A perennial challenge for urban education in the United States is finding effective ways to address the academic achievement gap between African American and White students. There is widespread and justified concern about the persistence of this achievement gap. In fact, historical evidence suggests that this achievement gap has existed at various times for groups other than African Americans. What conditions prevailed when this achievement gap existed for these other groups? Conversely, under what conditions did the gap diminish and eventually disappear for these groups? This article explores how sociocultural factors involved in the manifestation and eventual disappearance of the gap for these groups may shed some light on how to address the achievement gap for African American students in urban science classrooms. Our conclusion is that the sociocultural position of groups is crucial to understanding and interpreting the scholastic performance of students from various backgrounds. We argue for a research framework and the exploration of research questions incorporating insights from Ogbu's cultural, ecological theory, as well as goal theory, and identity theory. We present these as theories that essentially focus on student responses to societal disparities. Our ultimate goal is to define the problem more clearly and contribute to the development of research‐based classroom practices that will be effective in reducing and eventually eliminating the achievement gap. We identify the many gaps in society and the schools that need to be addressed in order to find effective solutions to the problem of the achievement gap. Finally, we propose that by understanding the genesis of the gap and developing strategies to harness the students' responses to societal disparities, learning can be maximized and the achievement gap can be significantly reduced, if not eliminated entirely, in urban science classrooms. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 1101–1114, 2001

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According to Gowin, a curriculum properly derives its authority by representing the "criteria of excellence" for evaluating the claims produced within a field of inquiry. Gowin's epistemology applied to examples from geological inquiry yields criteria of excellence responsive to the demands characteristic of geological problems. Student efforts to learn these criteria hold the promise of making progress toward independence in accessing, using, and evaluating knowledge. This understanding contributes to the reformation of the concept of inquiry as a "step beyond science as process" called for in the National Science Education Standards and reinforces the need to consider the diversity as well as unity of styles of scientific reasoning. Geological inquiries differ from those of other sciences because they refer to objects with histories. These histories create a demand for concepts that necessarily contain an irreducible element of ambiguity, thus permitting comparison and contrast of geological objects. A case study of how geologists apply analogies, impose boundaries on categories of thought, and constrain the ambiguity of key concepts in reasoning about the accumulation of sediments at a continental margin is used to support this argument. Such examples of geological reasoning support a skeptical attitude toward interdisciplinary curricula that omit or oversimplify criteria of excellence.

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For many decades, science educators have asked, "In what ways should learning the content of traditional subjects serve as the means to more general ends, such as understanding the nature of science or the processes of scientific inquiry?" Acceptance of these ends reduces the role of disciplinary context; the "Footprints Puzzle" and Oregon's "Inquiry Scoring Guide" illustrate this point. In the Footprints Puzzle, students are challenged to distinguish observations from inferences to learn about the nature of science or the culture of science. Oregon's Inquiry Scoring Guide separates content knowledge from inquiry skills. Given long-standing discredit of "the" scientific method, modern views emphasize the diversity of inquiry methods and explanatory ideals across disciplines. Paleontologists, for example, reconstruct the behavior of extinct beasts from fossil footprints using methods of inquiry responsive to this aim. Figuring out dinosaur locomotion depends upon making analogies to the limb structure and behavior of extant species. The history of the Footprints Puzzle demonstrates that an enduring adherence to "a process approach" obscures how conceptualization intertwines with methodology.