Science Practices in Urban High-Poverty Communities

Overview

Missing from the discourse in urban science education and gender education is a framework for how urban youth appropriate, organize, and activate scientific literacy in pursuit of their own lives, as individuals and as members of larger communities. By scientific literacy we refer to an individual's understanding of and abilities to access and utilize key scientific concepts, principles, process skills, discourses, and habits of mind. We assert that one way to better understand how urban girls appropriate, organize, and activate scientific literacy is by documenting and analyzing what we refer to as their "science practices."

Drawing from research on "literacy practices" (Moje, 2000), we define science practices as the means by which one engages in science and the reasons and motivations for doing so. Thus, this investigation
focused on middle school students' science practices in the content areas of urban ecology, nutrition, and forces and motion will provide us with insight into how and why urban girls engage in science meaningfully. We view "engagement in science" as having three parts similar to Moje's purposes for literacy practices: developing conceptual understandings of scientific concepts (meaning-making); developing and using the habits of mind that reflect a propensity towards scientific thinking (expression of scientific identity); and participating in or doing science in authentic ways (participation). In this three-year study, we propose to conduct research towards the following objectives:

Objectives

1. To document, describe and analyze high-poverty urban youths' science practices in both form and function in the context of three specific middle school content areas;
2. To document and describe those reform-based pedagogical strategies enacted by teachers that help youth to successfully leverage their science practices in their efforts to engage meaningfully in science;
3. To explore the relationship between youths' science practices and science learning;
4. To disseminate effectively research findings to the broader research and practice communities.
   
   Utilizing a mixed-methods approach we are conduct this longitudinal study in five middle schools that serve diverse ethnic and racial and high-poverty populations in the Harlem and South Bronx regions of New York City.
   
   

Significant of Science Practices

The intellectual merit of this research is that it will allow us to generate a set of working conjectures about youths' science practices and the pedagogical strategies that support those practices. This project will also provide a set of working conjectures focused on how science practices might be explored as a potential tool for teacher learning and teacher practice. If we can better understand, document, and analytically describe youths' science practices in reform-based science education settings and their impact on youths' engagement with science, then we will be better able to work with teachers and program organizers to tailor program design and instructional practice to best support urban youth.

The broader impact of this study is that we will have an opportunity to discover and describe the relationship between youths' science practices and engagement in science in high poverty urban schools. We intend to provide primary research data for K-12 educators, university teacher educators, curriculum and policy makers, and administrators. We believe this research will contribute to increasing the achievement and motivation for engaging in science among high-poverty, urban, middle schoolyouthgirls. Because our research will take place in five high poverty urban middle schools, our findings will have direct import for specific demographics that have not been represented well in the sciences and science related fields. By disseminating our findings to teachers, researchers, curriculum developers and policy makers through publications and presentations, we will also build an infrastructure for research and development that will allow curriculum developers and teacher educators to respond more attentively to the kinds of science practices that lead to meaningful engagement and learning among urban youth.