Anticipating Change: An Exploratory Analysis of Teachers’ Conceptions of Engineering in an Era of Science Education Reform

While integrating engineering into science education is not new in the United States, technology and engineering have not been well emphasized in the preparation and professional development of science teachers. Recent science education reforms integrate science and engineering throughout K–12 education, making it imperative to explore the conceptions teachers hold of engineering as a discipline, and as an approach to teaching. This analysis draws on focus group interviews with practicing secondary teachers (n = 12) conducted during a professional development seminar. The goals of the seminar were to present engineering as a heterogeneity of practices and inquiries organized to solve human problems; and, to model design-build-test pedagogy as a new approach to teaching. Outcomes show teachers’ conceptions of engineering as a discipline are that it redefines failure as necessary for success, and that it can more directly link school learning to serving society. Teachers also anticipated that design-build-test pedagogy would disrupt procedural learning in science, and likely invert which students achieve and why. These outcomes are discussed in light of reform goals, particularly as regards issues of equity. Implications for science teacher educators are also discussed

Exploring different theoretical frontiers – A symposium

Providing for a praxis of uncertainty, theoretical traditions that undercover how knowledge, power, and identity are interwoven and constituted in and through socio-cultural and -political discourses characterize the sociopolitical-turn moment in mathematics education research. Researchers who work in the sociopolitical-turn moment pull from a variety of theoretical perspectives most often located in the emancipate and/or deconstruct paradigms of inquiry. In this symposium, panelists discuss how different theoretical traditions available to researchers in the sociopolitical-turn moment provide new productive ways to think and rethink mathematics teaching and learning

Not in their name: re-interpreting discourses of STEM learning through the subjective experiences of minoritized girls

This paper problematizes the enduring conscription of STEM learning in discourses of U.S. global ascendancy, neoliberalism and militarism. Drawing on ethnographic data, we explore how girls of color make meaning of their everyday experiences in two settings: a racially tracked mathematics class in a suburban high school and a STEAM based after-school program in a working class urban community. The stories of these girls–separated by time, place, age, and social histories but bound by sensibilities grown in their Immigrant families and learning contexts–contest U.S. hegemony as the primary rationale for STEM learning; challenge individual gain at the expense of another; problematize what counts as science while insisting on its creative convergence with joy; and honor their ingenuity and humanity. Challenging representational and respectability politics, we consider how dignity may better account for the complexity of their experiences and serve as a resource for research, pedagogy and design

Culturally sustaining pedagogy within monolingual language policy: variability in instruction

This 5-month ethnographic comparative case study of two culturally and linguistically diverse U.S. elementary classrooms juxtaposes restrictive educational language policies with the theoretical principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy to explore a gap in our understanding of how teachers reflect educational language policies in the range of pedagogical approaches they take. Triangulating data sources from state and local policy documents, classroom observations, and teacher interviews, we identify three salient dimensions of state and local policies that manifested in these two upper-elementary classrooms: teachers' curricular and pedagogical choices; student-teacher participation structures; and teachers' views on language. Similarities and differences between the two classrooms highlight how policy exerts influence on these dimensions while also affording degrees of instructional freedom that varied by teacher, with implications for the learning opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Overall, however, a limited range of culturally sustaining practices was observed, highlighting the need to understand the spaces in language policy where teachers can mitigate some of the effects of restrictive regulatory approaches to learning. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht