Using Science Education to Expand the Agency of Urban Youth

Using Science Education to Expand the Agency of Urban Youth Kenneth Tobin The Graduate Center of CUNY ktobin@gc.cuny.edu

Why science education? • Power discourse--gateway to social advancement • Meet graduation requirements • Doorway to further learning and careers • Aesthetic reasons • Useful to meet and change goals in out of school fields

About science… • Form of culture that seeks to explain/understand, and in some cases control, the experienced events and phenomena of the universe (of the natural world) • System of practices and associated schema (always both) • Enacted by participants in a variety of fields including classrooms and test/examination sites

Thoughts on science achievement • Enacting science (as culture) within fields. • Ways of participating reflect position in a field • Legitimate peripheral • Central • Dynamic • Conscious | Unconscious

Subject matter (e.g. chemistry) Whole class interactive Small group discussions Individualized At the chalkboard The back row Labs Demonstrations Field trips Internet and computers Homework The fields of school science

Key points about fields • Structured with resources • Material (e.g., space, physical environment, equipment, supplies, aids, practices of participants) • Schematic (e.g., conventions, rules, ideologies, hegemonies, concepts, values, feelings, status and other identity markers) • Social (e.g., networks, tools such as language aptitude) • Support characteristic forms of culture • Have porous boundaries

Boundary crossing

Intermingled with culture from other fields Misses opportunities to participate Reliant on scaffolds from others Error prone Limited self correcting Mainly conscious actions Appropriate Just in time Anticipatory Fluent Autonomous Self-correcting Responsive Increasingly unconscious Peripheral versus Central

Urban Science • Teachers and students differ in culture, social class, age, and often gender • Achievement measures require science to be done “on demand” including paper and pencil tests, computers, and lab tasks. • Well-advertised achievement gaps between urban and suburban schools • Strident differences in resources (teachers, equipment, buildings) to support urban science education

Learning as cultural production • Reproduction | Transformation • Enactment utilizes practices and schema from other fields • Is enactment legitimate peripheral or is it outside the border (non-canonical)? • Which parts of culture, from each side of the border, are foundational for producing science?

Learning as expanded agency • Agency | Structure • Agency is the power to act; to appropriate the structures of a field • Appropriation implies intentions/goals plus capital to access and use resources for individual | collective interests • Capital spiral (cutural<->social<->symbolic) • Successful interactions chains produce webs of entrainment -- interactions are anticipated and appropriated by others

Teaching for success • Identify and support the enactment of foundational culture (from in and outside of the school) • Minimize disruptions (breaching/shut downs) • Minimize the incidence and duration of unsuccessful interactions • Maximize the incidence and duration of successful interactions

Minimize anger frustration boredom disappointment annoyance irritation dissatisfaction controlled failure “dissed, missed, pissed” Maximize enjoyment, happiness interest satisfaction freedom independence successful challenged respected valued Emotional climate

Challenges to culturally adaptive teaching • Erase deficit perspectives in an EITHER-OR sense (deficit | capital) • Recognize and encourage foundational culture • Identify teaching culture that shuts down student production • Produce teaching culture that affords student enactment and success • Increase incidence of coteaching • Increase evaluation by self, peer, and teacher • Successfully interact across borders

Challenges to culturally adaptive learning • Earn and maintain respect of peers • Read and successfully interact with the culture of the teacher (i.e., learn to interact successfully across borders) • Produce new identities through participation in science • Appropriate structures to enact science

Toward a science community • Mutual focus • Synchrony • Anticipation leads to fluent enactment • Chains of successful interactions occur • Increase in positive emotional energy • Solidarity emerges • Peer teaching • Respect • Got your back • Individual | Collective • All for one and one for all

Monitoring the Emotional Climate of Urban Science Classrooms Kenneth Tobin The Graduate Center of CUNY ktobin@gc.cuny.edu

General orientation to participant research • Search for patterns and contradictions in relation to: • the buzz and emotional climate of the classroom over space and time • Interactions with others and materials • Verbal • Non verbal • Obtain and learn from multiple perspectives of participants (honor diverse perspectives)

The background noise • Is there a working buzz? • Is there evidence of: • Negative emotions? • Positive emotions? • Efforts to disrupt? • Efforts to support? • Efforts to disrespect? • Efforts to show respect? • Is there evidence of positive, negative or neutral emotional energy?

Interactions with materials • Are participants interacting with materials to meet their goals? • Do successful interactions with materials afford other interactions to occur and succeed? • What emotions are associated with interactions with materials? • To what extent are the interactions with materials “as intended,” anticipated by others, and affording of interaction chains occurring?

Interactions among participants • In what ways are oral contributions picked up by others? • Is there evidence of attentive listening? • To what extent are utterances fluent? • Are utterances anticipated by others? • To what extent do utterances show evidence of verve?

Non verbal interactions • Body orientation and movement • Eye gaze and contact • Head movements and orientation • Smiles, frowns and facial expressions • Gestures • Pointing with fingers, hands and the body (e.g., head) • Are movements high or low energy?

Teaching and Learning Science Across Social and Cultural Boundaries Kenneth Tobin The Graduate Center of CUNY ktobin@gc.cuny.edu

Setting Up Cogenerative Dialogues • Dialogues among participants about shared experiences • Size of group can vary but it is best to start with small groups containing 1-2 students • Select student participants based on differences • Invite other participants based on their participation

Goals of Cogenerative Dialogues • Improve the quality of learning • Improve the quality of teaching • Identify and resolve contradictions • Arrive at consensus on changes needed in roles, rules, and classroom structures • Collective responsibility for enacting changes

Rules for Cogenerative Dialogues • Listen attentively • Try to understand others’ contributions • Show respect for all participants (always) • Address previous contributions • Maintain focus • Restrict time of utterances • Do not interrupt or be a turn shark • Strive for consensus

Outcomes of Cogenerative Dialogues • Learn to interact successfully across boundaries defined by race, ethnicity, class, age and gender • Identity changes • Synchrony • Solidarity • Mutual focus

Resources to support cogenerative dialogues • Video tapes of classes, digital photos, artifacts, qualitative and quantitative data • Invited peripheral participants such as school administrators, university teacher educators, former students, and parents • Regular occurrence (1-2 times a week) • Group size can vary along a continuum from one on one to whole class

Coteaching to improve the learning of urban science Kenneth Tobin The Graduate Center of CUNY ktobin@gc.cuny.edu

Coteaching scenarios • Resident teacher with one or more new teachers • Resident teachers from the same school or department • Advisory teachers, administrators, teacher educators and researchers with resident teachers • Many coteachers with many students • Students adopting coteaching roles

Structuring coteaching • Negotiate central and peripheral roles • Stepping forward and stepping back • Tutoring • Huddles • Cogenerative dialogues within an ongoing class • Focus on the learning of students

Outcomes of coteaching • Becoming like the other • Responsive to forms of diversity • Students experience much more teaching and are highly involved • Can learn from others by being with them while enacting culture and also by stepping back to observe from the side (tracking another)

Policy Issues • New teachers learning to teach • Induction for newly hired teachers (experienced and inexperienced) • Learning subject matter • Teaching out of field • Teacher assessment and evaluation • Expanding roles of students, parents and the community

Using Science Education to Expand the Agency of Urban Youth