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| •
Results
of prior NSF research
|
|
| Results of prior NSF research | |
| Tobin's recent NSF support includes
a teacher enhancement project (ESI-9911825, 5th yr, co-PI; Dai is
PI) in which practicing science teachers participate in an innovative
and inquiry-based master’s degree in chemistry education (MCE).
A significant proportion of the 100 participants selected in the
first five cohorts are teaching in urban high schools in which poverty
is a critical issue. Four papers have been submitted for publication
in peer reviewed journals and 20 have been presented at international/national
meetings. These presentations have included faculty, university
researchers, and 18 MCE teacher participants. Tobin is also a PI
for research that examines the teaching and learning of science
in urban high schools (REC-0107022, 3rd yr) from sociocultural perspectives.
The PI and collaborators have published 5 papers, 6 book chapters,
4 doctoral dissertations (6 more are in progress), 1 master’s thesis,
and presented 90 papers at national/international conferences. In
addition, 2 papers have been written collaboratively with DUE-9979635
and 14 have been written collaboratively with ESI-9911825. The project proposed here builds on both of these projects, each of which is in its final year of funding. First, the teacher enhancement project shows how college science teachers can transform their teaching to emphasize inquiry in lectures and labs and to focus on science subject matter that provides an underpinning for what teachers are required to teach in high school science classes. The development of an inquiry model in this project serves as a tool for curriculum planning and the professional development of college science instructors and high school science teachers. The research project, part of the ROLE program, showed how urban teachers and youth could collaborate in research as a central component of science education to profoundly improve the quality of curricula, professional development and science achievement. Hence in this project research will be a central component of four proposed goals areas. |
|
| Goals for this Project | |
| This project assumes that the problems
faced by new science teachers in urban high schools are multi–faceted
and include the quality of their initial education in science and
science education, the structural supports provided during their
teaching, the quality of professional development, and a tendency
to regard teachers as solely responsible for the quality of teaching
and the achievement of students. In this regard urban youth are
rarely viewed as resources on which teachers can call to improve
the quality of science education. We will not adopt a linear approach
in which just one of these factors is examined in isolation of others.
Instead, the project seeks to undertake research and other forms
of scholarly activity that relate to the education of college science
and science education faculty, a select group of new science teachers
in their initial four years of teaching, and the identities and
roles of urban youth taught by new science teachers in their early
career. The research is an extension of Tobin’s research on the
teaching and learning science that has now extended for more than
30 years (Tobin, 1998), the last seven years being in urban high
schools. This project has significance for rethinking approaches to education reform. Even though education researchers and theorists have for years stressed the social nature of learning, recent reforms tend to regard teachers as primarily accountable for student achievement and continue to address learning as if it were mainly an individual cognitive process that can be caused by teachers, as if implementation at the classroom level were not contingent upon the quality of social interaction, and that the class, race, and social histories of learners were not central to learning. The project has four principal goal areas: 1 To mentor two assistant professors a year and involve them in scholarly activities that will equip them to become leading scholars in urban science education. 2 Use of research and professional development activities to improve the quality of college science teaching, especially in courses for teachers and teacher candidates. 3 Use research and professional development activities in science and science education to improve the quality of urban science education in classes taught by new teachers. 4 Use research on urban science teaching and learning to expand the roles and identities of urban youth to include researchers of teaching and learning science, science teacher education, curriculum development and policy formulation. |
|
| Advisory Board | |
An advisory board for the project will consist of leading science educators with extensive experience with science and urban science education. The advisory board will meet twice a year, in the fall and the spring. Penny Gilmer (Florida State University) is a chemist who has worked to improve the quality of college science teaching and has recently turned her hand to science education. She always focuses on the science and will assist us to look beyond sociocultural issues to the manner in which science can be better taught and learned. She will also have special expertise to share in terms of college science teaching. Nicholas Michelli (City University of New York) is the University Dean of Teacher Education with responsibility for all campuses in which science education is taught – in teacher education programs and in degrees that contribute to the subject matter preparation of science teacher candidates. He is responsible also for the administration of alternative certification program for science teachers (The Teaching Opportunity Program, described later in this narrative). Brian Schwartz is Vice President for Research and a professor of physics at the Graduate Center of CUNY. Schwartz is heavily involved in science education and specializes in connecting the physical sciences with the arts. His connections with scientists in the Graduate Center and institutions throughout New York City will be invaluable in planning and enacting the colloquia (please refer to his letter of support). As an executive committee Michelli and Schwartz will meet with Tobin, Milne and Kirch to plan and enact the colloquia and review progress in the research projects. Gilmer will stay involved throughout the year through email and telephone communication. This procedure is already well established since Tobin and Gilmer have been collaborators since 1988. |
