The Wound

My academic and practical experiences span from engineering to education and accepting responsibility as a teacher of mathematics and Science, respectively. Those experiences as an engineering student molded me for what I would experience in the classroom as the teacher of 30 to 34 students at a time each period. During my years as an engineering student (from undergraduate to graduate school) the only difference I noticed was, the number of males far out numbered females. But, it was not until I was vested in an doctoral program in education that I started looking at the data highlighting the racial makeup of courses in the “hard sciences” in high school and beyond, upper level mathematics in high school and beyond, engineering from undergraduate and beyond.

Students Reading

Knowing That “The Wound” Exists and Doing Something about it: STREaM, Inc.

Some students of color — African-American students in particular — express high interest in Science, enjoy learning, and feel confident about doing it at the elementary-school level. But these students consistently receive lower grades on standardized assessments of Science achievement (Hanson & Johnson, 2000; Hill & Pettus, 1990; Kahle, et al. 1994). In general, research has revealed that Black and Latino students lag behind white students in nearly all measures of academic achievement in the Sciences — from course taking to standardized testing to postsecondary degree attainment (NSF 1996; Oakes, Gamoran, & Page, 1992; Oakes and Wells, 1998; U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Since advanced course work in Science is a prerequisite for entrance into Science careers, it is reasonable to assume that this documented lower participation in Science classes results in lower participation in Science careers by minority groups. Low representation in Science careers by minorities is well documented (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001).

I refer to this low participation as the “wound” — an intentional word choice to illuminate that despite good intentions, from court decisions to federal funding, there is still a paucity of minority students in the “hard science” classes in high school. The word “wound” is appropriate even now, fifty-four years after Brown v. Board of Education, because inequitable schooling, characterized specifically by course selection, taking, and proficiency in assessment in high school and beyond, still exists. Available quantitative data, from standardized examinations, from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, 1969 – Present), and from the American Institute of Physics (AIP, 2004-2007) have highlighted deficiencies in minority participation in courses in mathematics, reading, writing, Science and physics. According to the AIP, the percentages of high school students who took Physics from 1990 to 2001 increased as follows: Asian (from 34 to 47%), white (24 to 33%), Black (10 to 22%), and Hispanic (10 to 21%).

The increase in participation across racial groups resulted from an enhanced spectrum of course offerings in physics from conceptual to advanced placement and honors classes. Despite this reported increase by African-American and Latino students, these populations are still lagging behind their Anglo and Asian-American counterparts. This difference is more prevalent at the high school level because students, with their guidance counselors, are allowed to make choices about what courses they will take. In contrast, elementary school students have no choice of which courses they take. Many students tend to make career choices between the late elementary school years (grades 4–6) and early junior high school years, which makes this a critical window of opportunity (Campbell, 1991; Kahle, et al. 1994).

Young boy doing science!

Learning Together: Experiment in Geology

I argue that appropriate instructional strategies at the elementary level are critical to building student’s confidence in Science so that they feel empowered to choose Science courses once they are in high school. This empowerment is developed through “talk” that teachers and students are engaged in at the elementary level. Teachers from pre-K-12, must scaffold the language of school Science (LSS) development with technical vocabulary as an integral part of each teaching and learning process.

Introduction

It can be argued, based on research (Gee, 2004, Lemke 2004) that effective scientific communication skills should be developed through appropriate modeling and practice in using the technical terms encountered in textbooks, the teachers’ language, examinations, the news media, and science journals or magazines. In contrast, accommodationist educators argue that as long as students can explain the concepts in a way that shows comprehension, it is not necessary for them to use the technical vocabulary. “Accommodationism” will be used in reference to the philosophy that students need not learn the technical, “official” language associated with scientific concepts, as long as some familiarity with those concepts is achieved. The word “accommodationist” may be used in reference to practitioners who espouse that philosophy as well. The term originated in debates surrounding the conflicting views of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois; while Washington argued that black education should accommodate prevailing social realities, Dubois pushed for an educational strategy more focused on improvement and empowerment.

Tutoring Pre-K-14

“The Wound”

“The Wound” refers to a state of population-specific inequality that results from the coincidence of the following five conditions:

Science-specific pedagogy does not adequately address methods and practices for enhancing science-related vocabulary acquisition; so

Science teachers are not trained in methods and practices for enhancing Science-related vocabulary acquisition; and

Students from vocabulary-poor backgrounds may lack the repertoire of core vocabulary needed for the transfer of non-technical vocabulary to the understanding of analogous technical terms; therefore

Science teachers who lack training in vocabulary-building instructional strategies cannot address the needs of students who come to Science class needing explicit instruction in order to acquire Science-specific vocabulary; so

Science teachers lower expectations for students from vocabulary-poor backgrounds, permitting such students to use simplistic mnemonics to represent or describe scientific concepts that would otherwise be signified by the use of specialized scientific terminology.

It would appear that any situation requiring the coincidence of these five conditions would be very rare. Unfortunately, the conditions above coincide in an increasing percentage of schools across the United States.