Teachers College, Columbia University, proposes to study girls' science practices in urban high poverty communities.
Missing from the discourse in urban science education and gender education is a framework for how urban girls appropriate, organize, and activate scientific literacy in pursuit of their own lives, as individuals and as members of larger communities. Scientific literacy refers to an individual's understanding of and abilities to access and utilize key scientific concepts, principles, process skills, discourses, and habits of mind. One way to better understand how urban girls appropriate, organize, and activate scientific literacy is to document and analyze their "science practices."
Drawing from research on "literacy practices" (Moje, 2000), the team defines science practices as the means by which one engages in science and the reasons and motivations for doing so. Thus, the investigation focuses on the content areas of urban ecology and forces and motion as a means to obtain insight into how and why urban girls engage in science meaningfully. "Engagement in science" is viewed 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).
The three-year study has the following objectives:
1. To document, describe and analyze high-poverty urban girls' science practices in both form and function in the context of two specific middle school content areas; 2. To document and describe those reform-based pedagogical strategies enacted by teachers that help girls to successfully leverage their science practices in their efforts to engage meaningfully in science; 3. To explore the relationship between girls' science practices and science learning; 4. To disseminate effectively research findings to the broader research and practice communities.
Using a mixed-methods approach (broad scale survey, case study, and design experiments), the team will conduct the study in four middle schools that serve diverse ethnic and racial and high-poverty populations in the Harlem and South Bronx regions of New York City.
The intellectual merit of this research is that it should yield a set of working conjectures about girls' science practices and the pedagogical strategies that support those practices. If we can better understand, document, and analytically describe girls' science practices in reform-based science education settings and their impact on girls' engagement with science, then we will be better able to work with teachers and curriculum developers to tailor program design and instructional practice to best support girls.
The broader impact of this study is that it will contribute to increasing the achievement and motivation for engaging in science among high-poverty, urban, middle school girls. The findings will have direct import for specific demographics that have not been represented well in the sciences and science related fields.
