Sociocultural Studies and Implications for Science Education

Sociocultural Studies and Implications for Science Education
Author: Catherine Milne
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2015-07-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400742401

The chapters included in this book address two major questions: what are some of the methodological and theoretical issues in sociocultural research in urban education and science education and what sort of questions do technological and virtual contexts raise for these types of research perspectives. The chapters build off Ken Tobin's personal history of sociocultural research in science education and as they do each chapter asks philosophical, sociological and/or methodological questions that inform our understanding of the challenges associated with conducting research in experiential and virtual contexts.

Science and Society in the Classroom

Science and Society in the Classroom
Author: Geeta Verma
Publisher: Cambria Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2009
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1604976594

"In this book, the author posits that the exploration of urban students' engagement with school science using sociocultural perspectives may uncover factors that influence students learning and success in the science classrooms. The author further proposes that using curricula framed around sociocultural perspectives may develop students' understandings about the role science and technology plays in their lives, as well as well as in the larger society, thus making science more accessible and relevant for these children in urban settings." "There has been no study to date that examines the impact of curricular approaches guided by a sociocultural framework (contextualized curriculum in this study) on the comprehension level and attitudes of students. The study fills that gap and holds implications for the inclusion of alternative curricular framework in urban middle school science classrooms." "The author has used a mixed-methods study and draws upon both quantitative and qualitative data sources. The study design allows the reader to appreciate the perspectives of participating students and teachers on the use of contextualized curricular framework versus curricular framework guided by IVF practices in urban middle school science classrooms"--BOOK JACKET.

Theory and Methods for Sociocultural Research in Science and Engineering Education

Theory and Methods for Sociocultural Research in Science and Engineering Education
Author: Gregory J. Kelly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2018-12-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351139916

Introducing original methods for integrating sociocultural and discourse studies into science and engineering education, this book provides a much-needed framework for how to conduct qualitative research in this field. The three dimensions of learning identified in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) create a need for research methods that examine the sociocultural components of science education. With cutting-edge studies and examples consistent with the NGSS, this book offers comprehensive research methods for integrating discourse and sociocultural practices in science and engineering education and provides key tools for applying this framework for students, pre-service teachers, scholars, and researchers.

Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education

Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education
Author: W.W. Cobern
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1998-03-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780792349877

Tackles the question of whose interests are being served by the current science education practices and policies, and offers perspectives from culture, economics, epistemology, equity, gender, language, and religion. Promotes a reflective science education that takes place within people's cultural lives rather than taking it over. Among the topics are situating school science in a climate of critical cultural reform, the influence of language on teaching and learning science in a second language, a cultural history of science education in Japan, and the philosophy of science and radical intellectual Islam in Turkey. Of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners of education. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Sociocultural Approaches to STEM Education

Sociocultural Approaches to STEM Education
Author: Katerina Plakitsi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2024-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3031443772

This book is a contribution to the sociocultural approaches to Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education. It offers a new interpreting theoretical framework coming from the Cultural Historical Psychology. The authors highlight some serious elements of the sociocultural context that mediates learning on STEM or with STEM adds. The book brings together the work of researchers interested in developmental psychology and childhood, with a special focus on using Activity theory and Cultural-historical research approach to unite these two opposing approaches to the study of children. The authors reconsider our relationship and experiencing with technology. It moves the attention from the pure instrumental aspect of technology to a deep human and societal approach. Moreover, the book focuses on the issue of teachers' continuing education in both formal and informal settings is being seen under a sequential system of expansive cycles and the key role of contradictions in transformative educational settings. Overall, this book encourages the academic society to open dialogue with other societies and enhance interdisciplinary research in times of crisis.

Sociocultural Studies of Mind

Sociocultural Studies of Mind
Author: James V. Wertsch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1995-04-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521476430

Based on three unifying ideas, this landmark volume defines an approach to sociocultural psychology which the authors hope will continue to be debated and redefined. It addresses the question of how mental functioning is related to its cultural, historical and institutional settings.

Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education

Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education
Author: W.W. Cobern
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401152241

Global science education is a reality at the end of the 20th century - albeit an uneven reality - because of tremendous technological and economic pressures. Unfortunately, this reality is rarely examined in the light of what interests the everyday lives of ordinary people rather than the lives of political and economic elites. The purpose of this book is to offer insightful and thought-provoking commentary on both realities. The tacit question throughout the book is `Whose interests are being served by current science education practices and policies?' The various chapters offer critical analysis from the perspectives of culture, economics, epistemology, equity, gender, language, and religion in an effort to promote a reflective science education that takes place within, rather than taking over, the important cultural lives of people. The target audience for the book includes graduate students in education, science education and education policy professors, policy and government officials involved with education.

Theorizing the Future of Science Education Research

Theorizing the Future of Science Education Research
Author: Vaughan Prain
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030240134

This book reviews the current state of theoretical accounts of the what and how of science learning in schools. The book starts out by presenting big-picture perspectives on key issues. In these first chapters, it focuses on the range of resources students need to acquire and refine to become successful learners. It examines meaningful learner purposes and processes for doing science, and structural supports to optimize cognitive engagement and success. Subsequent chapters address how particular purposes, resources and experiences can be conceptualized as the basis to understand current practices. They also show how future learning opportunities should be designed, lived and reviewed to promote student engagement/learning. Specific topics include insights from neuro-imaging, actor-network theory, the role of reasoning in claim-making for learning in science, and development of disciplinary literacies, including writing and multi-modal meaning-making. All together the book offers leads to science educators on theoretical perspectives that have yielded valuable insights into science learning. In addition, it proposes new agendas to guide future practices and research in this subject.

