers enrolled in four sections of an elementary science methods course. Independent variables included instructional approach to teaching nature of science (implicit vs. explicit) and the context of nature of science instruction (as a stand-alone topic vs. situated within instruction about global climate change and global warming). These treatments were randomly applied to the four class sections along a 2×2 matrix, permitting the comparison of outcomes for each independent variable separately and in combination to those of a control group. Data collection spanned the semester-long course and included written responses to pre- and post-treatment administrations of the VNOS-B, semi-structured interviews, and a variety of classroom artifacts. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data with the goal of constructing profiles of participants' understandings of the nature of science and of global climate change /global warming (GCC/GW). These profiles were compared across treatments using non-parametric statistics to assess the relative effectiveness of the four instructional approaches. Results indicated that preservice teachers who experienced explicit instruction about the nature of science made statistically significant gains in their views of nature of science regardless of whether the nature of science instruction was situated within the context of GCC/GW or as a stand-alone topic. Further, the participants who experienced explicit nature of science instruction as a stand-alone topic were able to apply their understandings of nature of science appropriately to novel situations and issues. We address the implications of these results for teaching the nature of science in teacher preparation courses.
In the summer of 1962, Professor Herbert Smith of Pennsylvania State University was requested by the Commission on Science Education of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to prepare a paper summarizing reports of the most significant educational research relating to the teaching of elementary school and junior high school science. The purpose of this project was to make available to members of the Commission and others interested in the current efforts to improve science education the results of that research which has influenced most heavily current educational practice and which should therefore be of interest to those seeking to change present practice. A draft of the report was used by participants in the writing session held under the auspices of the AAAS Commission on Science Education at Stanford University in the summer of 1963. The JRST has agreed to assist in efforts to bring Dr. Smith's paper to the attention of the science education community and the Commission has expressed appreciation to the JRST for this service. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent AAAS, its Commission on Science Education, or the JRST. Reprints are available from the Editor, Department of Science Education, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, at a cost of $0.50 per copy.
“Science for All” is a mantra that has guided science education reform and practice for the past 20 years or so. Unfortunately, after 20 years of “Science for All” guided policy, research, professional development, and curricula African Americans continue to participate in the scientific enterprise in numbers that are staggeringly low. What is more, if current reform efforts were to realize the goal of “Science for All,” it remains uncertain that African American students would be well-served. This article challenges the idea that the type of science education advocated under the “Science for All” movement is good for African American students. It argues that African American students are uniquely situated historically and socially and would benefit greatly from a socially transformative approach to science education curricula designed to help them meet their unique sociohistorical needs. The article compares the curriculum approach presented by current reform against a socially transformative curriculum approach. It concludes with a description of research that could support the curricular approach advocated. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 301–316, 2011
The objective of this study is to facilitate progressive transitions in chemistry teachers understanding of nature of science
in the context of historical controversies. Selected controversies referred to episodes that form part of the chemistry curriculum
both at secondary and university freshman level. The study is based on 17 in-service teachers who had registered for an 11-week
course on ‘Investigation in the teaching of chemistry’ as part of their Master’s degree program. The course is based on 17
readings drawing on a history and philosophy of science perspective with special reference to controversial episodes in the
chemistry curriculum. Course activities included written reports, class room discussions based on participants’ presentations,
and written exams. Based on the results obtained it is suggested that this study facilitated the following progressive transitions
in teachers’ understanding of nature of science: (a) Problematic nature of the scientific method, objectivity and the empirical
basis of science; (b) Myths associated with respect to the nature of science and teaching chemistry; (c) Science does not
develop by appealing to objectivity in an absolute sense, as creativity and presuppositions also play a crucial role; (d)
The role of speculation and controversy in the construction of knowledge based on episodes from the chemistry curriculum;
(e) How did Bohr confirm his postulates? This goes beyond the treatment in most textbooks; (f) Differentiation between the
idealized scientific law and the observations. It is concluded that given the opportunity to reflect, discuss and participate
in a series of course activities based on various controversial episodes, teachers’ understanding of nature of science can
be enhanced.
In the mid 1800s Dr. J. Marion Sims reported the successful repair of vesicovaginal fistulas with a technique he developed by performing multiple operations on female slaves. A venerated physician in his time, the legacy of Dr. Sims is controversial and represents a significant chapter in the mistreatment of African-Americans by the medical establishment. This review compares the modern debate surrounding his legacy with the presentation of his operation in widely consulted urological texts and journals.
A literature review was performed of medical, sociological and periodical sources (1851 to the present) regarding J. Marion Sims and vesicovaginal fistula repair.
During the last several decades, while the controversy around Dr. Sims' surgical development has produced a steady stream of articles in the historical and popular literature, relatively little mention is found in standard urology textbooks or journals. With increased public attention, some have debated the removal or modification of public tributes to Dr. Sims. This move has been countered by arguments against the validity of judging a 19th century physician by modern standards.
While historians, ethicists and the popular press have debated Dr. Sims' legacy, medical sources have continued to portray him unquestionably as a great figure in medical history. This division keeps the medical profession uninformed and detached from the public debate on his legacy and, thus, the larger issues of ethical treatment of surgical patients.
A vision for science education: Responding to the work of
- G S Aikenhead
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The truth about drug companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it
- M Angell
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The shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains
- N G Carr
Carr, N. G. (2011). The shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains. W. W. Norton.
Professional journals as a source of information about teaching NOS: An examination of articles published in Science & Children
- S Cite
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NOS: An examination of articles published in Science & Children, 1996-2010. Science Education
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Salt sugar fat: How the food giants hooked us
- M Moss
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A review of worldview research in education: Analyzing theory, methods, and applications
- J W Mutegi
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applications. In P. J. Pinder, and E. L. Blackwell (Eds.), Issues and innovations in STEM education
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Center.