Doris Ash

Working within the Zone of Proximal Development: Formative Assessment as Professional Development

(2003). Working within the Zone of Proximal Development: Formative Assessment as Professional Development. Journal of Science Teacher Education: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 23-48.

Talk, Tools, and Tensions: Observing Biological Talk over Time.

The goal of this study is to explore new tools for analyzing scientific sense‐making in out‐of‐school settings. Although such measures are now common in science classroom research, dialogically based methodological approaches are relatively new to informal learning research. Such out‐of‐classroom settings have more recently become a breeding ground for new design approaches for tracking scientific talk and ideas within complex data‐sets. The research reported here seeks to understand the language people do use to make sense of the life sciences over time. Another goal of this study is to track biological themes over time, using a new analytical scheme—the Tool for Observing Biological Talk Over Time. Our analyses are linked to and informed by tensions between particularistic and holistic data collection and analysis, qualitative and quantitative representations, and everyday and formal science discourse. These tensions and our analyses are linked to larger theoretical frameworks and to the recursive interplay between theory and practice.

Changing Practices, Changing Identities as Museum Educators

The main goal of this chapter is to describe how research findings on a scaffoldingfocused,reflection-oriented community of practice transformed museum educators’identities as educators. A second goal is to describe the theory, the multiple methodologies drawing on that theory,and the layered analysis that accompanied this research. Our theoretical lens is sociocultural,placing great emphasis on community building,dialogic negotiation,and ongoing reflection and research on practice.

Methodologies for Reflective Practice and Museum Educator Research

We argue in this chapter that research focused on learners and learning, as well as on teaching, has sharpened our insights about how museum educators, in the process of becoming increasingly reflective practitioners and teacher researchers, can learn to both ‘notice’ learners in new ways and respond to these learners with flexible scaffolding rather than with predetermined disciplinary content, scripts or standardized questions. We base this argument on research conducted over the past five years using a sociocultural theoretical framework to inform methodological decisions. Our work and that of others (Tran & King, 2007, for example) and Kisiel’s and Tal’s chapters in this book have underscored the need for theoretically grounded practices for those teaching in informal science institutions (ISIs).

Dialogic Inquiry and Biological Themes and Principles: Implications for Exhibit Design

ver the past decade, learning research has focused on dialogic sense-making in science, both in and out of museums.1 In this article I rely on the theory and practices of dialogic inquiry2 to identify useful design attributes for biologically based exhibits. I concentrate on the analysis of dialogic data from three families. My research dovetails with current museum research on conversation as methodology,3 object-centered learning in museums,4 and prior research with families.5 1 touch briefly on the sociocultural roots of dialogic inquiry before presenting three dialogic examples. Finally, I suggest design principles supported by this analysis.

Exploring Models in the Biology Classroom

Abstract Models are simplified representations of more complex systems that help scientists structure the knowledge they acquire. As such, they are ubiquitous and invaluable in scientific research and communication. Because science education strives to make classroom activities more closely reflect science in practice, models have become integral teaching and learning tools woven throughout the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Although model-based learning and curriculum are not novel in educational theory, only recently has modeling taken center stage in K-12 national standards for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes. We present a variety of examples to outline the importance of various types of models and the practice of modeling in biological research, as well as the emphasis of NGSS on their use in both classroom learning and assessment. We then suggest best practices for creating and modifying models in the context of student-driven inquiry and demonstrate that even subtle incorporation of modeling into existing science curricula can help achieve student learning outcomes, particularly for English-language learners. In closing, we express the value of models and modeling in life beyond the classroom and research laboratory, and highlight the critical importance of “model literacy” for the next generation of scientists, engineers, and problem-solvers.

Tracing our Methodological Steps

The process of interpreting how collaborative groups make sense of science in informal learning and teaching contexts such as museums has been actively studied for the past few decades. Studies often focus on the science content that is learned or the ways in which content is taught. Such studies also largely focus on the typical European-American public that predominantly populate museums and other informal places of learning. The research we describe in this chapter disrupts these patterns; our research has actively explored scientific sense making from the point of view of the learners, who, in our study, were all ethnically diverse families with children in a nearby school serving culturally and linguistically diverse students. As in the other chapters in this volume, we focus here on the twists and changes of methods with time that made our research possible. We start with a short vignette, in order to introduce some of the themes we will advance.