NCCRESt

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Science Instruction

• Tie-Dye Chemistry
  Presents a multidisciplinary activity for reviewing general chemistry concepts in which students make their own tie-dye cloth. Explores the traditional cultures and customs of Nigeria.
• The Native American Learner and Bicultural Science Education
  Explanations of natural phenomena within a traditional Native American context are often at odds with Western scientific philosophy and what is taught in school science. Herein lays a very real conflict between two distinctly different worldviews: the mutualistic/holistic-oriented worldview of Native American cultures and the rationalistic/dualistic worldview of Western science that divides, analyzes, and objectifies.
• Discovering Indigenous Science: Implications for Science Education
  Explores aspects of multicultural science and pedagogy and describes a rich and well-documented branch of indigenous science known to biologists and ecologists as traditional ecological knowledge. (Author/SAH).
• Rejoinder: Infusing Indigenous Science into Western Modern Science for a Sustainable Future
  Comments on the responses to the original article in this journal issue concerning universalism and multiculturalism. Indigenous science offers important scientific knowledge that western modern science has not yet learned to produce.
• The Inclusive Classroom: Mathematics and Science Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities. It's Just Good Teaching
  The first in a series of guides on the inclusive classroom that offers teachers research-based instructional strategies with real-life examples from Northwest classrooms, this publication focuses on the educational needs of students with learning disabilities in inclusive classrooms. It highlights methods for teaching mathematics and science, and suggests ways to foster collaborative relationships with special education teachers and families of students with learning disabilities.
• 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.
• Defining "Science" in a Multicultural World: Implications for Science Education
  Examines the definition of science put forward from multicultural perspectives in contrast to the universalist perspective of science. Argues that good science explanations will always be universal, even if indigenous knowledge is incorporated as scientific knowledge.
• Teaching Sciences: The Multicultural Question Revisited
  Summarizes the case for a universalist approach to science education. Examines the weaknesses of universalism within the limits of human cognitive capabilities in constraining what we understand about nature, a description of reality as a flux, and the disunity of science and the role of culturally different forms and social organization of research shaping the cognitive content of the sciences.
• Multicultural Science: Who Benefits?
  Comments on three articles in this issue on universalists versus multiculturalists. Supports teaching culturally relevant science.
• Epistemic Universalism and the Shortcomings of Curricular Multicultural Science Education
  Identifies both epistemic and political shortcomings in the portrayal of science found in curricular multicultural science education. This approach denies the unique characteristics of Western science as it ignores the particular strengths of other systems of thought and has the unexpected political effect of reaffirming scientism.
• 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.
• Rethinking the Discussion about Science Education in a Multicultural World: Some Alternative Questions as a New Point of Departure
  Comments on three articles in this issue on universalists versus multiculturalists. Discusses the importance in the United States of universalism versus relativism with regard to science.
• Advanced Science for Kids: Multicultural Assessment and Programming
  Describes Advanced Science for Kids (ASK), a multicultural approach to assessment and programming for a middle school advanced science program. ASK is designed to provide alternative approaches to identification and assessment, facilitate authentic instruction and assessment, and provide minority students with academic and social support as they adjust to a rigorous science curriculum.
• Influence of Culture and Home Environment on Science Learning
  This paper has the potential for identifying and codifying the home learning environment and parental factors in a unique multicultural setting within Australian schools, and for the establishment of research-based initiatives for more effective collaboration between schools and parents.
• Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers: The Field Experience. Teacher Education Yearbook IV
  This yearbook provides educators with current research and practical guidelines for improving the education of teacher candidates and beginning teachers. The book has four sections, each on a particular topic and containing an overview and a response (reflections and implications).
• Towards A Pragmatic Science in Schools
  Contrasts naive beliefs about the nature of science with science as it appears from sociological and philosophical study, feminist critique, and insights from multicultural education. Pragmatic school science is situated within a framework that questions how we know and the recognition that even high-status knowledge can be challenged.
• Phytochemistry and Culture
  Describes a trend in science teaching marked by shifts in philosophies and practices and by a search for science content that draws from the experiences of a culturally diverse student population. (DDR).
• Universalism, Multiculturalism, and Science Education
  Describes the division of universalists and multiculturalists over the question of the nature of science. Universalists maintain that science has a universal essence and western modern science is the paradigm example of such science.
• Preservice Teachers' Views of Inclusive Science Teaching as Shaped by Images of Teaching, Learning, and Knowing
  Interpretive analysis of preservice teachers' writings and discussions during an elementary-science methods course identified the teachers' positivist views of knowledge, learning, and teaching as prominent tools for guiding understanding of and reaction to ideas of teaching science to diverse student populations. Discusses the impact on teachers' views of pedagogy and makes suggestions for teacher education.
• The Inclusion of Multicultural Material in Middle School Science Teachers' Resource Manuals
  Examines and categorizes multicultural teaching information found in middle school science teacher resource manuals to determine how multicultural information relates to guidelines for teaching in multicultural classrooms. A content analysis of 21 teacher editions provided the data.
• The Inclusive Classroom: Mathematics and Science Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities. It's Just Good Teaching
  The first in a series of guides on the inclusive classroom that offers teachers research-based instructional strategies with real-life examples from Northwest classrooms, this publication focuses on the educational needs of students with learning disabilities in inclusive classrooms.
• Introduction: Shifting Perspectives from Universalism to Cross-Culturalism
  Introduces three articles that appear in this issue on universalism and multiculturalism. Describes the articles as having moved beyond the debate of multiculturalism and universalism by accepting that all systems of knowledge about nature are embedded within the context of a cultural group.
• The Native American Learner and Bicultural Science Education
  Explanations of natural phenomena within a traditional Native American context are often at odds with Western scientific philosophy and what is taught in school science. Herein lies a very real conflict between two distinctly different worldviews: the mutualistic/holistic-oriented worldview of Native American cultures and the rationalistic/dualistic worldview of Western science that divides, analyzes, and objectifies.
• 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.
• Cultivating Cultural Appreciation
  Presents an activity that addresses cultural differences and diversity through ethnobotany. Offers a multicultural framework designed to develop concepts about plant characteristics and taxonomy.
• Preparing Science Teachers for Diversity through Service Learning
  Discusses challenges teachers face with learners from different backgrounds. Presents service learning as an alternative framework for teacher education with the potential for engaging teachers in an active construction of knowledge and development of connections between community and multicultural teaching practices.
• Native American Perspectives
  On the Fajada Butte in New Mexico, 11th-century Anasazi constructed a site that marks the high and low points of the orbits of the sun and the moon. This unit on astronomy challenges students to think differently about the moon and about the ability of native people to understand the natural world.
• Cultural Diversity: Masking Power with Innocence
  Responds to three articles from this issue on universalists versus multiculturalists. Explores the idea of an effective teacher as a culture broker.