|
| Background | |
The national science standards advocate science for all as a current goal for American public schools (National Research Council, 1996), but the reality is that many inner city schools do not meet this ideal. Students in low-income urban schools often have to contend with out-of-date textbooks, limited access to laboratory equipment, and teachers lacking appropriate qualifications (e.g. Ingersoll, 1999; Tobin, Seiler & Walls, 1999). There are disparities between white and minority students and between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds in both science achievement (Rodriguez, 1997) and the percentage of people seeking science related careers (Kahle & Meece, 1994). Recent reforms focusing on raising academic standards for all students are limited in that they are not specifically directed toward changing learning environments to reduce the disadvantages that students from diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds experience in classrooms. Gender still remains an issue for many students and is a predictor of participation and achievement in science (e.g., Kahle & Meece, 1994). Based on our studies of urban high schools in Philadelphia many males are at high levels of risk and frequently are “pushed out of school” and many are incarcerated or have encounters with the criminal justice system. Furthermore, policies that make teachers accountable for the quality of teaching pay scant attention to the possible advantages of creating collective responsibility with students for the quality of learning environments. Turnover in the teaching profession also is high, especially in urban schools, and for teachers in their first three years of employment and in science. Although Ingersoll (1999) and others have studied the problems of teacher turnover, there have been few intensive studies that have explored the challenges faced by early career teachers and the structures that drive them away or encourage them to stay, especially in the toughest of conditions, as are found in New York public high schools. College Science Part of the problem faced by early career science teachers relates to the manner in which they were taught and learned science, not only in high school, but also in college. In our ongoing studies of College science teaching we have found that most college classes emphasize the learning of facts and coverage of what appears to be far too much subject matter – as opposed to the adoption of a “less is more” philosophy (Taylor, Gilmer & Tobin, 2002). Fedock, Zambo and Cobern (1996) described how a group of college science professors participated in a professional development program as a means to learn about the tenets of science educations, as a preparation for them participating in a teacher education program. Significantly, what they learned transferred and improved their teaching of other science courses in community colleges (i.e., not just courses for teacher candidates). Similarly, Adamson et al. (2003) demonstrated that the enrollment of teacher candidates in “reformed” college science courses led them to teach in ways that reflected how they were taught (i.e., they taught in a “reformed way too) and for their students to achieve at a higher level than classes taught in the traditional manner. Higher achievement was attained in terms of scientific reasoning, nature of science and biology concepts. White (2002) and Gilmer (2004) have shown that the quality of participation and achievement can improve dramatically when inquiry methods are employed in college science classes. Most studies of inquiry have focused on the uses of inquiry in labs (e.g., Rivers, 2003; Wallace, Tsoi, Calkin & Darley, 2003). These studies are promising and suggest that when students use inquiry they achieve more. Zoller (1999) extended these studies, demonstrating that organic chemistry could be taught to large and small classes using inquiry-oriented class discussions and promoting students’ active participation. The outcome of his research was an increase in the incidence of higher-order cognitive learning of freshmen and sophomores. Other factors that promote the active participation of students also are salient to higher science achievement. For example, Lake (1999) and Blowers, Ramsay, Merriman and Grooms (2003) showed that peer tutoring was an effective strategy for promoting academic gains in a college-level nursing program. Along the same lines, Walczyk and Ramsay (2003) showed that learner centered approaches and uses of the Internet improved the quality of undergraduate science education, particularly the education of science teacher candidates. Problem solving, peer review, and learner centered approaches were incorporated into what is now known as the Penn Inquiry Model (see Figure in the appendix), which was designed by Bryan Roberts (an organic chemist) and several of his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. The Inquiry Model has been used extensively as a basis for teaching chemistry in college courses designed for teachers and in middle and high school science classes, especially in urban schools (ESI-9911825, Dai PI). Not surprisingly, Catherine Milne and others who have worked on the evaluation of ESI-9911825 report that college instructors tend to use the Inquiry Model in other classes they teach, not just those designed for teachers. In addition, building on the work of Gess-Newsome, Southerland, Johnston and Woodbury (2003), we recognize the salience of what they describe as the personal practical theories of college instructors in shaping how they plan and teach college science. We plan to provide a context for teachers and students to adapt their personal practical theories through the use of cogenerative dialogues (Eldon & Levin, 1991; Roth & Tobin, 2002), in which college instructors discuss the lectures, labs and performance in college science with students from their classes and the three investigators involved in this project (see later section for more detail on cogenerative dialogues). Urban High School Science In numerous studies associated with REC-0107022 (e.g., Tobin 2000a, in press) it is apparent that science teaching in urban high schools is only effective when teaching and learning are culturally adaptive. This is a challenge because the gaps between the social and cultural histories of teachers and students are often a major problem (Nieto, 2002). Delpit (2002) identified a culture of power in schools which serves to privilege mainly white, middle-class students by allocating