In this study, we explore oral and written work (plays and rap songs) of students in a sixth‐grade all African‐American urban science class to reveal ways affective and social aspects are intertwined with students' cognition. We interpret students' work in terms of the meeting of various genres brought by the students and teachers to the classroom. Students bring youth genres, classroom genres that they have constructed from previous schooling, and perhaps their own science genres. Teachers bring their favored classroom and science genres. We show how students' affective reactions were an integral part of their constructed scientific knowledge. Their knowledge building emerged as a social process involving a range of transactions among students and between students and teacher, some transactions being relatively smooth and others having more friction. Along with their developing science genre, students portrayed elements of classroom genres that did not exist in the classroom genre that the teacher sought to bring to the class. Students' work offered us a glimpse of students' interpretations of gender dynamics in their classrooms. Gender also was related to the particular ways that students in that class included disagreement in their developing science genre. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 579–605, 2002
In this study, we embark on an exploration and analysis of a community of learners of science in a classroom of one of the authors (Barbara Lustcr)--a group of Year 8 African American girls and boys in an urban, inner-city school. This study is a coUaborative action research project that examines closely the practice of roaching and learning science within a socio-culmral perspective that Barbara has espoused and brought to her classroom. We study the two dimensions of a community of Icamcrs--social-organisafional, and intellectual-thematic---and how each evolved and influcnceA the other. As we explore thcs~ dimensions we pay particular attention to the gender of the students, looking for similarities and differences bcrwccn boys and girls in the patterns that emerge. Our findings indicat_e that in Barbara's class the relative success of the learning community in terms of the social-organisational dimension was not accompanied by a relative success in the intellectual-thematic dimension. Barbara and her students, for the most part, succeeded in developing a community of people coming together to ask questions, offer their thinking, and respectfully sometimes build on each other's con~bufions and sometimes disagree with each 0ther. However, Barbara and her students did not quite succe~ in developing sharod undt,~andings, and we discuss the reasons for thi~ Increased attention to socio-cultural approaches to teaching and learning has led to a growing literature regarding how classrooms with diverse students can become communities of learners. As Simonson (1995) writes, a community of learners is a supportive, caring environment that provides time, struaure, and space for individuals who, in the case of a classroom, are the students and the teacher. It is a socio=cultural system mutually and actively created by teacher and students. In a community of learners all participants are active; no one has all the responsibility and none is passive. Children and teacher together are active in structuring what is explored and how, though with asymmetry of roles. This is a very different model fzom both an "adult-run" or a "children-run" classroom. As Rogoff, Matusov & White (1996) writes, "it is not a compromise or a balance of the adult=run and children-run models. Its underlying theoretical notion is that learning is a process of transformation of participation in which both adults and children conm'bute support and direction in shared endeavors" (p. 389). This model is consistent with the vision that the National Science Education Standards promote, according to which in a community of learners all members "support and respect a diversity of experience, ideas, thought, and expression" (National Research Council, 1996, p. 46).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.