Diversity In Science Education Research Articles

Diversity and Inclusion in Science Education: Why? A Literature Review

In the last twenty years, there has been a consensus around the world that effective science education is vital to economic success in the emerging knowledge age. It is also suggested that knowledge of science and scientific ways of thinking is essential to participation in democratic decisionmaking. Students may recognise differences and advocate diversity, but assimilating those ideas requires the creation of conditions in which students can think deeply about situations that require tolerance. Schools in many countries and regions of the world are places shaped by cultural diversity. One may observe that in many schools there are social developments like migration and demographic and value change, consequently increasing the diversity of students. The issue of diversity in science education is therefore tackled according to many aspects, e.g., culture, language, scientific literacy and gender. The aim of the present literature review is to align the ERASMUS+ project Diversity in Science towards Social Inclusion with studies and views regarding diversity and inclusion in science education. The main goals of this project were to promote inclusive education and to train and foster the education of disadvantaged learners through a range of measures, including supporting education staff in addressing diversity and reinforcing diversity among education staff. Practices dealing with dimensions of diversity and inclusion in science education are developed and the partners shared the good practices that they developed.

Foregrounding Intersectionality in Considerations of Diversity: Confronting Discrimination in Science Teacher Education

This paper contributes to a small but significant body of research addressing issues of prejudice in science education. It is written in the form of a critical incident analysis that uses the framework of intersectionality to examine deficit ideologies and biases inherent in science as a body of knowledge as well as science teacher education. If left unchecked, these prejudices can filter through into school science education, reinforcing the stereotypes of who can contribute to the field of science. The paper makes a call for science teacher educators to support teacher candidates as they move past an academic understanding of diversity in science education to examine their personal dispositions. Suggestions are made for approaches that can be adopted to facilitate the forms of deconstruction necessary for progress to be made in this area.

Dialogic Pedagogies and Multimodal Methodologies: Working Towards Inclusive Science Education and Research

Abstract This contribution to the APSE special issue, “Equity and Diversity in Science Education: Implications for the Asia-Pacific Region,” presents research on plurilingual students’ interactions in science drawn from several studies in the multilingual context of Luxembourg. The goal of the manuscript is to present dialogic pedagogies and multimodal methodologies as central to working towards equitable practices in science education, in particular when working with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Through a layering of claims from prior case studies, the manuscript makes three assertions: multimodal methodologies highlight children’s embodied participation in science; multimodal methodologies support resource-rich perspectives on children; and dialogic pedagogical structures mediate children’s engagement of resources. An interpretive discussion focuses on the necessity of situating difference as a resource, and implications are raised for science education teaching and research.

Mexican and Mexican-American children’s funds of knowledge as interventions into deficit thinking: opportunities for praxis in science education

In this case study, I use an ethnographic-style approach to understand the funds of knowledge of immigrant families living in colonias on both sides of the US/Mexico border. I focus on how these “knowledges” and concomitant experiences impact the ways we perceive and treat immigrant students who have all too often been viewed through deficit lenses that relegate them to the lowest expectations and outcomes in the classroom. I find that Mexican and Mexican-American families hold unusually sophisticated and relevant “knowledges” to mitigate their everyday lives. In this paper, I will refer to citizens of Mexico, whether they reside in Mexico or have crossed to the United States legally or without documentation for purposes of work, as Mexican. People who have crossed the border and are living in the US as legal residents or have gained citizenship are referred to as Mexican-Americans. They live a hybrid identity that is varied and dynamic, an issue that adds to the complexity of the content and contexts of this study. These families know and use these “knowledges” on a daily basis, yet they are not recognized by teachers in the US as a starting point to affirm and support immigrant children. Instead, immigrant children are relegated to the non-gifted and lower track classes where science is taught from an abstract and non-contextual and therefore less engaged basis. The approach I outline here, based on insights from my case study, can greatly improve teachers’ abilities to prepare their curricula for diversity in science education and science literacy as well as for broad expectations for student success.

How to foster student–student learning of science? The student, the teacher and the subject matter

In this response to Konstantinos Alexakos, Jayson K. Jones, and Victor H. Rodriguez’s study, I discuss ways attending to student membership in groups can both inform research on equity and diversity in science education and improve the teaching of science to all students. My comments are organized into three sections: how underrepresented students’ experiences in science classrooms are shaped by their peers; how science teachers can help students listen to and learn from one another; and how the subject matter can invite or discourage student participation in science. More specifically, I underscore the need for teachers and students to listen to one another to promote student learning of science. I also highlight the importance of science education researchers and science teachers viewing students both as individuals and as members of multiple groups; women of color, for example, should be understood as similar to and different from each other, from European American women and from ethnic minorities in general.

Cultural diversity in science education through Novelization: Against the Epicization of science and cultural centralization

AbstractScience educators are confronted with the challenge to accommodate in their classes an increasing cultural and linguistic diversity that results from globalization. Challenged by the call to work towards valuing and keeping this diversity in the face of the canonical nature of school science discourse, we propose a new way of thinking about and investigating these problems. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, we articulate epicization and novelization as concepts that allow us to understand, respectively, the processes of (a) centralizing and homogenizing culture and language and (b) pluralizing culture and language. We present and analyze three examples that exhibit how existing mundane science education practices tend, by means of epicization, towards a unitary language and to cultural centralization. We then propose novelization as a way for thinking the opening up of science education by interacting with and incorporating alternative forms of knowing that arise from cultural diversity. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 824–847, 2011

Van Eijck and Roth’s utilitarian science education: why the recalibration of science and traditional ecological knowledge invokes multiple perspectives to protect science education from being exclusive

This article is a philosophical analysis of van Eijck and Roth’s (2007) claim that science and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) should be recalibrated because they are incommensurate, particular to the local contexts in which they are practical. In this view, science maintains an incommensurate status as if it is a “fundamental” basis for the relative comparison of other cultural knowledges, which reduces traditional knowledge to a status of in relation to the prioritized (higher)-status of natural sciences. van Eijck and Roth reject epistemological Truth as a way of thinking about sciences in science education. Rather they adopt a utilitarian perspective of cultural-historical activity theory to demonstrate when traditional knowledge is considered science and when it is not considered science, for the purposes of evaluating what should be included in U.S. science education curricula. There are several challenges for evaluating what should be included in science education when traditional knowledges and sciences are considered in light of a utilitarian analysis. Science as diverse, either practically local or theoretically abstract, is highly uncertain, which provides opportunities for multiple perspectives to enlarge and protect the natural sciences from exclusivity. In this response to van Eijck and Roth, we make the case for considering dialectical relationships between science and TEK in order to ensure cultural diversity in science education, as a paradigm. We also emphasize the need to (re)dissolve the hierarchies and dualisms that may emerge when science is elevated in status in comparison with other knowledges. We conclude with a modification to van Eijck and Roth’s perspective by recommending a guiding principle of cultural diversity in science education as a way to make curriculum choices. We envision this principle can be applied when evaluating science curricula worldwide.

Preparing mathematics and science teachers for diverse classrooms: promising strategies for transformative pedagogy

Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms: Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy, edited by Alberto J. Rodriguez and Richard S. Kitchen. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. 296 pp. $79.95, hardcover. This book will help teacher educators who are reluctant to engage in transformative pedagogy to see how it can be done, as well as to gain understanding of why they should undertake this assignment, (p. xi) In the forward to Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms: Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy, noted multicultural education scholar, Carl Grant, makes the aforementioned statement about the utility of this volume. However, the editors take the reader in a direction that opens the road to equity and excellence for all who are involved in education, particularly those of us uniquely concerned with the education of children of color. Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms affords Rodriguez and Kitchen the opportunity to focus with colleagues on ways to improve mathematics and science teacher preparation by providing the theoretical basis and numerous practical strategies for working in diverse schools. In this book, the chapter authors present strategies that they use in their classes to prepare teachers of mathematics and science who might be resistant to ideological change or pedagogical change. The editors define ideological change as for and pedagogical change as for understanding. The two theories that support this book are multicultural education and social constructivism. Both of these theoretical frameworks are common in the multicultural science education scholarly community. In the first chapter, Rodriguez lays the theoretical foundation for the subsequent chapters by using examples from his own classrooms as the basis for his work in the field of diversity in science education. Rodriguez also elaborates on the editors' use of the term resistance as a construct that is frequently cited in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database. Practical issues such as the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and the national science and mathematics standards on teaching for diversity and teaching for understanding are highlighted in the initial chapter. Chapter 1 concludes with an excellent table that provides an overview of the next 11 chapters. Chapters 2 through 12 focus on the respective authors' explanation of effective pedagogical strategies that are used in working with teachers and teacher candidates who resist the ideas of teaching for understanding and teaching for diversity-transformative pedagogy. These eleven chapters do not have to be read in sequence, as each author does a thorough job of delineating the appropriate theoretical underpinnings of her or his pedagogical philosophy, as well as comprehensively describing the instructional strategy presented in the chapter. There is also a fairly balanced set of chapters along the two contents areas with chapters 3, 7, 9, and 11 devoted to mathematics-based strategies and chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 focused on science-based approaches. Chapter 5 presents mathematics- and science-based strategies that with some reflection and adjustment, a teacher educator could effectively utilize across disciplines. …

Science and Engineering Education in Europe

This paper addresses diversity in science education in Europe. I would like to give you first a global overview of education in engineering and sciences in our countries and then present two European models for global education for engineers and scientists that are becoming increasingly important components of their curricula.

Diversity in Science Education: Its Role in the Development of Latin America in the 21st Century

Over the next quarter-century, the world's population is expected to grow by an unprecedented 90 million people-the equivalent of Mexico's population in 1995 (IFPRI, 1996). The resulting strain on food supplies, agricultural production, services and the environment will pose enormous challenges to even the most resourceful leaders. However, a growing body of research shows that these challenges can be met provided that well-planned science education and research is in place. That being so, there still is wide variation in the levels of literacy between the different Latin American countries, indicating the differential effect that science education has on the region. This is probably due to the differential investment in science that countries have made over the years. For example, while Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile are among the countries with the highest literacy rates in South America, there are other countries in the same continent with literacy rates at levels below 75 percent. 
 Latin America, like the rest of the world, will not escape the challenges of the twenty-first century. These challenges include: an ever increasing concern for environmental conservation and the management of biodiversity; the globalization of the economy; and the increasing need to ensure food security to the growing population in general and particularly to the urban sector. This means that science education must focus on these challenges. In all these, science has had, and will continue to have, significant influence.