rewards to the students most familiar with its rules and norms. Other researchers have highlighted the relevance of Delpit’s argument to science classrooms (e.g. Barton & Yang, 2000). These studies suggest that middle-class language and methods of argumentation are privileged (Lemke, 1990), science is portrayed as distant and overly difficult (Barton & Yang, 2000), and low-income and minority students’ cultural capital, knowledge, and dispositions often are not valued (Elmesky, 2003; Tobin, Seiler, & Walls, 1999). The question remains as to how to change science classrooms in order to work toward this goal. While some studies in science recommend culturally relevant curricula (e.g. Seiler, 2001), when this is attempted there is a risk that students and other stakeholders will perceive that they are not learning real science (Seiler, 2002) and that interests-based curricula are evidence of their teacher’s low expectations for the achievement of urban youth. In order to acquire science-related learner identities students need to view science classrooms as communities in which they want to participate (Brickhouse, Lowery & Schultz, 2000). Lave and Wenger (1991) highlight the importance of group membership for learning, since it is through efforts to become active participants in communities of practice that learners acquire skills, knowledge, and new identities. Hence in this project we will be interested to learn how group solidarity/communality is built in the classes of early career teachers, many of who are cultural and social minorities, like their students. Also, we are interested in how the emergence of collective responsibility (among the teacher and students) for the quality of science education is related to the changing roles and learning patterns in urban science classrooms (and college science classrooms – Goal 2). |
|
| Goal 1: Mentoring | |
One of the goals of this project is to assist in building an infrastructure for urban science education. Accordingly, Kenneth Tobin (PI) will collaborate with two assistant professors in science education. Susan Kirch is a biologist with a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology. She has an appointment in the College of Education at Queens College (CUNY) and is anxious to learn more about conducting research in urban science classrooms. Her strong background in biology complements Catherine Milne’s background in chemistry and Tobin’s background in physics. Milne has collaborated with Tobin in research in urban high schools in Philadelphia. Now in her second year as an assistant professor at New York University she has yet to establish a research program in New York City. This collaborative project will enable her to build on the work that was initiated in Philadelphia, in urban high schools and with college science teaching (see prior NSF support above). It is anticipated that Kirch and Milne will be collaborators on this project for two years, by which time they will have obtained their own funding and developed a parallel research program. When and if this occurs Tobin will recruit two more non-tenured faculty in universities in New York City, one from within the CUNY colleges and one from outside. During the first year of the project Kirch and Milne will be involved in research in the classrooms of the selected early career teachers. They will participate in the weekly research seminars and through their participation they will become more experienced in all aspects of the methodology associated with research in urban schools, including ethnography, design experiments (Brown, 1992), survey methods and writing grants and papers for publication. In the fall of the second year of the project Kirch will plan and teach a science course for teachers, that incorporates the Penn Inquiry Model and focuses on science that has relevance to urban science teachers (i.e., Science in the City). A brief description of this course is provided in the appended documents (final page). Similarly, with the assistance of two members of the advisory committee, Brian Schwartz (Physics) and Penny Gilmer (Chemistry), we will identify faculty from within CUNY to plan and coteach a course on the Physical Environment of New York City (building and adapted from Penn’s Environmental Chemistry course – for teachers in the MCE program). |
|
| Goal 2: Professional Development Activities for College Scientists and Science Educators | |
Nicholas Michelli (see letter in the Appendix), the University Dean of Teacher Education and Kenneth Tobin will create a Science Education Council to monitor the quality of science and science education in the teacher education programs in CUNY. The Council will comprise one representative from each of the 6 colleges that have teacher education programs and the other 11 that teach science, potentially to teach candidates (though they might not have declared when they take the science courses). The Council will identify 3-4 faculty from each of the relevant campuses to participate in a colloquium series that features the frontiers of science and contemporary research and associated methods, research and theory pertaining to college science education (see description of the colloquia later in the proposal). In the first semester of the project an emphasis will be placed on forming the Council and creating an agenda that includes professional development. The Council will take an active role in creating the agenda and the timetable for enacting it. In the context of the Council setting the agenda, we anticipate that toward the end of spring of the first year approximately six college science instructors with an interest in getting involved in research in their own classrooms will participate in a seminar series led by Kenneth Tobin. The seminar will focus on methods, theory and the results from research on college science classrooms. As part of the seminar, and in anticipation of these instructors undertaking research in their own classrooms, each of the participants will learn about design experiments, cogenerative dialogues, ethnography, and survey methods. In the sections below we describe our approach to research, especially the use of ethnography and cogenerative dialogues. In these descriptions the text refers to research in urban science classes. Parallel methods also will be used in the research that is undertaken in college science classes. Because of the desirability of the Council making decisions about professional development, including research in classrooms and limitations in person power, the research in college science classes will begin at such time that rapport has established with college science instructors and they show a commitment to participate in research of the type we describe here. The anticipation is that the colloquium series will precede research activities and the first studies will likely occur in college science classrooms during the first summer. |
