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Science Education

• Service-Learning in Teacher Education: Enhancing the Growth of New Teachers, Their Students, and Communities
  This book provides teacher educators, administrators, practicing teachers who work with preservice teachers, policymakers, and researchers with information on the conceptual, research, and application areas of service-learning in preservice teacher education.
• Strategies for Counterresistance: Toward Sociotransformative Constructivism and Learning To Teach Science for Diversity and for Understanding
  Reports on two types of resistance by preservice science teachers--resistance to ideological change and resistance to pedagogical change. Suggests a sociotransformative constructivist orientation as a vehicle to link multicultural and socioconstructivist theoretical frameworks.
• Embracing Diversity
  Illustrates integration of multiculturalism into science curriculum and instruction and outlines the principles that should be reflected in multicultural science classrooms. Offers strategies for science teachers in developing science programs, shaping classroom climate, and using learning styles.
• Exploring Culture, Language and the Perception of the Nature of Science
  Explores the views some First Nations (Cree) and Euro-Canadian grade 7-level students in Manitoba have about the nature of science. Uses both qualitative and quantitative instruments to explore student views.
• Science Teaching, Culture and Religious Values
  Examines approaches to science teaching in a multiethnic context as well as contradictions to present models. Seeks to define the parameters of an antiracist approach to science teaching and provides ideas and a list of useful resources for classroom teachers.
• Learning Me Your...Science Language
  Demonstrates how science instruction can only be effective when teachers are aware of differences in children's language and their culture. The author argues that it is important to recognize when linguistic or cultural understandings lead children to wrong answers that to them seem totally logical.
• Ethnic Minorities and Achievement: The Fog Clears. Part I (Pre-16 Compulsory Education)
  Quantified ethnic elementary school student underachievement data in the compulsory subjects of mathematics, science, and English, with a focus on Black and African Caribbean students. Negative influences to academic achievement in the school environment, including student-teacher relationships and lack of parental involvement, are discussed.
• Learning Together
  Describes a teaching assignment at a Department of Defense (DoD) high school in Puerto Rico with bilingual Latin students influenced by island cultures. Discusses classroom cultural awareness and the importance of understanding and appreciating students' backgrounds when cultural or ethnic differences exist in the science classroom.
• The Multicultural Science Framework: Research on Innovative Two-Way Immersion Science Classrooms
  Reviews the different approaches to multicultural science teaching that have emerged in the past decade, focusing on the Spanish-English two-way immersion classroom, which meets the needs of Spanish speakers learning English and introduces students to the idea of collaboration across languages and cultures. Two urban two-way immersion classrooms in Texas and New York are described.
• Learning To Teach Science in Contemporary and Equitable Ways: The Successes and Struggles of First-Year Science Teachers
  Examines views and practices of first-year science teachers, graduates of a teacher education program in California, focusing on gender equity and multicultural education. Explores teachers' attempts at the nature of science and implementing equitable instruction in classrooms.
• The Energy-Culture Connection
  Introduces an activity in which students study the relationships between cultures and energy. Provides students with different scenarios to investigate the possible effects of having or not having energy in different cultures.
• Multi-Tasking in Science: Meeting the Challenge of Change
  Explains the multitasking approach to instruction and how it fits to a diverse student population. Focuses on one such program for high school science students in North Carolina.
• Discovering Diversity
  Introduces a preservice teacher field trip to the rain forests and coastal areas. This experience develops an awareness for different cultures among preservice teachers by experiencing biological and cultural diversity in Costa Rica.
• Collaboration in the Science Classroom To Tackle Racism and Sexism
  Describes techniques used in a British secondary school classroom to encourage collaborative learning to promote science while addressing sexism and racism in the classroom. Group work practices were extended to include students monitoring of themselves and their interactions, with feedback and discussion of the social processes.
• Cortes' Multicultural Empowerment Model and Generative Teaching and Learning in Science
  Adapts Cortes' Multicultural Empowerment Model to science teaching and to Wittrock's Model of Generative Learning and Teaching in Science. Encourages all children to learn science and learn about science.
• Pluralism and Science Education
  Examined how British preservice science teachers responded to an independent study pack designed to stimulate their understanding of race and culture. The pack provided information on cultural diversity and pluralism in Britain and educational responses to cultural pluralism.
• An Agenda for Research on Text Material in Primary Science for Second Language Learners of English in Developing Countries
  Reviews evidence related to the readability and comprehensibility of material in primary school science textbooks, which shows that texts are often too difficult for children, particularly in developing countries where pupils are learning through English as the medium of instruction. (69 references) (Author/CK).
• The Fin Art of Science
  Describes how Japanese fish printing brings interdisciplinary science and culture to the classroom. Presents an activity on fish printing that provides students with a tactile, concrete experience and explores what fish feel like and how their scales are arranged.
• Bridges on the I-Way: Multicultural Resources Online
  Presents an annotated list of various multicultural education resources that are available free of charge on the World Wide Web. Topics include: multicultural and gender issues in mathematics education; barrier-free education for students with disabilities; women in education; gender and equity reform in math, science, and engineering; and a profile of equitable mathematics and science classroom teachers.
• Multicultural Learning Environments: Influence of Culture on Science Learning
  This study deals with the cultural environments of students and how cultural and contextual factors might interact with student perceptions of their learning environment and their preferred instructional modes.
• Girls Can Succeed in Science! Antidotes for Science Phobia in Boys and Girls
  This book provides teachers with effective strategies to help encourage all students but particularly young women who are apprehensive about science.
• Multicultural Education: Implications for Science Education and Supervision
  Describes general development of multiculturalism and multicultural education. Emphasizes multicultural education as a valuable resource for science education, which should be acknowledged, respected, and implemented into the existing science curriculum.
• Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science (Minneapolis, MN, January 8-11, 1998)
  The 40 papers from this international conference addressed the major theme of facilitating science literacy for all teachers and students.
• Science Motivation in the Multicultural Classroom
  Discusses how to integrate into the curriculum the interests of children of all ethnic backgrounds. Includes a rubric for multicultural contributions to science.
• Whose World Is It, Anyway? Multicultural Science from Diverse Perspectives
  Reviews three books that argue that science education should reflect global scientific contributions, use multicultural and feminist perspectives, and be grounded in everyday life experiences with science. Suggests questions of policy and practice in moving from theory to implementation of a more equitable, socially responsible science education.
• Calendars and Thinking Logically
  Presents a mini-lesson and describes the "Calendars and Thinking Logically" curriculum designed to combat the belief that mystical powers are associated with numbers on the calendar and to introduce the complex interplay of physical phenomena, religion, and science in an interdisciplinary way. The curriculum is designed for adolescents and young adults.
• Providing a Culturally Relevant Curriculum for Hispanic Children
  A culturally relevant curriculum lets Hispanic students learn from a familiar cultural base and connect new knowledge to their own experiences, thus empowering them to build on personal knowledge. Teachers must understand Hispanic culture to help students embrace the authentic information they receive.
• Ecological Education: A System Rooted in Diversity
  Argues that educating children is a means of planting the seeds of learning. Compares intelligence, its development, and diversity to characteristics and processes in the natural environment.
• Multicultural Science Education
  Describes multicultural education and lists its basic premises. Explains the importance of science teachers' attitudes in learning.
• It's about People: A Successful School/University Partnership
  Utah State University and a rural elementary school attended by Navajos cooperated on a science education program for grades 4-6. The program used take-home science kits; field trips; parental input; and Navajo staff, language, and culture to make the program culturally relevant.
• Developing Writing Skills To Raise Achievement in Science and English at KS2
  Studied the development of writing skills as a way to raise academic achievement for four year-6 ethnic minority students in an English classroom. Identifies strategies that increased achievement and confidence of students and parent participation in their schooling.
• Collaboration in the Science Classroom To Tackle Racism and Sexism
  Describes techniques used in a British secondary school classroom to encourage collaborative learning to promote science while addressing sexism and racism in the classroom. Group work practices were extended to include students monitoring of themselves and their interactions, with feedback and discussion of the social processes.
• Mentors in Medicine
  Introduces the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) which was created by West Virginia University for secondary school students to address the shortage of minorities pursuing science careers. Aims to improve science and mathematics education and increase the college attendance rate among underrepresented students.
