Christina Siry

Creating Participatory Discourse for Teaching and Research in Early Childhood Science

This paper presents the results of a study conducted with second grade students and pre-service teachers. This study examined the possibilities for engaging children in critical discourse about their classroom science experiences. At the heart of this discussion lies the desire to provide a space for teachers and children to develop relationships and to explore the learning of science together. Themes that emerged include: (1) on-going, focused, critical dialogue between children and teachers supported children in developing agency in the classroom, and (2) on-going conversations created the opportunity for children to reveal their ways of knowing and developing interpretations of the practice of science.

Emphasizing Collaborative Practices in Learning to Teach: Coteaching and Cogenerative Dialogue in a Field-Based Methods Course.

This article details a field‐based methods course for preservice teachers that has been designed to integrate shared teaching experiences in elementary classrooms with ongoing critical dialogues with a focus on highlighting the complexities of teaching. I describe the structure of the course and explore the use of coteaching and cogenerative dialogue as approaches to learning how to teach. Vignettes that typify experiences in this course are analyzed, and two main findings are explored. First, coteaching provided critical support to preservice teachers as they taught their first lessons to children. Second, cogenerative dialogues mediated reflexive dialogue around the complexities of teaching. This structure provided a foundation for participants to examine their epistemological assumptions. It is argued that at a time of increasing segmentation of teacher education, teacher educators need to support dialogic, multi‐perspectival approaches that emphasize the complex nature of teaching and learning in elementary classrooms.

Using Video in Science Teacher Education: An Analysis of the Utilization of Video-Based Media by Teacher Educators and Researchers

In this chapter, we examine trends involving video usage in science teacher education and science education research. We trace developments in video technologies and explore examples of the ways in which video/multimedia have been utilized in the education of science teachers. We conclude the review by summarizing our findings, and offer implications for research on the utilization of video and multimedia technologies in the preparation and professional development of science teachers. Specifically we raise questions and considerations for future research as it relates to science teacher education and research in science education.

‘Working with’ as a methodological stance: collaborating with students in teaching, writing, and research

Using critical ethnography guided by cultural sociology, this paper examines the role of ‘co’ in teacher education; coresearching, coteaching, and cogenerating dialogue. The authors are a pre‐service teacher and a college instructor, and through our multiple perspectives and positionings, we explore how collaboration served to dismantle teacher–student hierarchies and replaced them with complex relationships mediated by polysemic approaches to research. Pushing against traditional ideologies, we utilize a multi‐voiced approach to writing as we present our experiences and interpretations of data relative to the possibilities of collaboration in education and research. As we analyze our role in collaborative endeavors, we ask: How can we find ways to work across and around hierarchical institutional structures when working with our students? What are ways that we can examine our individual lived experiences together, and is it possible to work with each other to develop identities as teachers that are not predicated on power differentials?

GLOBALIZATION AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

Processes of globalization have played a major role in economic and cultural change worldwide. More recently, there is a growing literature on rethinking science education research and development from the perspective of globalization. This paper provides a critical overview of the state and future development of science education research from the perspective of globalization. Two facets are given major attention. First, the further development of science education as an international research domain is critically analyzed. It seems that there is a predominance of researchers stemming from countries in which English is the native language or at least a major working language. Second, the significance of rethinking the currently dominant variants of science instruction from the perspectives of economic and cultural globalization is given major attention. On the one hand, it is argued that processes concerning globalization of science education as a research domain need to take into account the richness of the different cultures of science education around the world. At the same time, it is essential to develop ways of science instruction that make students aware of the various advantages, challenges and problems of international economic and cultural globalization.