|
| Goal 3: Supporting the Teaching and Learning of Science in Urban High Schools | |
We will initiate a number of activities associated with research, curriculum development and support for the intellectual growth of early career science teachers. We decided to focus on supporting new teachers, specifically those who have been recruited into urban science teaching through an alternative route. The Teaching Opportunity Program (TOP) is a collaborative initiative between The City University of New York and the New York City Department of Education; an alternative way to obtain certification to teach science. The program provides stipends, scholarships and special training to highly qualified baccalaureate program graduates seeking to pursue a career in teaching by completing a master’s degree leading to certification while teaching in New York City public schools. In science, TOP recruits undergraduate students, recent graduates and career changers with academic majors in biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, and related analytical fields. Since it began in 1999 the TOP program has graduated 89 teachers certified to teach science. The ethnic breakdown consists of 32 Black (Caribbean, African and African American), 10 Hispanic and 35 White/Middle Eastern. Thirty-four graduates are male and 55 are female. Seventy-nine of these graduates are presently teaching in middle and high schools that reflect the full range of public schools in New York City. Graduates from TOP must commit to teaching for a total of four years in New York City public schools, two of which occur while they are completing their master’s degree. The TOP science teachers are central to this project. We will create a network of urban teachers in New York City consisting of all graduates from TOP. All 79 science teachers who have graduated from the TOP program and are currently teaching in New York public schools will be invited to participate in a network of urban science teachers who will be connected electronically and interact via an interactive website and an associated listserve. They will also be invited to participate in the colloquia scheduled on Saturday mornings, one a month at the Graduate Center, which is in central Manhattan and thereby readily accessible from all parts of the city. As was the case with the college science/science education network, the teachers will be provided opportunities to get involved before they are invited to apply to be involved in research in their own classrooms. Six teachers will be selected to participate in a program of research in their own classrooms. They will be volunteers from public schools in which poverty is a factor in the lives of the students they teach and the students have diverse ethnic backgrounds. We will endeavor to select early career teachers such that we have equal representations of males and females and a range of ethnic groups represented in the six teachers. Those TOP teachers selected for the intensive research in their own classrooms will be offered an opportunity to study for a two 3-credit graduate courses per year for two years. In the first year the courses will be taught by Tobin -- Research in urban schools (fall) and Teaching and learning urban science (spring). These courses will enable the participants to examine the extant research that has been undertaken in urban science classes, different theories that provide lenses into urban classrooms, and methodologies that can be used in intensive multi-method research. Efforts will be made to incorporate what is learned from the research of the teachers into the courses, including videotaped vignettes of teaching and learning episodes selected from the classes of participants, and interviews with students and other key stakeholders, including school administrators and parents. Although funding has only been sought to pay the tuition of six TOP graduates, all will be offered the opportunity to participate in the courses (either by auditing them or paying for the tuition). Research groups will be formed to assist teacher-participants to learn how to do participatory interpretive research, build deep understandings of theoretical frameworks to support their research and other professional activities, and to share what has been learned from school-based research activities. The research of teachers is expected to catalyze reform in their own classrooms and school and mechanisms will be developed within participating schools to allow for dissemination within the school and the building of collective responsibility for high quality learning of science. Three research groups will be formed, consisting of one university researcher (i.e., Kirch, Milne or Tobin) and two of the participating TOP teachers. The research will be undertaken in one of the classes taught by each TOP teacher. Soon after the study commences two students will be identified as researchers in each of the participating classes. The students will be selected to be different from one another and to obtain diversity across the 12 student researchers in terms of sex, ethnicity, and class. |
|
| Goal 4: Expanding the Roles and Science-related Identities of Urban Youth | |
We will create a network of urban youth with an interest in science. The youth will be selected from the classrooms of the teachers in the Urban Teacher Network (i.e., potentially 2 x 79 = 158 youth). Each teacher participating in the TOP network will be invited to identify two students from the class she or he has designated as the one that will participate in the research. These students will be invited to attend colooquia at the Graduate Center on the frontiers of science and they will be taught how to do research on the teaching and learning of science. The foci for these colloquia will be on explorations of the nature of science, ways to look at the learning and teaching of science in their own classrooms, science in their lives outside of school, and how and why to undertake cogenerative dialogues focusing on the teaching and learning of science, curriculum development, and teacher education. Student researchers. As researchers, students have shown adeptness at learning and using the same social and cultural