Multicultural Science Education

Multicultural Science Education
Author: Mary M. Atwater
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400776519

This book offers valuable guidance for science teacher educators looking for ways to facilitate preservice and inservice teachers’ pedagogy relative to teaching students from underrepresented and underserved populations in the science classroom. It also provides solutions that will better equip science teachers of underrepresented student populations with effective strategies that challenge the status quo, and foster classrooms environment that promotes equity and social justice for all of their science students. Multicultural Science Education illuminates historically persistent, yet unresolved issues in science teacher education from the perspectives of a remarkable group of science teacher educators and presents research that has been done to address these issues. It centers on research findings on underserved and underrepresented groups of students and presents frameworks, perspectives, and paradigms that have implications for transforming science teacher education. In addition, the chapters provide an analysis of the socio-cultural-political consequences in the ways in which science teacher education is theoretically conceptualized and operationalized in the United States. The book provides teacher educators with a framework for teaching through a lens of equity and social justice, one that may very well help teachers enhance the participation of students from traditionally underrepresented and underserved groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas and help them realize their full potential in science. Moreover, science educators will find this book useful for professional development workshops and seminars for both novice and veteran science teachers. "Multicultural Science Education: Preparing Teachers for Equity and Social Justice directly addresses the essential role that science teacher education plays for the future of an informed and STEM knowledgeable citizenry. The editors and authors review the beginnings of multicultural science education, and then highlight findings from studies on issues of equity, underrepresentation, cultural relevancy, English language learning, and social justice. The most significant part of this book is the move to the policy level—providing specific recommendations for policy development, implementation, assessment and analysis, with calls to action for all science teacher educators, and very significantly, all middle and high school science teachers and prospective teachers. By emphasizing the important role that multicultural science education has played in providing the knowledge base and understanding of exemplary science education, Multicultural Science Education: Preparing Teachers for Equity and Social Justice gives the reader a scope and depth of the field, along with examples of strategies to use with middle and high school students. These classroom instructional strategies are based on sound science and research. Readers are shown the balance between research-based data driven models articulated with successful instructional design. Science teacher educators will find this volume of great value as they work with their pre-service and in-service teachers about how to address and infuse multicultural science education within their classrooms. For educators to be truly effective in their classrooms, they must examine every component of the learning and teaching process. Multicultural Science Education: Preparing Teachers for Equity and Social Justice provides not only the intellectual and research bases underlying multicultural studies in science education, but also the pragmatic side. All teachers and teacher educators can infuse these findings and recommendations into their classrooms in a dynamic way, and ultimately provide richer learning experiences for all students." Patricia Simmons, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA "This provocative collection of chapters is a presentation in gutsiness. Ingenious in construction and sequencing, this book will influence science teacher educators by introducing them to issues of equity and social justice directly related to women and people of color. The authors unflinchingly interrogate issues of equity which need to be addressed in science education courses. "This provocative collection of chapters is a presentation in gutsiness. Ingenious in construction and sequencing, this book will influence science teacher educators by introducing them to issues of equity and social justice directly related to women and people of color. The authors unflinchingly interrogate issues of equity which need to be addressed in science education courses. It begins with setting current cultural and equity issue within a historic frame. The first chapter sets the scene by moving the reader through 400 years in which African-American’s were ‘scientifically excluded from science’. This is followed by a careful review of the Jim Crow era, an analysis of equity issues of women and ends with an examination of sociocultural consciousness and culturally responsive teaching. Two chapters comprise the second section. Each chapter examines the role of the science teacher in providing a safe place by promoting equity and social justice in the classroom. The three chapters in the third section focus on secondary science teachers. Each addresses issues of preparation that provides new teachers with understanding of equity and provokes questions of good teaching. Section four enhances and expands the first section as the authors suggest cultural barriers the impact STEM engagement by marginalized groups. The last section, composed of three chapters, interrogates policy issues that influence the science classroom." Molly Weinburgh, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, USA

Science, Learning, Identity

Science, Learning, Identity
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9087901267

Over the recent years, identity has become one of the most central theoretical concept and topics of scholarship in a number of disciplines, including science education. In this volume, leading science educators articulate in carefully prepared case studies their theoretical perspective on science, learning, and identity. More importantly, the authors of the chapters that in the different parts of the book engage each other in a collaboratively written chapter concerning some of the central issues that have arisen from their individual studies; and in particular they engage each other over the similarities and differences between their approaches. This book, which features detailed case studies of identity as both resource and outcomes of learners in a variety of settings, will be of interest to anyone concerned with learning science in and out-of schools. The book also caters for readers who have wondered about how identity mediates science learning and, simultaneously, how engagement in science-related tasks and activities mediates the emergence and development of identities. The general tenor of all chapters is a cultural-historical and sociocultural framework that is brought to issues of identity, thereby inherently transcending the individual person and linking identity to cultural possibilities.