Leslie C. Moore

Muslim Children's Other School

During my service as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Far North Province of Cameroon, I lived just around the corner from a Qur’anic school. Each afternoon on my way back to work after lunch, I passed a crowd of children sitting outside their family compound. Th ey sat cross-legged on the gravel-covered ground, holding wooden tablets covered with writing, while their teacher walked among them or sat on a sheepskin, studying his/her own text. Sometimes the children murmured, sometimes they yelled. For about two hours every afternoon, except Fridays, and again in the evening after dinner, except Th ursdays, the children would gather outside their teacher’s house to study the Qur’an under the teacher’s supervision, committing to memory passages from the sacred text in Classical Arabic, a language they did not comprehend. Millions of Muslim children around the world participate in Qur’anic schooling. For some, this is their only formal schooling experience; others attend both Qur’anic school and secular school. As the vignette above illustrates, Qur’anic schooling emphasizes memorization and reproduction (recitation, reading, and transcription) of Qur’anic texts without comprehension of their literal meaning. Such practice is not unique to Muslims, nor is it restricted to religious educational contexts. In the religions that have promoted literacy, including Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Confucianism, traditional pedagogies emphasize verbatim mastery of sacred written texts as a means to develop a child’s intellect, moral character, and religious community membership. It was emphasized in Western secular schools, as well (Wagner, 1983). by Leslie C. Moore, Assistant Professor, School of Teaching and Learning, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Muslim Children’s Other School

Linguistics in a Science Museum: Integrating Research, Teaching, and Outreach at the Language Sciences Research Lab

We describe the mission and practices of the Language Sciences Research Lab, a fully functional research lab embedded within a science museum. Within this environment, we integrate cutting-edge research, formal instruction, informal learning, and outreach to the public so that our work in each domain interacts with and enriches the others. We are guided by core concepts from the field of informal science education, and we strive to inspire excitement and expand both scholarly and public knowledge about the language sciences.

Science Education for Young Emergent Bilinguals

Linguistic diversity among school-aged children in the United States has grown rapidly over the last 30 years, and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years. This chapter presents an overview of research on science education for young emergent bilinguals in preschool through third grade settings. This body of work provides important insights but also raises many questions about how science education unfolds and can be improved for children learning in a second or additional language in early childhood educational contexts. We begin with a brief discussion of the contexts in which (research on) science education for young emergent bilingual occurs. We then examine the empirical research, organizing our review along four dimensions that emerged as the main analytic foci across studies: curriculum development, teacher professional development, student outcomes, and classroom interaction. Across these four foci, hands-on and inquiry-based science education figures prominently, as does the integration of science education and English language development. We conclude by discussing implications of the research for educational practice, directions for future research, and the need for further integration of multiple perspectives on and methodological approaches in research on science educational processes and outcomes for emergent bilinguals and their teachers in early childhood educational contexts.