lenses as other researchers in our team. Accordingly we will have seminars for student researchers so that they can learn relevant theory and methodology to employ so that they can participate as fully-fledged researchers in the classroom and school-based research in which we engage. Of course schools are situated in urban communities and students are well placed to be primary researchers in fields outside of the classroom. They will participate in ethnography of their neighborhoods, including home, streets and sporting venues and also undertake video ethnography to represent what they have learned from their research. The student researchers are expected to be central in creating new groups within classrooms and schools around which different interests will grow, including interests in being an educator, doing research and participating in science. Hence the creation of student networks is a central part of the catalytic activities of this project. In our current research self-ethnography has been one of the most interesting student researcher projects that significantly opened dynamic doorways into understanding what occurs within fields outside of the science classroom, how these structures affect student identities and the internal turmoil and contradictions that can arise as urban youth participate in science. Typically, the student researchers chose to produce edited movies and PowerPoint presentations to represent aspects of their lives out of school that they regarded as salient to their learning of science. In addition, rap and poetry were genres used to represent aspects of the students’ lifeworlds. Our original goal involved finding out about three fields in the student researchers’ lives –home, neighborhood and school – yet each student researcher decided which field to foreground in their research. While some of the youth chose to develop presentation material that emphasized their homes and neighborhoods, others focused on their life histories, including educational experiences that were particularly significant. In the six intensive case studies the teacher and student researchers will create self-ethnographies and these will be foci for discussion at cogenerative dialogues and will be data for analysis for the research. The student ethnographies might be the most significant windows we have into the resources students have, foundations on which science education can build. Self-ethnographies were invaluable to our research understandings regarding weak cultural boundaries (Sewell, 1992) and the ways in which practices are often enacted without conscious awareness (Elmesky, 2003). In addition, by gaining access to video footage depicting the daily practices engaged by youth on the streets and in their homes and by studying their practices as they were represented in artifacts using PowerPoint, poetry and rap, the ethnography project helped us to begin to understand the practices that were commonly enacted by youth outside of school. We could then begin to look for overlapping use of such practices (i.e., resources for meeting their goals) within the research lab where the youth acted as both researchers and learners, as well as in school to discover how they could provide a framework on which to build their learning of science. In this project we will focus on involving the youth in a range of activities that center on cogenerative dialogues about the activities of all participants – including ethnography in the classroom and in fields outside of the classroom. Arising from these dialogues foci will emerge for research, curriculum development, teacher education, and policy – especially within the schools involved in the research. Our goal is not so much on the use of the students’ products as research artifacts (i.e., analyzing the video ethnographies using discourse analysis) because we do not have the resources to undertake the intensive studies that would be possible. Instead we will regard the activities of youth as potentially catalytic and will describe what they do and produce and associate their practices with the evolution of enacted curricula and changes in the practices of teachers and students in the classroom, school and fields away from school. Curriculum developers. Student researchers have shown that they can provide deep insights into their lives outside of the classroom including their interests, hobbies and ways in which science intersects with life’s priorities – including such issues as health, safety, diet, employment, and recreation. The insights they can provide for changes to curricula in which they have just participated and in the design of new curricula is a mine that we will develop in the lifetime of this project. The participation of students as researchers with the goal of curricular enhancement is the primary goal of design experiments. Teacher educators. As teacher educators student researchers can participate as panel members who will educate their teachers on how to “better educate students like me.” In addition to participation in panels the student researchers will use video editing to produce video clips of teaching and learning, student life in fields out of the classroom, and interviews of peers. They will then interpret their video vignettes and save them on DVD or CD. These can then be used as resources for science teacher education and some of these resources also will be made available on the website for the use of colleagues. |
|
| Central Activities | |
|
|
| In this section we describe three activities that are central to all of the project’s goal areas. These are research, cogenerative dialogues and colloquia. | |
| Research | |
| The project will incorporate research
as a central component of all activities. The approach will not
split out along the boundaries of qualitative or quantitative because
we regard this as an oversimplified dichotomy. However, in the spirit
of Ann Brown’s design experiments (Brown, 1992) and Patti Lather’s
critical ethnography (Lather, 1986), the research we undertake will
employ methods that support all participants being educated by what
is learned and the research being catalytic in the sense that the
quality of science education should iteratively improve because
the research being done creates products and processes that are
seeds for the building of collective understandings, responsibilities
and values among participants. Through the use of participatory
forms of research we will avoid a dichotomy of researchers and researched;
establishing a methodology whereby all participants are researchers.
