This paper examines the use of students' lived experiences in an urban elementary science classroom. Students bring different funds of knowledge that are accumulated through their lived experiences into the classroom, and I examine what those funds of knowledge mean to an elementary science teacher working in an urban school. I describe how a female elementary teacher integrates her life experiences with that of her students, and utilizes those experiences to teach meaningful science. This paper also discusses what it means to students when their lived experiences are the part of science learning. I also include a description of how the Linking Food and the Environment (LiFE) curriculum can provide a framework to teach science using students' lived experiences. C 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 90: 94 -110, 2006
This case study explores how a group of Grade 9 students engaged in sociopolitical discourses and actions in a science class in a mostly indigenous student school in Nepal. The study used sociopolitical consciousness (SPC) as a framework to document and understand indigenous students’ SPC‐oriented science interactions and subsequent social change actions. We used ethnographic methods of data collection over 6 months. The study focused on the actions of 4 girls and 2 boys belonging to the indigenous Tharu group. Data were analyzed using iterative qualitative methods. The study findings show that students are capable of engaging in critical thinking, critical reflecting, and taking actions for social change. Additionally, students are competent to link their experiences with social, structural, and political discrimination to the relevant science content they learn. The study presents four thematic findings related to SPC and science teaching and learning: Fostering social justice awareness in science class, fostering structural understanding of inequities in sickle cell disease, fostering sociopolitical actions for sickle cell disease, and the teacher's activist pedagogy for SPC in science learning. Implications of the study are that culturally relevant pedagogy helps indigenous students to become sociopolitically more aware of the links between science and social change. Adding aspects of critical pedagogies in science teaching could encourage students to become more sociopolitically reflective about science learning.
This study draws upon a qualitative case study to investigate the impact of the high-stakes test environment on an elementary teacher's identities and the influence of identity maintenance on science teaching. Drawing from social identity theory, I argue that we can gain deep insight into how and why urban elementary science teachers engage in defining and negotiating their identities in practice. In addition, we can further understand how and why science teachers of poor urban students engage in teaching decisions that accommodate school demands and students' needs to succeed in high-stakes tests. This paper presents in-depth experiences of one elementary teacher as she negotiates her identities and teaching science in school settings that emphasize high-stakes testing. I found that a teacher's identities generate tensions while teaching science when: (a) schools prioritize high-stakes tests as the benchmark of teacher success and student success; (b) activity-based and participatory science teaching is deemphasized; (c) science teacher of minority students identity is threatened or questioned; and (d) a teacher perceives a threat to one's identities in the context of high stakes testing. Further, the results suggest that stronger links to identities generate more positive values in teachers, and greater possibilities for positive actions in science classrooms that support minority students' success in science.
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