Bhaskar Upadhyay

Middle school science teachers' perceptions of social justice: A study of two female teachers

The focus of this qualitative study is to document two middle school science teachers’ perceptions of social justice and how these teachers implement various aspects of social justice in their science instruction. The two teachers teach science in an urban school that serves students from low-income, immigrant, and ethnic minority families. The study highlights key findings that pertain to the integration of their views of social justice with science teaching, empowerment of students through social justice-oriented science teaching, and utilization of students’ knowledge and values in socially just and equitable science teaching practices. The study also highlights the challenges of teaching science for social justice in this environment, and emphasizes the importance of context in constructing and executing science instruction for equity and social justice.

Teaching and Learning Science for Social Justice: Introduction to the Special Issue

This past spring 2009, I (Angie) was teaching a fifth grade science unit on “weather” at a small urban school at the request of one of the teachers. The teachers request was loaded. Her school had...

Taking an active stance: How urban elementary students connect sociocultural experiences in learning science

ABSTRACT In this interpretive case study, we draw from sociocultural theory of learning and culturally relevant pedagogy to understand how urban students from nondominant groups leverage their sociocultural experiences. These experiences allow them to gain an empowering voice in influencing science content and activities and to work towards self-determining the sciences that are personally meaningful. Furthermore, tying sociocultural experiences with science learning helps generate sociopolitical awareness among students. We collected interview and observation data in an urban elementary classroom over one academic year to understand the value of urban students’ sociocultural experiences in learning science and choosing science activities.

Deliberative Democracy in an Urban Elementary Science Classroom

Over a one-week period a fourth-grade class is investigating the question: What things does a bean seed need to germinate? The students created a list of items such as water, dirt, light, and, air that the bean seed will need to germinate. Each student placed their bean seeds in a plastic cup covered by wet cotton balls and observed the seeds grow for a week. The following week students shared their observations and discussed the outcomes.

Changing Lives: Coteaching Immigrant Students in a Middle School Science Classroom

Ann: I had never taught science to Hmong students and teaching Hmong students is just so tough because they don’t understand me and I don’t understand them.… Students have nice ideas, but I can’t get to use in class because some of their views don’t match with science.… I needed another person to be by my side to teach science and Chue has been a great asset to me and the students.… I couldn’t have gotten a better resource to teach my students science so they [students] feel comfortable to do and talk science.

Elementary Students’ Ways of Seeing Globalization in Science

Globalization has to be a new educational imperative in science education policy, teacher preparation programs, and curricular development initiatives. As geopolitical, cultural, and economic boundaries are blurred because of globalization, there is an urgent need to understand and document the effects of globalization in our youths’ everyday actions and choices inside and outside the school environments. In everyday urban science classrooms teachers and students are engaged in many science related activities but globalization is missing from the science discourses. This chapter presents fifth-grade urban students’ engagements with science content and activities and how their classroom engagements are parts of larger local and global events in the process of globalization. In this chapter I draw on three notions of globalization – deterritorialization, interconnectedness, and time and space compression – and look through the sociocultural lens to examine the interactions and discourses that take place in a poor urban science classroom. Using the interpretive research paradigm I attempt to answer the following three questions linking science and globalization: (1) How do elementary students see globalization in a science classroom context?; (2) How do elementary students engage in science when Western-scientific knowledge and non-Western knowledge interact as global and local knowledge structures?; and (3) How do students view their connection to larger global issues and the science they learn in school? The students in the fifth grade class took the initiative to connect science content to the recent earthquake disaster in Haiti and engaged in discussions and actions that created bonds between the students and the events in Haiti. The students not only discovered the role of their actions in being a part of the global event but also managed to redefine how science learning could reshape their thinking about distant people. Similarly, the students also wrestled with the standard science knowledge that the science books and school curriculum teach and the local and personal knowledge gained over long periods of time. As the process of globalization sweeps across many distant local communities and people, the struggle to retain and preserve local knowledge will become more acute. The interactions between local and global values and beliefs will spill into the social and cultural fabric of many communities. The voices that the students will bring into local science classrooms are at the heart of understanding and documenting what science education in the age of globalization should do for these students and their lives. Therefore, nations and communities have to rethink science education so that it will engage students in making sense of the interactions between science learning and the process of globalization and their role now and when they become adults.