In our endeavors to improve the quality of urban science education
we will not create hard boundaries between school, university, community
and home. Instead our research will explore teaching, learning and
curricula in formal and informal sites and endeavors will be made
to view what students know and can do as foundations for learning
and assisting others to learn. The approach uses multi-methods, especially ethnography and surveys with university researchers, teacher researchers and student researchers all contributing. At least once a week the research group will meet to participate in cogenerative dialogues and the cogenerated products (i.e., collective understandings of what is happening in the class, agreements on changes needed in the roles of the teacher and students, and collective responsibility for enacting agreed decisions) become the catalysts for the curriculum change described in design experiments. In the sub sections below the methods for the ethnography are described. |
|
| Data Sources | |
As part of our research, we draw on a variety of qualitative research methods appropriate in school contexts, including ethnography, discourse analysis, and micro-analytic approaches to studying situated cognition (Tobin, 2000b, in press). In addition to the usual observational, methodological, and theoretical field notes we videotape lessons and cogenerative dialogue sessions, interview students and teachers, and audiotape interviews conducted by high school student research assistants among their peers. Teachers are equipped with recorders to ensure that their talk is captured at all times and recorders are placed on various student desks to assure that all contributions to whole-class conversations are recorded and available for analysis. All relevant video are digitized to make them available for analysis using iMovie 3 (Macintosh OS 10.3), which allows slowing down and speeding up the playing and moving through the recording image by image to capture phenomena at the micro level, where we often observe patterned actions that the speed of everyday activity do not allow us to discern in real time. Transcriptions are made of video vignettes, audiotapes of classroom events, interviews, and cogenerative dialogues. The first transcriptions are often completed by the high school research assistants, because of the high fidelity with which they capture student contributions to the conversations in the science lessons. In addition to the transcribed audio- and videotaped lessons, meetings, and interviews, our database includes written reflections and curriculum plans that the teacher researchers produce in their planning. |
|
| Data Interpretation | |
Our interpretive work of teaching and learning begins with the cogenerative dialogues, which we conduct soon after the lessons have occurred. In subsequent meetings we take particular lessons and analyze them in increasingly greater detail. Our recordings of the lesson, which we tend to replay as often as necessary, became central resources in the meaning-making processes; this allows us to ensure that our theorizing remains grounded in the concrete materials of everyday teaching. These research meetings are recorded, transcribed, and made available for analysis. In our analyses, we do not seek to triangulate the different perspectives on the “same” events, because we expect participants who are institutionally and experientially located differently to have differing views on what has happened. That is, we would consider it surprising and worthy of inquiry if a professor of education with 35 years of experience were to have the same perspective on a lesson as an early career teacher or a student researcher. However, embodied in the cogenerative nature of our discussions, we strive not to privilege any one voice. (We created a heuristic that allows us to monitor whether the voices of all participants contribute and are heard – Roth & Tobin, 2002.) Also, we do not expect a strong coherence of behaviors, intentions, beliefs, or practices across different situations and settings (including our research settings), for cultures exhibit only weak internal coherence and internal contradictions are the norm (Sewell, 1992). Thus, data collected in different situations may be contradictory rather than consistent with the data collected on the same individual in a different situation. As they arise contradictions will be discussed and serve as a basis for changing the roles of teachers and learners and the curricular emphasis. Rather than consider contradictions as sources of error we will regard them as opportunities to learn and transform the curriculum. Contradictions can be strengthened to become stronger patterns (i.e., to become more coherent) or they can be eliminated. This process is at the heart of design experiments – changes by eliminating contradictions catalyze curricular changes. |
|
| Quality of Interpretations | |
| A central goal is the improvement of
conditions for teaching and learning in the urban schools where
we do our research. Thus, the most important quality criteria for
research are its ontological, educational, catalytic, and tactical
authenticity (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). Ontological and educational
authenticity relate to the extent to which the research enhances
the understanding and analyses of individuals within and across
stakeholder groups, respectively. In our research, all stakeholders
(e.g., teachers, students, and university researchers) are directly
involved in all stages of the research process, starting with research
on teaching and cogenerative dialogues, then examining the changing
conditions in the classroom, and finally writing research articles
for the research community. Catalytic and tactical authenticity
concern the extent that the research stimulates actions and increases
the power to act of heretofore underprivileged stakeholder groups,
respectively (in this case early career teachers and urban youth).
