Eli Tucker-Raymond

Science Learning in Urban Elementary School Classrooms: Liberatory Education and Issues of Access, Participation and Achievement

We examine what we know about science learning inside classrooms in American urban elementary schools that educate predominately low-income students of colour (African-Americans and Latino/as). Mindful of a Freirean liberatory framework for education, we analyse research published in journals in the last decade that addresses classroom learning issues, what learning takes place and how, benefits (perceived and conceived) of science learning, when classroom learning is more successful and for whom, and the relationship between teaching and learning. The research synthesis points to the usefulness of various constructs, such as language, identity, hybridity and meaning making in exploring and understanding science learning in the urban elementary school classrooms of students who usually have limited access, participation and achievement in science.

Young Children’s Multimodal Identity Stories about Being Scientists

An important goal of science education is helping students develop sophisticated understandings about what science is, how it is done, and for what purposes (National Research Council, 1996, 2012). Just as importantly, science education should help students imagine themselves within scientific activity, including considering what counts as science in and out of school in more robust ways (Bang & Medin, 2011). In this chapter, we present findings from a series of interviews, given three times throughout one school year, that asked 54 children in six classrooms, grades 1–3, to draw and talk about two times they were scientists.

Cultural Persistence, Political Resistance, and Hope in the Community and School-Based Art of a Puerto Rican Diaspora Neighborhood.

The authors describe themes of cultural persistence, political resistance, and hope in the art of one Puerto Rican neighborhood in the Midwestern United States. The themes are described across three contexts: community mural art, poetry from students in an alternative high school, and poetry from seventh grade students in a neighborhood middle school. In describing currents of Puerto Rican identity-making, resistance to gentrification, and struggles against local oppression that are evident in all three contexts, the authors argue that as they name their worlds, students commit acts of social justice through their perpetuation of historical and cultural themes situated within a tradition of community activism.

Imagining Identities: Young People Constructing Discourses of Race, Ethnicity, and Community in a Contentious Context of Rapid Urban Development

This article uses a critical sociohistorical lens to discuss and explain examples of the ways in which young people reflect, refract, and contribute to discourses of gentrification, displacement, and racial, ethnic, and geographic community identity building in a rapidly changing urban neighborhood. The article explores examples from open-ended dialogic conversations in one seventh-grade classroom. In their conversations, youth imagine themselves and their communities as sociohistorically yet dynamically situated. We argue that such spaces allow for schools and students to bridge in and out of school worlds, amplifying young people’s relationships to enduring struggles in changing urban contexts.

DiaspoRican Art as a Space for Identity Building, Cultural Reclamation, and Political Reimagining

ABSTRACT The lives of Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood of Humboldt Park, Chicago, are often situated in a complex social field shaped by transnational cultural and political border crossing. We argue that artistic practices in this neighborhood are integral to building community and individual identities grounded in local meanings of the Puerto Rican diaspora experience. Interviews with three adolescent community residents and a high school art teacher indexed themes that exemplify community residents’ purposes for artistic practice: (1) self-expression within practices of collective identity building; (2) cultural reclamation; and (3) political reimagining. We also discuss how such work invites new tensions for identity making, including who can participate, who is represented, and what forms those representations take. These tensions point backward in time, forward to the future, and across geopolitical space. Finally, we suggest implications for learning in schools.