‘Opening up’ a science task: an exploration of shifting embodied participation of a multilingual primary student

ABSTRACT Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students have different home languages and cultures from many of their peers, In our context, these students suffer from higher school drop-out rates than their peers and are far behind their peers in sciences. This study investigates the interactions of a nine-year-old child whose home language is Portuguese and who learns science in this specific case in a diglossic environment in the Luxembourgish school system, in which his teacher used German for written tasks and Luxembourgish for oral communication. We examine, moment-by-moment, the interactions around a task regarding environmental protection. The role of this Lusoburguês (Luxembourgish and Portuguese identities and nationalities combined) student and his embodiment and participation changes when his group is confronted with an activity that requires an increased amount of manipulation. His identity evolves in interaction, as he becomes the leader in his group, and through a playful stance, manages to open the task so that his peers can further explore. Implications include the value of including more open-ended investigations in the teaching and learning of science as well as implications for further study concerning practice-based approaches in science classrooms with CLD students, particularly in increasingly multilingual/cultural and/or diglossic or heteroglossic school contexts.

Interaction rituals and inquiry-based science instruction: Analysis of student participation in small-group investigations in a multilingual classroom

Abstract Language learners participating in inquiry‐based science instruction are often faced with the challenge of interacting in a language they have not yet mastered. With this challenge at the fore, this study uses interaction ritual theory to examine a plurilingual students participation in inquiry‐based science. Interaction ritual analysis of the focal students interactions with peers during small‐group science investigations at the microlevel (tenths of a second) and in real‐time revealed that positive interaction rituals failed to form at first. Over a period of 6 months, his persistent use of nonverbal and verbal participation strategies, and opportunities to engage diverse communicative resources, resulted in higher levels of synchrony with his classmates and successful interactions in the language of instruction. The findings present novel information about the nuances of the silent, embodied participation of language learners in inquiry‐oriented instruction. Further, the findings elaborate the claim that inquiry‐based science pedagogies created space for students to form successful interaction rituals that, in turn, supported the focal students science engagement and language development.

“And? Did We Do Nice Things?” Children Documenting Their Emerging Inquiries in Early Science Learning

This study investigates inquiry-based science activities in elementary school and examines ways in which science emerges from young students’ interactions. Regarding the context-sensitive organization of children’s talk around and about collaborative inquiry processes, the research foregrounds the quality of the learners’ semiotic resources they rely on as they “do” science within multi-modal interactions. It stresses the spontaneous ways they describe, explain, interconnect and reason about science phenomena and, more generally, how they talk their joint experiences into being. Particular attention is paid to possibilities for including students’ insights about their inquiry and learning processes in the analysis. The study explores to what extent learners manage to document ‘doing science’ with handheld cameras and how this can open a dialogue between students and teachers.

Exploring the complexities of learning to teach: Collaborative methods and participatory structures in teacher education

In this chapter we focus on a science methods course for pre-service teachers that has been structured to provide a field-based approach to learning how to teach science at the elementary level. Utilizing coteaching and cogenerative dialogue (cogen) (Tobin and Roth 2006), this course is built around collaboration and shared classroom experiences, in order to create opportunities for pre-service teachers to engage in teaching science together in the authentic settings of elementary classrooms. We, the authors of this chapter, are the course instructor and a pre-service teacher participant in the course. Through a multi-voiced approach to writing, we explore cogen within teacher education as a pedagogical space to facilitate collective responsibility for elementary science teaching, and to support participants as they work towards becoming teachers of science.

Envisioning Polysemicity: Generating Insights into the Complexity of Place-Based Research Within Contested Spaces

In Implications of Sense of Place and Place-Based Education for Ecological Integrity and Cultural Sustainability in Contested Places, Steven Semken and Elizabeth Brandt explore the construct of place and suggest that place-based education can serve as a mutually advantageous transaction between people and place in contested areas. In this chapter, I extend the implications they have introduced and contend that a critical theoretical perspective is required in work with contested places and displaced people in order to recognize the multitude of complexities involved. Building from their work, I suggest using polyvocal and polysemic research in and around contested places as a means to acknowledge multidimensional intersubjective perspectives while also emphasizing connections to place.