In our practice, both forms of authenticity are built in by design,
because the initial stages of analysis are immediately used to bring
about changes in the classrooms involved in the study. Our concern
for authenticity, as it is conceptualized above, is consistent with
Brown’s design experiments (Brown, 1992), which are enhanced through
the inclusion of cogenerative dialogues and the perspectives of
all participants. In our studies of urban science education in high
schools (initially at least), cogenerative dialogues will involve
two student researchers, a university researcher and the teacher.
We have found in our REC/ROLE study that cogenerative dialogues
involving the whole class occurred with telling effects – leading
to radical shifts in the curriculum. In fact, in some schools in
Philadelphia cogenerative dialogues have been institutionalized
as a way to provide urban youth with a voice in their own education
and are used school-wide in some large inner-city high schools (REC-0107022). Three other criteria are important for ensuring the quality of research, especially in academic contexts. These criteria include credibility, dependability, and transferability to other settings (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). Among the techniques that contribute to credibility, the qualitative researchers’ equivalent to internal validity, are prolonged engagement, persistent observation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis, progressive subjectivity, and member checks. We will employ each of these criteria in our longitudinal ethnographies which will extend for at least a year in a given teacher’s classroom. In terms of turnover, our experience is that most teachers want to stay involved for at least a two year cycle and some want to extend for longer periods. We expect teachers to commit to at least a year, after which time they can opt to withdraw. Teachers will be replaced as they withdraw. Optimally we will involve 12-18 teachers as teacher-researchers in the four year cycle. Student researchers may turnover more rapidly, although in Philadelphia we have had student researchers continue for the four years of high school. |
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| Dissemination | |
| Dissemination within and across the sites
in which our research occurs is a critical part of the project.
Weekly seminars that focus on activities among participants at each
site will focus on methods, theories and results associated with
the ongoing research. All participants will be encouraged to create nuggets, short “pithy” descriptions of what has been learned from research at a particular site. These nuggets will be posted on a website that is established for participants in the research. The website also will be a place for accessing resources used by researchers, which are potentially useful to others involved in research. This portion of the website would be password protected. Examples of these include video vignettes, transcriptions of various sorts, field notes, draft versions of papers, scanned artifacts from the field, and other digital media. The use of the web for making research artifacts accessible affords collaborative research among urban scholars who may be in remote locations. For example, in past NSF funded research we have actively involved members of our advisory board in research by making similar resources available to them. Their analyses of resources from our database were then provided for the use of others involved in our research. More conventional forms of dissemination also will occur. CDs and DVDs produced in the project will be disseminated throughout CUNY to science teacher educators and will be available nationally to colleagues in NSTA, AETS, AAAS and NARST (for example). Tobin and the assistant professors involved as mentees will attend national meetings to present what they have learned from their scholarly activities in this project. |
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| Cogenerative Dialogues | |
| Cogenerative dialogues, which involve
students, teachers, researchers, and sometimes administrators in
discussions over shared experiences of teaching and learning, can
address the extent to which teaching benefits learners, the roles
of the teacher and students, what appears to work and what does
not, and the associated divisions of labor and power relationships.
The research group associated with each class (i.e., a teacher researcher,
two student researchers, and a university researcher) endeavor to
convene as equals with the goal of identifying contradictions and
patterns of coherence that occur in the classroom practices so that
we can reach collective understandings on how to resolve contradictions
that are identified. Agreement can be reached on patterns that ought
to be strengthened and others regarded as deleterious and in need
of elimination. Similarly, environments can be enhanced by eliminating
some contradictions and strengthening others; making patterns of
coherence by increasing the frequency of contradictory practices.
