Eileen Carlton Parsons

An Examination of Black Science Teacher Educators’ Experiences with Multicultural Education, Equity, and Social Justice

Diversity, multicultural education, equity, and social justice are dominant themes in cultural studies (Hall in Cultural dialogues in cultural studies. Routledge, New York, pp 261–274, 1996; Wallace 1994). Zeichner (Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, pp 737–759, 2005) called for research studies of teacher educators because little research exists on teacher educators since the late 1980s. Thomson et al. (2001) identified essential elements needed in order for critical multiculturalism to be infused in teacher education programs. However, little is known about the commitment and experiences of science teacher educators infusing multicultural education, equity, and social justice into science teacher education programs. This paper examines twenty (20) Black science teacher educators’ teaching experiences as a result of their Blackness and the inclusion of multicultural education, equity, and social justice in their teaching. This qualitative case study of 20 Black science teacher educators found that some of them have attempted and stopped due to student evaluations and the need to gain promotion and tenure. Other participants were able to integrate diversity, multicultural education, equity and social justice in their courses because their colleagues were supportive. Still others continue to struggle with this infusion without the support of their colleagues, and others have stopped The investigators suggest that if science teacher educators are going to prepare science teachers for the twenty first century, then teacher candidates must be challenged to grapple with racial, ethnic, cultural, instructional, and curricular issues and what that must mean to teach science to US students in rural, urban, and suburban school contexts.

High school students’ implicit theories of what facilitates science learning

Background: Research has primarily concentrated on adults’ implicit theories about high quality science education for all students. Little work has considered the students’ perspective. This study investigated high school students’ implicit theories about what helped them learn science. Purpose: This study addressed (1) What characterizes high school students’ implicit theories of what facilitates their learning of science?; (2) With respect to students’ self-classifications as African American or European American and female or male, do differences exist in the students’ implicit theories? Sample, design and methods: Students in an urban high school located in south-eastern United States were surveyed in 2006 about their thoughts on what helps them learn science. To confirm or disconfirm any differences, data from two different samples were analyzed. Responses of 112 African American and 118 European American students and responses from 297 European American students comprised the data for sample one and two, respectively. Results: Seven categories emerged from the deductive and inductive analyses of data: personal responsibility, learning arrangements, interest and knowledge, communication, student mastery, environmental responsiveness, and instructional strategies. Instructional strategies captured 82% and 80% of the data from sample one and two, respectively; consequently, this category was further subjected to Mann-Whitney statistical analysis at p < .05 to ascertain ethnic differences. Significant differences did not exist for ethnicity but differences between females and males in sample one and sample two emerged. Conclusions: African American and European American students’ implicit theories about instructional strategies that facilitated their science learning did not significantly differ but female and male students’ implicit theories about instructional strategies that helped them learn science significantly differed. Because students attend and respond to what they think and perceive to be important, addressing students’ implicit theories may be one way to enhance science education reform.

Conceptualizations of Context in Science Education Research: Implications for Equity

Context is commonly equated to the setting in which events take place. Researchers often capture this place in their descriptions of participants, physical surroundings, and artifacts relevant to the phenomenon under investigation. In this chapter, context is treated as part of the researched phenomena. The first treatment of context considers factors internal and external to the individual. This conceptualization of context is illustrated via research on middle school science teachers’ views about students in relation to their life experiences situated within the sociopolitical milieux of the societies in which they occurred. Fields, sites that are separated both temporally and spatially constitute the second conceptualization of context. Fields have resources that promote structure; agency within a field enables access to and appropriation of these resources. Social life within a field is mediated by a dialectical relationship between agency and structure and this second view of context examines this relationship by way of cogenerative dialogues (Roth et al., Learn Environ Res 5(1):1–28, 2002). Cogenerative dialogues (or cogens) are fields within which participants engage in critical reflection by making meaning of shared experiences through multiple understandings and opportunities.

Science Education Research Involving Blacks in the USA During 1997–2007: Synthesis, Critique, and Recommendations

In this chapter, the authors critically review K–12 science education research situated within classrooms in the USA. The authors examine studies involving Blacks that were conducted over the past decade from 1997, the year in which equity became a featured topic in mainstream science education discourse, to 2007. The authors highlight areas investigated in science education and discuss relevance of the literature corpus to the status of Blacks in science education.