The goal of this critical ethnographic study was to investigate the difficult terrain between theoretical visions of transformation and actual transformative classroom practice. The study articulates how a critical science framework (Fusco and Calabrese-Barton, 2001) facilitated student development of critical stances, how students responded to these critical approaches, and closely documents the difficult process involved when working with transformative issues in the classroom.The study was carried out in a Health Science classroom in the southwestern borderland of the United States. Participants included a beginning teacher, who was committed to a critical science framework and 24 (9 th -12 th grade) students enrolled in the Health Science course. Over the two-year duration of the study, multiple sets of data were collected including but not limited to student interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, and sample student work. The main findings indicate that critical science approaches to content and pedagogy helped students envision that transformative possibilities do exist and deepened their understanding for how science content could benefit their future lives. Most importantly, students articulated how these approaches have helped them better understand their own points of Downloaded by [University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries] at 20:24 25 December 2014 Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 100100 view and these new understandings will serve as the basis for their current and future actions. Implications for the utilization of critical science pedagogy and impacts on students are also discussed.
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