Negotiating cultural differences in urban science education: an overview of teacher’s first-hand experience reflection of cogen journey

Abstract

Classrooms across the United States increasingly find immigrant science teachers paired with urban minority students, but few of these teachers are prepared for the challenges such cultural assimilation presents. This is particularly true in secondary science education. Identifying potential prospects for culturally adaptive pedagogy in science education is important for students and teachers alike because it provides means for increasing marginalized students’ access to science fields. In this autoethnography, I document my experience as an immigrant science teacher in an urban intermediate school in New York City. Although I possessed the content knowledge highly valued by the current neoliberal agenda, I lacked the cultural adaptivity necessary to foster a successful learning environment. I utilized cogenerative dialogue (cogen) as a tool to ameliorate instances of cultural misalignments and improve teaching and learning in my classroom. The results of the study show that the interstitial culture produced through the implementation of the different forms of cogen became a reference point to draw upon in improving the overall learning environment.