This study examined how, in some instances, participation in the cultural practices of high school science classrooms created intrapersonal conflict for ethnic minority students. Discourse analysis of videotaped science classroom activities, lectures, and laboratories was the primary methodology employed for analyzing students' discursive identity development. This analysis demonstrated differential appropriation of science discourse as four significant domains of discursive identities emerged: Opposition status, Maintenance status, Incorporation status, and Proficiency status. Students characterized as Opposition Status avoided use of science discourse. Students who exhibited Maintenance Status illustrated a commitment to maintaining their normative discourse behavior, despite a demonstrated ability to appropriate science discourse. Students characterized as Incorporation Status made active attempts to incorporate science discourse into their normative speech patterns, while Proficiency Status students demonstrated a fluency in applying scientific discursive. Implications for science education emerging from the study include the illumination of the need to make the use of specific scientific discourse an explicit component of classroom curriculum. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 810–834, 2004

ABSTRACT:In this paper we propose the construct of discursive identity as a way to examine student discourse. We drew from the work of Gee (2001, Review of Research in Education, 25, 99 -125) and Nasir and Saxe (2003, Educational Researcher, 32(5), 14 -18) to consider the multiple contexts and developmental timescales of student discursive identity development. We argue that theories of scientific literacy need to consider the sociocultural contexts of language use in order to examine fully affiliation and alienation associated with appropriation of scientific discourse. As an illustrative case, we apply discursive identity to series of short exchanges in a fifth-grade classroom of African-American students. The discussion examines potential co-construction of student identity and scientific literacy.

Our research project was guided by the assumption that students who learn to understand phenomena in everyday terms prior to being taught scientific language will develop improved understanding of new concepts. We used web-based software to teach students using a ''content-first'' approach that allowed students to transition from everyday understanding of phenomena to the use of scientific language. This study involved 49 minority students who were randomly assigned into two groups for analysis: a treatment group (taught with everyday language prior to using scientific language) and a control group (taught with scientific language). Using a pre-post-test control group design, we assessed students' conceptual and linguistic understanding of photosynthesis. The results of this study indicated that students taught with the ''content-first'' approach developed significantly improved understanding when compared to students taught in traditional ways. ß

This investigation explores how underrepresented urban students made sense of their first experience with high school science. The study sought to identify how students' assimilation into the science classroom reflected their interpretation of science itself in relation to their academic identities. The primary objectives were to examine students' responses to the epistemic, behavioral, and discursive norms of the science classroom. At the completion of the academic year, 29 students were interviewed regarding their experiences in a ninth and tenth-grade life science course. The results indicate that students experienced relative ease in appropriating the epistemic and cultural behaviors of science, whereas they expressed a great deal of difficulty in appropriating the discursive practices of science. The implications of these findings reflect the broader need to place greater emphasis on the relationship between students' identity and their scientific literacy development. ß 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 2006

This article reports on urban elementary teachers’ understandings of cultural relevancy and the practices they enacted after a professional development on culturally relevant education (CRE) and cognitive apprenticeship. Focus group interviews support that participating teachers understood some principles of CRE but did not always match the theory to practice before our professional development. After training, video data of teaching support that this divide was mediated. These findings point to a need to engage in explicit theory-to-practice research about cultural relevancy in urban science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching. Implications are provided relating to teachers planning lessons purposefully to infuse cultural relevancy into their STEM classrooms.