De-Marginalizing Science in the Elementary Classroom by Coaching Teachers to Address Perceived Dilemmas

Berg, Alissa; Mensah, Felicia Moore

doi:10.14507/epaa.v22n57.2014

Cited by 22 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In Israeli elementary schools, as in the United States, science teaching is typically marginalized relative to literacy and mathematics teaching. Accordingly, elementary science teachers are often general teachers (teaching other subjects as well), with very limited disciplinary training and expertise, underdeveloped identification as science teachers, and consequently, limited reform orientation (Berg & Mensah, ; Chen & Mensah, ; Danielsson & Warwick, ). This obviously has implications for students' science learning and their identity development at school, as well as for bridging between museum science and school science.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…ME training for school visits would be different (and perhaps more difficult) than other informal educator training because it should involve training to bridge between the formal and informal cultures, expectations, and goals without undermining the unique benefits of each context. It should also consider the elementary school science‐learning environment: the limited preparation for fieldtrips; the marginalization of science; and the generalist nature of science teachers, their lack of disciplinary training and expertise, and their difficulty in identifying as science teachers (Berg & Mensah, ; Chen & Mensah, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Science identity trajectories throughout school visits to a science museum

Shaby

Vedder‐Weiss

2019

J Res Sci Teach

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Research has repeatedly demonstrated how informal learning environments afford science‐identity development by fostering a broader array of interactions and recognizing more varied participation modes and roles, as compared to the classroom. Thus, science teachers are encouraged to take students to field trips in informal environments, including science museums. However, the question of whether and how informal environments indeed support science identities also in a schooling context (i.e., in field trips) has not yet been explored. This case study addresses this question by analyzing identity trajectories of three students throughout six school visits to an Israeli science museum. We observed and recorded these students in the museum over the course of 3 years (fourth to sixth grade). We also visited their school and interviewed them after each visit. Drawing on a sociocultural interactional approach to identity, we analyzed 18 hr of video and audio recordings, tracking the participation of the three students across time and contexts, comparing between the students, points in time and settings, including structured (museum lab), semi‐structured (riddle‐solving activities in exhibition halls), and unstructured settings (free exploration). We employed linguistic ethnographic methods and microanalysis to examine the ways in which the students participated and their positioning by self and others. While we found differences between settings within the museum, overall, the findings show that the museum reproduced the school's interaction, positioning, and roles. The “(non)science person” in school was also the “(non)science person” in the museum, and thus, the museum visits did not appear to shift identity trajectories. These findings challenge the premise that informal environments support the development of science identities also in a schooling context and call for a more critical view of such fieldtrips in terms of their pedagogical and physical design, facilitation approach, and consideration of peers' social interaction.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science identity trajectories throughout school visits to a science museum

Shaby

Vedder‐Weiss

2019

J Res Sci Teach

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“…Jennifer was aware that her time to complete the lesson was short and she had to weigh the importance of her students' active engagement with learning new content. Confronted with the complexities of teaching, teachers often aim for the fastest, least complicated resolution to the conflicts at hand (Berg & Mensah, 2014), which often means avoiding dialogicality. Interpreting student silence or choral agreement to a rhetorical question as resolution, they "move on" with the mistaken belief their students have understood the "right" answer.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure-agency dialectic in contested science spaces: “Do earthworms eat apples?”

Kane

2015

J Res Sci Teach

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Focusing on a group of African American third graders who attend a high-poverty urban school, I explore the structure-agency dialectic within contested spaces situated in a dialogically oriented science classroom. Contested spaces entail the moments in which the students challenge each other's and their teacher's science ideas and, in the process, construct agentic science selves. Drawing on sociocultural frameworks, I demonstrate the complexities of agency within contested spaces and the ways in which contested spaces shape and are shaped by agentic moves. Using an interpretive qualitative analysis, I found that contested spaces bubble up are maintained by dialogue, and simmer down over time. In this study, children exercised both individual and collective agency in negotiating science ideas with their teacher to shape the science classroom space in favor of their own meaning making. Using dialogicality as a resource and building on their own cultural resources, the children acted as a community of learners to challenge their teacher's science ideas and, in doing so, transformed the dialogic space within the classroom. This study highlights the tensions teachers face in choosing authentic meaning making within the limits of the school day and their own science knowledge. In addition, it demonstrates the importance of providing equitable learning spaces for African American children that offer them opportunities to agentically use their own ways of being as resources for learning and becoming in science. # 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach Keywords: equity; diversity; dialogic teaching; learning communities Schools and classrooms are culturally and historically situated spaces impacted by issues of class, race, gender, and power, as well as sites of conflict for and between teachers and students, ideas, values, and goals. In the last decade, teachers have faced the implications of the increased regulation of schooling, including instructional practices, the narrowing of the curriculum, and the pressures associated with frequent and multiple standardized measures of student achievement (Crocco & Costigan, 2007). This is particularly true in high-poverty urban schools that serve historically marginalized students. Because of increasing expectations related to student achievement, teachers often struggle to manage the demands of teaching within the limits of the school day. Furthermore, conflicts have always arisen between teachers and students in classrooms relative to teachers' attempts to manage or control students' actions and ideas. On the one hand, teachers have a curriculum to complete; on the other hand, students strive to make sense of their worlds through their experiences and the content of schooling. These contrasting goals often give rise to conflict, which can be problematic in classrooms. However, spaces of conflict The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