By actively involving students in cogenerative dialogues there is
a potential to have them identify maladaptive practices that lead
them to experience alienation as dispositions to act are shut down
unintentionally by teaching practices, and even to identify instances
when adherence to rules or schema leads to the oppression of some
students. In a science classroom it is important to realize that not all practices can be regarded as conducive to learning and doing science. Since the students in the science classroom are much the same as the participants in many fields out of the classroom they frequently enact practices from those other fields without being aware of so doing. Accordingly, there is need for a process of becoming aware of which support the learning of science and those that do not. Cogenerative dialogue is a field in which participants become aware and develop collective understandings and resolutions about what and how to change (Roth & Tobin, 2001). Becoming collectively aware is a critical step for teachers and students to enact practices that are culturally adaptive, that are conducive to learning science and eliminate practices (of students and teachers) that do not promote science learning. There are other very important outcomes likely from participation in cogenerative dialogues. All participants learn, in a relatively safe context, how to discuss and reach agreement with others who differ in terms of age, sex, ethnicity and class. It is important for teachers and students to learn to communicate across such boundaries and what is learned on cogenerative dialogues can then be the basis for culturally adaptive teaching and learning in a classroom context. Hence it is important in cogenerative dialogues to “cogenerate” a collective responsibility for enacting agreed upon changes in the science classroom. The shared responsibility that is distributed across students and the teacher can break down the model of teacher as lone hero who alone is accountable for the quality of science education. The collective responsibility raises the possibility of creating communities of learners in which the learning of science can thrive and identities can be honed that are connected with success in science and enjoyment of doing science. Cogenerative dialogues have been catalysts for changing the nature of learning environments. In this study we expect cogenerative dialogues to occur at least once and preferably twice a week. Any of the researchers can raise issues for discussion and “cogenerated” solutions, including issues, impressions, raw data, analyses and interpretations. Based on our experience in urban schools we will conduct cogenerative dialogues at lunch time and provide the food. One of our research team noted that: The food was also the key. The students chose the food we would have each week. They said that helped because it was one of the little ways we listened and showed we cared. It was also the intro to some of our first conversations on what the students ate in school and at home as well as talking about nutrition and sleep. The cogenerative dialogues have been ideal places for discussing a range of topics that have provided deep insights into the lives of the students and the other social spaces in which they spend time and that have salience to them. What was most notable was that the practices of the students involved in the cogenerative dialogues changed dramatically in their science classrooms and throughout the fields that comprised the school. These changes were positive and were noted by other teachers, administrators and parents. Similarly, the teachers’ practices and identities also changed and the quality of teaching improved in ways that were apparent to students and administrators. |
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| Science Education Colloquium Series | |
| We propose to host monthly colloquia for three sets of participants, college scientists and science educators, early career science teachers and urban high school youth. The colloquia will be planned by an executive group consisting of Penny Gilmer (chemistry, planning electronically), Brian Schwartz (physics), Susan Kirch (biology), Catherine Milne (chemistry) and Tobin (physics). We plan to have colloquia once a month on a Saturday and envision that a program of activities will be planned so that participants in the seminars will come to Manhattan for several hours and participate in a range of activities, not just a one-hour lecture/demonstration. This will allow the sessions arranged for each group to have common and unique components. For example, if the colloquia are three hours in duration we would have one hour each on three strands (a) Science at the frontier, (b) Research, theory and innovative ideas for teaching and learning science, and (c) Methods for research in science education. Because of its centrality and the resource rich nature of Manhattan the colloquia will be scheduled to occur in the Graduate Center of CUNY, which is located on 5th Avenue and 34 St in New York City. | |
| Science at the Frontier | |
| Speakers will present research and theory from their scholarly activities to bring participants up to date with advances of science. In this way school curricula can be enriched by educators having an awareness of what is happening on the frontiers of science, especially as it is practiced by scientists from New York City and the immediate vicinity. Each presentation would be tailored to the audience and on a given Saturday there would likely be separate presentations for college science educators, science teachers and urban youth. However, there is likely to be overlap and we would encourage participants from any of the groups to select from what is available depending on their interests and background knowledge. | |
| Research, Theory and Innovative Ideas for Teaching and Learning Science | |
| This strand in the colloquium will be supported by scholars in our research group and science education researchers from New York City who are involved in cutting edge research in urban science education. Activities will be designed for the particular target group and to the extent that cross-over involvement is desirable it will be afforded and encouraged. | |
| Methods for Research in Science Education | |
| At each colloquium issues that have salience to the unfolding research agenda will be presented so that participants from each of the three networks can increase their understandings of how to do research in urban science education. These presentations will be in addition to the localized weekly meetings in which participants will learn and use appropriate methods. The advantage of having this strand in the colloquium series is that there is a greater opportunity for participants to learn from one another and for knowledge and skills to diffuse across the research sites. | |
| Concluding Remarks | |
This project is ambitious given the level of funding. However the PI regards this proposal as being a seedling to which many researchers will be attracted. As was the case with the present REC/ROLE grant from the NSF many researchers collaborated with the project, without direct funding from the NSF grant. The activity stimulated others who wanted to focus their scholarly activities on the renewal of urban science education. Accordingly, the size of the project was more than doubled by researchers who were not directly funded by the grant. Similarly, we will encourage others to join us and in so doing contribute their intellectual resources to the project, thereby enhancing what we can do and allowing a scale up in attaining the goal of creating an infrastructure of support for urban science education. The very proactive support of Schwartz and Michelli address the issue of resources directly. Through their participation structures will be created to leverage the project in ways that will directly benefit the development of higher quality science education throughout CUNY and to the extent that CUNY can impact the New York public schools, we will increase the quality of learning and teaching science in public high schools. Through the enhancement of the identities of urban youth we anticipate that more of them will continue with their education, perhaps some coming into science and all having enhanced horizons for productive lives and employment. It is to be hoped that their experiences will attract more than just a few into science. |
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