• Learning to Teach in a Diverse Setting: A Case Study of a Multicultural Science Education Enthusiast
  Explores the student-teaching experience of a multicultural-science-education enthusiast who taught in a school whose predominant culture was different from her own. Describes thematically the student's teaching experience and examines how encountered constraints were negotiated.
• Seeing a World in a Grain of Sand: Science Teaching in Multicultural Context
  Describes the Imagining Nature Project at Deakin University in Australia, and the Native Eyes Project at the Institute of American Indian Art in New Mexico. Both projects entail the teaching of science and technology to non-science majors of highly diverse cultural origin.
• The Border Crossings of a Multicultural Science Education Enthusiast
  Examines the "borders" a preservice science education student encountered as she completed her student teaching in a cultural setting that was different from her own. Suggests that, during field experiences, preservice teachers may encounter multiple cultural borders, some consistent and some inconsistent with their instructional philosophy.
• The Harvard Education Letter, 1996
  This document is comprised of volume 12 of the Harvard Education Letter, published bimonthly and addressing current issues in elementary-secondary education.
• Science Education in a Multiscience Perspective
  Argues that a multiscience perspective on science education affords richer implications for reflection and practice than does multiculturalism. Recognizes the existence of various types of science at play in all science classrooms, especially personal science, indigenous science, and Western modern science.
• Professional Development for University Scientists around Issues of Equity and Diversity: Investigating Dissent within Community
  Investigates the role of dissent in a community of university scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and social scientists engaged in a two-year professional development project on issues of equity and diversity. Focuses on professional development sessions devoted to a contentious yet integral topic in science education, the gendered and multicultural nature of science.
• The Effect of Modified Input on the Acquisition of Vocabulary in Science by a Newly Arrived Bilingual Student in a Secondary School
  Studies the effect of specific teacher input, modified for comprehension, on the acquisition of science vocabulary by a recent immigrant, a 12-year old newly arrived at an English secondary school. Comprehensible input played an important part in the acquisition of this student's science vocabulary.
• Issues in Science Education
  This publication addresses the issues and practical approaches needed to lay the foundation upon which science educators can work together to build effective science programs. It shares the ideas, insights, and experiences of individuals ranging from science supervisors to university personnel to agencies representing science education.
• Assessing Students' Attitudes and Achievements in a Multicultural and Multilingual Science Classroom
  Takes a qualitative and quantitative look at the curriculum and teaching of a two-way immersion eighth-grade solar energy science classroom and examines its implications for education policy and reform. Results for a class of 25 students indicate that the approach increases the retention rate of Hispanic students.
• Promoting Excellence in Teacher Preparation: Undergraduate Reforms in Mathematics and Science
  This monograph presents a collection of papers that focus on excellence in teacher education and examine questions which are critical to the reform of curriculum and pedagogy.
• Going Beyond Cultural Pluralism: Science Education for Sociopolitical Action
  Combines some guiding principles of antiracist education with Vygotskian notions of education as enculturation to produce a set of proposals for a radical form of multicultural science education for sociopolitical action. Outlines a radical form of curriculum development involving the politicization of teachers as the only effective way of implementing such a curriculum.
• Integrating Western and Aboriginal Sciences: Cross-Cultural Science Teaching
  Addresses issues of social power and privilege experienced by Aboriginal students in science classrooms. Presents a rationale for a cross-cultural science education dedicated to all students making personal meaning out of their science classes.
• Research on Multiculturalism Applied to Students' Learning School Science: Some Theoretical Issues
  This paper reviews research with a focus on looking at the differences between research taken on by those who see themselves primarily as science educators/science education researchers, and those who conduct research on science education from the perspective of a particular discipline such as psychology or sociology.
• Opening Doors with Informal Science: Exposure and Access for Our Underserved Students
  The Young Scholars Program at The Ohio State University is a 6-year pre-collegiate intervention program designed to prepare academically talented, economically disadvantaged minority students for college education. This study describes the success of this effort to reshape the traditional presentation of agriculture.
• The Nature of Science in a Multicultural Context
  Proposes an alternative view of the nature of science that strikes a balance between extremely relativist views that see no difference between science and pseudoscience and current views that are inappropriate in a multicultural society. Implications for science teaching in the British schools are discussed.