Resisting the marginalization of science in an urban school: Coactivating social, cultural, material, and strategic resources

Abstract

This study describes the resources and strategies middle school teachers, urban fellows, and a district science staff developer coactivated to resist the marginalization of science in a high‐poverty, low‐performing urban school. Through critical narrative inquiry, I document factors that marginalized science in three teachers' classrooms. The narratives show that constraints related to cultural, material, and social resources contributed to a more global symbolic resource constraint, the low status and priority of science in the school. The narratives develop a new category of strategic resources embodied or controlled by others and leveraged to improve students' opportunities to learn science. Attention to a broader array of resources, including social, symbolic, and strategic resources, helps to excavate some of the inertial forces that might derail efforts to teach for social justice. The findings provide a sense of how and why teachers might activate resources to resist the marginalization of science in their classrooms. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:840–860, 2010

Negotiating White science in a racially and ethnically diverse United States

“…As evident in the research above, scholars should continue to examine how teachers navigate through the challenges of low student achievement (in terms of standardized tests), limited resources, and pervasive deficit models. All of these factors are results of students being continuously marginalized not only in science, but school and society (Otsuki, 2009;Patchen & Cox-Petersen, 2008;Rivera Maulucci, 2010). This line of inquiry requires us to consider a wide range of voices from students who do not fit the typical profile of American teachers: White, female, and middle-class.…”

“…The teacher was accustomed to FOSS kits (an interactive/hands-on science kit) and was forced to give her students instruction using the more traditional note-taking style. Maulucci (2010) found that limited resources could further marginalize the students in the study if teachers felt helpless in supplying their students with the distinct resources their population needed. However, in this study, teachers adapted and learned how to use their social, symbolic, and strategic resources, in lieu of economic resources (i.e.…”

De la Escuela Gueto a una Comunidad de Aprendizaje: Un Estudio de Caso sobre la Superación de la Pobreza a Través de una Educación de Éxito

“…Una de las estrategias educativas que mayor impacto ha generado en la superación de la pobreza es que los niños y las niñas menores de seis años tengan la oportunidad de acceder a recursos y programas de desarrollo cognitivo y socioemocional. Además, el establecimiento de un currículo de máximos, especialmente en las áreas instrumentales (Maulucci, 2010;Hammond, 2001) o la extensión del tiempo de aprendizaje (Arnold & Doctoroff, 2003;Mahoney, Lord & Carryl, 2005;Taylor, Power & Rees, 2010) son factores esenciales para el éxito académico y el acceso a la educación post-obligatoria (Baum & Flores, 2011) de las personas que viven en contextos empobrecidos.…”

Moving Beyond “Those Kids”: Addressing Teacher Beliefs Regarding the Role of Culture Within Effective Science Pedagogy for Diverse Learners

“…Morrison, Robbins, and Rose () conducted a meta‐analysis of research on the implementation of CRP and suggested CRP “ultimately clashes with the traditional ways in which education is carried out in society” (p. 444), and this may be the reason teachers are unable to change their practice. As with other significant instructional paradigm shifts, teachers adopting CRP will need professional development support to make the transition to the constructivist mode of teaching that CRP requires (Johnson, ; Lee, Penfield, & Maerten‐Rivera, ; Morrison et al., ; Rivera Maulucci, ).…”