Improving Urban Science Education

New Roles for Teachers, Students, and Researchers

Kenneth Tobin, Rowhea Elmesky, Gale Seiler

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2005
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780742568679
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Many would argue that the state of urban science education has been static for the past several decades and that there is little to learn from it. Rather than accepting this deficit perspective, Improving Urban Science Education strives to recognize and understand the successes that exist there by systematically documenting seven years of research into issues salient to teaching and learning in urban high school science classes. Grounded in the post structuralism of William Sewell-and brought to life through the experiences of different students, teachers, and school settings in Philadelphia-this book shows how teachers and students can work together to enact meaningful science education when social and cultural differences as well as inappropriate curricula often make the challenges seem insurmountable.

Chapters contain rich images of urban youth and each strives to offer insights into problems and suggestions for resolving them. Most significant, in spite of the challenges, the research offers hope and shows that fresh approaches to teaching and learning can lead students-some who have already been pronounced academic, even societal, failures-to becoming avid and deep learners of science.

Table of contents

• Reverberations - Contemporary Curriculum and Pedagogy
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword - Student Voices on Urban Science Education: A Collage of Student Researcher Perspectives
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - The Who, What, Where, and How of Our Urban Ethnographic Research
• Chapter 2 - Urban Science as a Culturally and Socially Adaptive Practice
• Chapter 3 - Painting the Landscape: Urban Schools and Urban Classrooms
• Chapter 4 - Organizational Mediation of Urban Science
• Chapter 5 - Playin on the Streets—Solidarity in the Classroom: Weak Cultural Boundaries and the Implications for Urban Science Education
• Chapter 6 - All My Life I Been Po’: Oral Fluency as a Resource for Science Teaching and Learning
• Chapter 7 - Becoming an Urban Science Teacher: The First Three Years
• Chapter 8 - The Role of Cogenerative Dialogue in Learning to Teach and Transforming Learning Environments
• Chapter 9 - Learning Science and the Centrality of Student Participation
• Chapter 10 - Female Sexuality as Agency and Oppression in Urban Science Classrooms
• Chapter 11 - Meeting the Needs and Adapting to the Capital of a Queen Mother and an Ol’ Head: Gender Equity in Urban High School Science
• Chapter 12 - Paperclips + Polymers → Problems: Learning to Use Levels of Representation in a High School Chemistry Classroom
• Chapter 13 - An Autobiographical Approach to Becoming a Science Teacher in an Urban High School
• Chapter 14 - Beyond Either-Or: Reconsidering Resources in Terms of Structures
• Chapter 15 - My Cultural Awakening in the Classroom
• Chapter 16 - Social and Cultural Capital in Science Teaching: Relating Practice and Reflection
• Chapter 17 - Transforming the Future while Learning from the Past
• References
• About the Contributors
• Index