Intellectual Merit: This collaborative research proposal seeks to discover and describe the conditions and experiences that impact science learning for female and male language minority (LM) and English Language Learner (ELL) adolescent students in urban middle schools. LM students are students who live in homes where a language other than English is spoken. ELLs are language minorities who have been identified as having limited proficiency in spoken and written English. This study will explore the interactions among school administrators, teachers, parents, and adolescent LM/ELL students from ethnic/language subgroups in the context of science learning in urban middle schools through a gender lens. Because national data are rarely disaggregated by gender, race or ethnicity, little is known about the educational needs, achievements, or problems of LM/ELL students, and specifically, how the needs of female LM/ELL students may differ from their male peers. This research will focus on adolescent LM/ELL students in science highlighting the role of gender in the context of ethnicity and culture in grades 6-8 science classrooms. The study is designed as an exploratory, three-year, mixed-methods study to examine the experiences of female and male LM/ELL students from particular marginalized subgroups, including Latinas/os (Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican) and Southeast Asians (Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Indonesian) and Chinese (Fujianese, Cantonese, and mainland). In exploring the science learning experiences of linguistically and ethnically diverse female and male adolescent students the researchers will develop case study examples that illustrate relationships and tensions between learning science, students' gender, ELL status, ethnicity and class. Specifically, the research will explore inter-categorical complexity and socio-cultural learning theories.
Broader Impacts: The broader impact of this research will be the dissemination of findings to researchers,science teacher educators, K-12 educators, school administrators, and policymakers who can positively transform practices and policies to better support science learning for female and male LM and ELL students. Ultimately, these new understandings have the potential to increase male and female language minority students' participation in STEM fields, particularly females who are most significantly underrepresented in STEM majors and careers.
(Project G-SPELL, NSF HRD 1036637) was an exploratory research project that focused on the connections between gender, attitudes, experiences, and practices in relation to science learning and to future careers in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) for female English Language Learners (ELL). To provide a multifaceted view of the participants’ experiences and practices, data was also collected from teachers, administrators, and families. Results from the project addressed the following areas, all of which were found to influence ELL girls’ achievement in STEM: (1) the participants’ attitudes about and practices in science and science learning; (2) the pedagogical practices used by the participants’ teachers; (3) teachers’ expectations related to family involvement; (4) institutional factors in the school and community; and (5) the teachers’ use of cogenerative dialogues as a means to better understand the students’ needs as STEM learners. Attitudes about and practices in science: The survey instrument used included five subscales to address both attitudes and practices, including: What I do in class, What my teacher does, What my friends do, What parents/adults do, and Views of science. The survey is a well-established instrument with the subscales’ reliability ranging from 0.65 to 0.87. Items were answered using Likert-type scales that indicated frequency or level of agreement. There were no gender differences on the five subscales, except for the Views of Science, for which the boys’ mean score was significantly higher than the girls’ mean score. Boys had more confidence in their science ability compared to girls and were more likely to continue studying science. Other data sources revealed that although the families of Latina girls expected them to achieve academically, they expected their daughters to remain living with the family and providing support to the family through childcare and domestic work. The Asian girls and boys had significantly lower mean scores than Latina/o and African American students on What parents/adults do. Asian girls reported that adults in their home were not very supportive of their academic studies. However, in spite of less home support compared to their peers, Asian girls had more positive views of science compared with Latina girls. There were significant differences between Latina/o students’ attitudes towards science and their African American and Asian peers. This was attributable to whether the Latina/o students spoke Spanish or English at home. Middle school Latina/o students who reported speaking Spanish at home had less positive attitudes towards science than the Latina/o students who spoke English. Moreover, the Latina/o students who spoke English at home had similar, positive attitudes towards science as their African American and Asian peers. With increasing diversity in the K-12 population and emphasis on language skills such as argumentation, science educators need to explore the different learning needs for Latino/a students in connection with their home languages and current proficiency levels in English. Teachers and schools may need to explore different strategies for Latina girls that speak Spanish at home. These findings also point toward implications for afterschool and outreach activities that schools can use introduce opportunities for girls in science to students and families. Family involvement and institutional factors: Teachers perceived several barriers to family participation in school events or to communicating about student progress. These barriers included: (1) busy home schedules; (2) intimidation of or a lack of trust in the school; (3) differences between the home language and the dominant language of school; (4) a lack of formal education in the sciences; and (5) the economy. However, most teachers had traditional expectations for family involvement for ELL students. Limited resources used to communicate with families were provided in the students’ home language. Teachers’ pedagogical practices and cogenerative dialogues: An analysis of teacher interviews and observations were used to identify the pedagogical practices used that either supported or constrained girls’ science learning and achievement. Middle school students and teachers participated in cogenerative dialogues, designed to provide a voice to participants. Students shared their perspectives on how science classes could change to help them understand and learn science. The students noted that experiments, projects, supplementary materials, and group work highly supported their science learning. During cogenerative dialogues the students offered teachers suggestions for teaching practices that included the use of laboratory stations and supportive reading strategies to learn science concepts. Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of the project was addressed by the research outcomes, which project staff disseminated through thirteen presentations at national and international conferences, one published book chapter, one published journal article, and three articles and a book chapter that are currently in peer review.
