The Production of Epistemic Culture and Agency during a First-Grade Engineering Design Unit in an Urban Emergent School

Primary school practices are often bound by traditions that perpetuate compliance and skills-based, decontextualized, rote memorization activities. These histories of practice, prevalent in schools serving mostly Black and Brown children, make it inordinately difficult for students to author themselves as knowledge builders (i.e., with epistemic agency), which is a form of injustice. Engineering is a potentially fertile context to support the creation of epistemic culture, whereby young students’ assets are recognized, named, and leveraged as they create and shape the group’s disciplinary knowledge. The authors investigated this potential. The primary research question was: How do first-grade students in an urban emergent school author themselves as epistemic agents during an engineering design unit? Using a social practice theory lens and ethnographic methods, the authors studied 29 days of a materials engineering unit focusing on the teacher’s epistemic commitments, implicit meanings of knowledge in classroom discourse, and practices that opened space for students’ epistemic agency. Data collection included fieldnotes and video of class activities and teacher and student interviews. Class discussions about the properties and uses of materials yielded a rich context for studying epistemic culture. The teacher’s epistemic commitments included an eschewing of disciplinary silos, recognizing the nonlinear nature of knowledge-building about engineering, and acknowledging children’s thinking as an asset for engineering knowledge production. Examples of students’ discursive moves demonstrating epistemic agency included: reminding others about the relevance of previous lessons to the current topic, mirroring the teacher’s instructional moves, claiming voice, space, time, and material resources for knowledge-building, translating one another’s ideas, and making unsolicited connections to their lives. Young children’s intellectual assets can too easily be overlooked in traditional learning contexts. This study demonstrates the affordances of responsive engineering instruction in recognizing and building on youths’ intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for substantively contributing to the classroom’s knowledge-generating practices

Boundary Spanners as Bridges of Student and School Discourses in an Urban Science and Mathematics High School

A key to improving urban science and mathematics education is to facilitate the mutual understanding of the participants involved and then look for strategies to bridge differences. Educators need new theoretical tools to do so. In this paper the argument is made that the concept of “boundary spanner” is such a tool. Boundary spanners are individuals, objects, media, and other experiences that link an organization to its environment. They serve critical communicative roles, such as bridges for bringing distinct discourses together, cultural guides to make discourses of the “other” more explicit, and change agents for potentially reshaping participants' discourses. This ethnographic study provides three examples of boundary spanners found in the context of an urban public high school of science, mathematics, and technology: boundary media, boundary objects, and boundary experiences. The analysis brings to the foreground students' and teachers' distinct discourses about “good student identity,”“good student work,” and “good summer experience” and demonstrates how boundary spanners shaped, were shaped by, and sometimes brought together participants' distinct discourses. An argument is made for boundary spanners' practical and theoretical utility: practically, as a tool for enhancing meaning-making between diverse groups, and theoretically, as a heuristic tool for understanding the reproductive and transformative aspects of urban science education

Ethnographies of science education: situated practices of science learning for social/political transformation

This article is an introductory essay to the Ethnography and Education special issue Ethnographies of science education: situated practices of science learning for social/political transformation

Understanding the Science Experiences of Successful Women of Color: Science Identity as an Analytic Lens

In this study, we develop a model of science identity to make sense of the science experiences of 15 successful women of color over the course of their undergraduate and graduate studies in science and into science-related careers. In our view, science identity accounts both for how women make meaning of science experiences and how society structures possible meanings. Primary data included ethnographic interviews during students‘ undergraduate careers, follow-up interviews 6 years later, and ongoing member-checking. Our results highlight the importance of recognition by others for women in the three science identity trajectories: research scientist; altruistic scientist; and disrupted scientist. The women with research scientist identities were passionate about science and recognized themselves and were recognized by science faculty as science people. The women with altruistic scientist identities regarded science as a vehicle for altruism and created innovative meanings of "science," "recognition by others," and "woman of color in science." The women with disrupted scientist identities sought, but did not often receive, recognition by meaningful scientific others. Although they were ultimately successful, their trajectories were more difficult because, in part, their bids for recognition were disrupted by the interaction with gendered, ethnic, and racial factors. This study clarifies theoretical conceptions of science identity, promotes a rethinking of recruitment and retention efforts, and illuminates various ways women of color experience, make meaning of, and negotiate the culture of science

Habitus, Social Fields, and Circuits in Rural Science Education

Schooling and science education are embedded within larger socio-cultural, political and economic contexts, influenced by global flows of capital, labor, ideas, and images. In this article we consider the ways in which ethnography traces the web of interactions (circuits), in a rural community and the ways that science inquiry was associated with character education. Our discussion examines the relationship between social fields, habitus, and meritocracy under new and ever-changing neoliberal conditions. These macro-level forces play out in everyday practices in the community and reveal schools, as well as science education, as sites for struggle

Authoring identity amidst the treacherous terrain of science: A multiracial feminist examination of the journeys of three women of color in science

The study of the identity processes of women of color in science-based fields helps us (a) find ways to support similar women, and (b) study the dynamics of inequity, within and beyond science. Participants in this study (a Black woman, a Latina, and an American Indian woman) survived inadequate high schools and discouraging college science departments to win formal recognition (fellowships, publications). Using multiracial feminist theory, including intersectionality, and practice theory, we conceptualize authoring of identity as an ongoing process. Qualitative methods were designed around Black feminist precepts of caring and personal accountability, the use of concrete experience and of dialogue (Collins, 2000a). Participants' opportunities to author legitimate science identities were constrained by their location in the matrix of oppression. They reported conflicts between their identities as women of color and as credible science students, and having racist, sexist identities ascribed to them. All became more adept at fending off negative ascription and all found settings with less identity conflict; their ability to read a situation and quickly adjust, la facultad (Anzaldúa, 1999) helped them survive. But the fact that they have needed to do this is unjust

Science Education and the Commonplaces of Science

In this paper, we describe science as a set of “commonplaces,” similar to Schwab's commonplaces of teaching, for framing the nature of science and science education (Schwab, J. J. [1978]. Science Curriculum, and Liberal Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Framed thoughtfully, these commonplaces have the potential to incorporate insights from a variety of perspectives. We propose four formulations of the commonplaces of science, based on distinct views of the nature of science, and explore the consequences of each. We argue that, although there are strengths to each formulation, some commonplaces prove more comprehensive than others in capturing the essence of science for the purposes of developing curriculum, educating science teachers, and conducting science education research

Tempered radicals: elementary teachers’ narratives of teaching science within and against prevailing meanings of schooling

Science educators and researchers have bemoaned the lack of reform-based science in elementary schools and focused on teachers’ difficulties (i.e., lack of knowledge, interest, experience) in enacting quality science pedagogy. We present compelling evidence that challenges assumptions about science education reform and draw on a practice theory perspective to examine the stories, commitments and identities of thirteen teachers, whose beliefs and practices aligned with those promoted by science education reform documents. Through ethnographic interviews, we learned about these teachers’ critical science experiences, perceived science teacher identities, and their goals and commitments. Their stories highlight institutional and sociohistorical difficulties of enacting reform-based science, the many biases, contradictions, and unintended consequences prevalent in educational policy and practice today, and emphasize how easily the status quo can get reproduced. These teachers had to work as ‘tempered radicals’, ‘working the system’ to teach in ways that were consistent with reform-based science