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“…Por lo tanto, surge como un gran interrogante a qué se debe esta distancia entre lo prescrito y el tipo de enseñanza observada durante esta investigación. Uno de los factores que podría incidir en la falta de tiempo dedicado a la enseñanza del área, y en el tipo de actividades observadas, es la falta de confianza de los docentes respecto del área, como revelan otros estudios, que muestran que los docentes esquivan las ciencias por falta de su conocimiento disciplinar, por la falta de materiales y por la presión por darle más importancia a las áreas de Lengua y Matemática (Berg y Moore, 2014;Tilger, 1990) o que, de tener que enseñarlas, incurran en actividades de índole transmisiva, en las que se sienten más seguros.…”

Section: Enseñanza De Las Ciencias Núm 362 (2018): 81-103unclassified

“…Otra implicación de este resultado es la necesidad de apoyar a los docentes con la provisión de materiales y secuencias didácticas que promuevan el pensamiento de orden superior de sus alumnos, una estrategia que ha dado muestras de generar buenos resultados (Davis, Janssen y Van Driel, 2016 Otra implicación fundamental del estudio es la necesidad de fortalecer la gestión pedagógica de los directores de las escuelas para lograr que se cumplan las horas estipuladas para la enseñanza de las ciencias y para acompañar a los docentes en el desarrollo de propuestas que fomenten el pensamiento de orden superior en los niños. Los estudios muestran que en las escuelas primarias suele priorizarse el aprendizaje de la lengua y las matemáticas en detrimento de otras áreas curriculares como parte de la cultura institucional (Berg y Moore, 2014), y que el aprovechamiento del tiempo de enseñanza general es bajo en todas las áreas, con interrupciones usuales destinadas a actividades como las rutinas, la merienda, actos escolares o anuncios institucionales (Näslund-Hadley et al, 2012;Veleda, 2013). En este marco, el rol de los directores es fundamental para administrar el tiempo escolar y garantizar que se optimice su uso, puesto que, como ponen en evidencia nuestros resultados, un mayor tiempo de enseñanza está asociado a mejores desempeños de los alumnos.…”

Section: Enseñanza De Las Ciencias Núm 362 (2018): 81-103unclassified

Abriendo la «caja negra» del aula de ciencias: un estudio sobre la relación entre las prácticas de enseñanza sobre el cuerpo humano y las capacidades de pensamiento que se promueven en los alumnos de séptimo grado

et al. 2018

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: 81-103 Investigaciones didácticas https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/ensciencias.2519 ISSN (impreso): 0212-4521 / ISSN (digital): Furman, M., Luzuriaga, M., Taylor, I., Anauati, M. V., & Podestá M. E. (2018). Abriendo la «caja negra» del aula de ciencias: un estudio sobre la relación entre las prácticas de enseñanza sobre el cuerpo humano y las capacidades de pensamiento que se promueven en los alumnos de séptimo grado. Enseñanza de las ciencias, 36(2), 81-103.Abriendo la «caja negra» del aula de ciencias: un estudio sobre la relación entre las prácticas de enseñanza sobre el cuerpo humano y las capacidades de pensamiento que se promueven en los alumnos de séptimo grado Opening the «black box» of the science classroom: a study on the relationship between teaching practices on the topic of the Human Body and the thinking skills promoted in 7th grade students RESUMEN • Comprender los bajos desempeños de los alumnos argentinos en las evaluaciones de ciencias implica abrir la «caja negra» del aula para analizar las prácticas de enseñanza. Se realizó un estudio cuanti-cualitativo en una muestra representativa de 36 cursos de séptimo grado (alumnos de entre 12 y 13 años) de 19 escuelas estatales de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Se analizó el tiempo dedicado al área y los tipos de actividades propuestas por los docentes a partir de los cuadernos de clase de los alumnos y se evaluó a todos los estudiantes (574). Observamos que en promedio se dictan 1,75 horas de clase semanales de ciencias, frente a las 4 estipuladas, y que el 81 % de las actividades promueven capacidades de pensamiento de orden inferior. Más tiempo de enseñanza y de actividades de orden superior correlacionan positivamente con el rendimiento de los alumnos en la prueba (r = 0,66 p < 0,05 y r = 0,5 p < 0,05, respectivamente).PALABRAS CLAVE: enseñanza de las ciencias; escuela primaria; pensamiento de orden superior; prácticas de enseñanza. ABSTRACT • Explaining low student achievement in Science requires opening the «black box» of the classroom to understand teaching practices. This mixed methods study on science teaching was conducted in a representative sample of 36 7th grade classes (students between 12 and 13 years old) from 19 state schools in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. All students (n = 574) were evaluated to understand the relationship between teaching practices and learning outcomes. Using student workbooks, we found that teachers taught an average of 1.75 hours of science lessons per week, versus the 4 hours specified by local guidelines, and that 81% of teaching activities promote lower order thinking skills (such as recalling and reproducing facts). This is worrying as increasing teaching time and higher order activities correlate positively with student learning outcomes (r = 0.66 p < 0.05 and r = 0.5 p < 0.05 respectively).

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De-Marginalizing Science in the Elementary Classroom by Coaching Teachers to Address Perceived Dilemmas

Cited by 22 publications

References 45 publications

Science identity trajectories throughout school visits to a science museum

Science identity trajectories throughout school visits to a science museum

The structure-agency dialectic in contested science spaces: “Do earthworms eat apples?”

Abriendo la «caja negra» del aula de ciencias: un estudio sobre la relación entre las prácticas de enseñanza sobre el cuerpo humano y las capacidades de pensamiento que se promueven en los alumnos de séptimo grado

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