Taking an active stance: How urban elementary students connect sociocultural experiences in learning science

Upadhyay, Bhaskar; Maruyama, Geoffrey; Albrecht, Nancy

doi:10.1080/09500693.2017.1392645

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Specifically, research shows that when students' culture in teaching is minimized, their content learning and connections to larger sociocultural and sociopolitical issues diminish (e.g., Rogoff, 2003;Rogoff et al, 2016;Upadhyay, Atwood, & Tharu, 2020). Another major contribution of sociocultural theory is that social values and contexts are motivators for learning rather than hindrances (Anderson et al 2000;Ladson-Billings, 1995;Southerland et al, 2008;Upadhyay, Maruyama, & Albrecht, 2017). Wertsch (1998) claims that a sociocultural approach to teaching, learning, and researching focuses on -the relationships between human action, on the one hand, and the cultural, institutional, and historical contexts in which this action occurs, on the other‖ (p. 24).…”

Section: Sociocultural Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Professional Development: Mobile and Limited Technology-enhanced Pedagogy

Barksdale

Upadhyay

Vernon

2021

IJTES

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This qualitative case study seeks to document and understand the influence of technology integrated/supported professional development (PD) on preK-12 grade teachers in Nepal. The study focuses on the value of collaborative, university-school relationships to foster buy-in among teachers to integrate technology for increased student learning. We used the TPACK framework and sociocultural theory of learning to understand how and why technology integration at a rural school in a poor country would support more engaged pedagogy for learning. The PDs were co-designed by the researchers with teachers’ input, and further supported in its implementation when teachers tried out the new strategies in their classrooms. Data was collected utilizing methods of observations, self-reflective fieldnotes, informal interviews, and artifacts. Data analysis indicated that effective and locally suitable technology integration relies on building relationships with the teachers and school community; technology integration needs to be focused on the local needs of students and teachers based on their resources and curricular demands; and while limited (mobile) technology integration can support better learning, student-centered inquiry-based pedagogy needs to guide technology use in class. Furthermore, the study argues that recognizing and valuing local cultural and school contexts are central to successful PD in technology integration.

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Section: Sociocultural Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Professional Development: Mobile and Limited Technology-enhanced Pedagogy

Barksdale

Upadhyay

Vernon

2021

IJTES

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“…Students sharing their understandings of how to use the plants to make medicines to treat commonplace illnesses “would be a perfect point [for teachers] to affirm students’ prior knowledge and engage them during botany studies or soil science” (Licona, , p. 869). In linking their science learning goals (e.g., student development of domain‐specific knowledge) to what students already know, teachers may improve students’ academic performance and attitudes toward science (Atwater, ; Barton & Tan, ; Bianchini & Brenner, ; Kern, Howard, Brasch, Fiedler, & Cadwell, ; Upadhyay, Maruyama, & Albrecht, ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the extant literature suggests that CRP is and can be applied to science instruction (Goldston & Nichols, ; Johnson, ; Mendoza, ; Moore Mensah, ; Rodriguez, ; Upadhyay et al, ), there is limited work on CRP in science in elementary and middle school classrooms. Research suggests that this void exists because some K‐8 teachers have difficulty envisioning the use of CRP in science instruction (Moore Mensah, ; Underwood & Moore Mensah, ; Young, ) and few researchers have examined how K‐8 teachers implement CRP in science classrooms (e.g., Johnson, ; Laughter & Adams, ; Milner, ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Illuminating political clarity in culturally relevant science instruction

Madkins

Royston

2019

Science Education

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Failure to improve achievement in K‐12 science for racially minoritized students and students living in poverty continues to challenge the inclusionary rhetoric of science for all. Science education researchers, teacher educators, and educators must consider the racialized and classed inequalities that continue to limit students’ opportunities to learn. To achieve this, we must be able to conceptualize sociopolitical pedagogical approaches and learn from empirical examples of science teachers who consciously attend to their students’ realities in empowering rather than deficit‐oriented ways. We argue for the importance of utilizing culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and attending to and theorizing an educator's sociopolitical consciousness and enactments of political clarity in science instruction. Our analysis highlights how an African American male science teacher responds to his middle school students’ realities and identities as African American youth and children growing up contexts with limited economic resources. Through classroom observations and interviews with the teacher, we nuance our understanding of sociopolitical consciousness, the third tenet of CRP, as reliant upon a teacher's political clarity and examine how, through instruction, science teachers can position students and their realities as consonant with knowing and doing science and being scientists.

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“…Together, our study, along with those studies in VR more broadly, encourages researchers and teachers to explore the dynamic potential of VR 360 to impact diverse students' learning and sense of connection to the discipline as a function of leveraging these students' local contexts as sites where science can be learned, an affordance emphasized by equity‐focused K‐16 STEM education research more broadly (Calabrese Barton & Tan, ; Garibay, ; Kayumova, McGuire, & Cardello, ; Vakil, ; Vossoughi, Hooper, & Escudé, ). Thus, while aligning curriculum to pursue relevant ways of teaching and learning science continues to be a struggle for science teachers (Braaten & Sheth, ; Mensah et al, ; Rodriguez, ), this struggle, specifically in elementary science, has been shown to be ameliorated by research–practice partnerships where design elements that contextualize science content in students' local contexts and leverage students' identities afford students the chance to embrace a nuanced type of learning, as well as the capacity to apply what they have learned (Buxton, ; Djonko‐Moore, Leonard, Holifield, Bailey, & Almughyirah, ; Upadhyay, Maruyama, & Albrecht, ).…”

Section: Implications and Principal Contribution To The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming urban learners' attitudes toward the relevancy of science: A mixed‐methods study testing the importance of context

Boda

Brown

2019

J Res Sci Teach

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The development of three‐dimensional learning among all K‐12 student demographics remains a prominent goal for the field of science education. However, substantial research in science teacher education for urban populations showcases hurdles to overcome in order to achieve this goal, particularly for elementary teachers. Research shows that urban elementary teachers are often ill‐prepared to develop a type of science pedagogy responsive to students' learning needs. The fidelity of such pedagogies that these teachers adhere to when trying to implement such a requested content–relationality between these populations and how their local contexts can be used as sites to learn science in relevant ways are often not fully realized, as well. Given that science achievement gaps exhibit racial disparities starting in primary grades and attitudes toward science have been shown to affect academic achievement and motivation, we argue that one way to ameliorate, in at least an incremental way, this disparity is to design novel learning experiences to prime students to see the relevancy of science in their local contexts before such three‐dimensional designed learning is set to occur. In this research, we leveraged the immersive nature of Virtual Reality 360 videos and present a design‐based research iteration testing how this novel technologically enhanced learning experience may have influenced close to 400 urban elementary students' attitudes toward science around those attitudes labeled as “behavioral beliefs” by the field. Using a concurrent, convergent mixed‐methods design with a two‐way multivariate analysis of covariance quantitative data set triangulated with students' qualitative self‐reports that were transformed into quantitative preponderances in graphic form, the data support that our design iteration emphasizing the importance of context as a design focus can prime students who struggle to see science as relevant to change their attitudes. Implications are discussed around relationality, novel technological affordances, and the use of local contexts as learning resources.

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Taking an active stance: How urban elementary students connect sociocultural experiences in learning science

Cited by 18 publications

References 34 publications

Teacher Professional Development: Mobile and Limited Technology-enhanced Pedagogy

Teacher Professional Development: Mobile and Limited Technology-enhanced Pedagogy

Illuminating political clarity in culturally relevant science instruction

Priming urban learners' attitudes toward the relevancy of science: A mixed‐methods study testing the importance of context

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