The case of Carla: Dilemmas of helping all students to understand science

Abstract

This paper tells the story of four sixth-grade students, of mixed race and social class, who worked together in a small group. All four students were intrigued as they experimented with colored solutions of different densities. They all wanted to share ideas about the techniques they had used, the observations they had made, and the patterns they had seen. They all wanted to understand why the colored solutions acted as they did. In spite of these common interests, they often failed to achieve intersubjective communication about the colored solutions or about the process of planning and making a poster to report their findings. We explain these failures using the sociolinguistic concepts of polysemy, privileging, and holding the floor. In particular, Carla (an African American girl) was unable to hold the floor within the group, so her opportunities for science learning were diminished. The four students were not overtly prejudiced in their speech or actions. Yet the expectations they brought with them about how and when people should talk, how work should be done, and what standards of quality they should aspire to led them to reconstruct among themselves some of the most troubling inequities of our society as a whole. This story is about important connections. In particular it is about how the actions of children are connected to the histories of their families, and how the privileging of ideas is connected to that of people, and how the practice of science is connected to that of discrimination. Science education reformers may underestimate the difficulty of separating conceptual conflict about ideas from interpersonal conflict about privilege and status.

An Investigation of Student Roles within Small, Racially Mixed Science Groups: A racial perspective

“…For each of the categories, the European-American students in the small science groups attained roles more frequently than their African-American counterparts who were, on average, comparable in academic performance and in spatial ability. While cognitive gains were not measured and reported in this investigation, previous studies suggested that those who do not participate do not learn as much as those who do (Bianchini, 1997;Kurth et al, 2002;Richmond & Striley, 1996); consequently, the results of this study may provide incidental insight upon the existing achievement disparities among European-American and African-American students. From the perspective of race, particularly whiteness in the USA, the researchers expected the aforementioned patterns in role attainment by European-American and African-American students in the small, racially mixed science groups.…”

“…When the researchers viewed Carla's interactions within another group at a later time, the quality of Carla's contributions were significantly less than those she provided in the first group and the roles she assumed were far less challenging. This study continues the line of investigation presented in the Kurth et al (2002) case study and examines occurrences within small groups with regard to race.…”

“…These studies examined friendship choices within groups and the nature of relationships that developed among students of different racial groups (Davis & Cheng, 1996;DeVries, Edwards, & Slavin, 1978;Slavin, 1979;Slavin & Madden, 1979). Most of the research investigating equity issues studied equal-status interactions within small groups without attention to race (Bianchini, 1999;Webb, Nemer, Chizhik, Sugrue, 1998), with the exception of Kurth, Anderson, and Palincsar's (2002) study. This study provided insight on the question of race in group work by focusing upon group interactions with respect to Carla, an African-American female in a four-person sixth-grade science group comprised of students from different racial backgrounds.…”

Measuring the impact of a science center on its community

“…The Science Center was perceived as a gateway experience to future success. Given that there is evidence that traditional classroom practices have been found to privilege majority and upper income children (Cobern & Aikenhead, 1998; Kurth, Anderson, & Palincsar, 2002; Lee & Fradd, 1998; Moje, Collazo, Carillo, & Marx, 2001), these findings are particularly interesting and encouraging and worth further study; particularly given the dearth of confirmatory data in the literature.…”

Scaffolding Complex Learning: The Mechanisms of Structuring and Problematizing Student Work

“…This complex collaborative work presents social interaction challenges such as weighing opinions and keeping track of alternatives proposed by all group members, ensuring participation from all group members, and learning to offer and receive critiques (Coleman, 1998;Webb & Palincsar, 1996). The success of group work can be compromised by difficulties in these social interactions (Barron, 2003;Kurth, Anderson, & Palincsar, 2002).…”