P/power as an Analytic Lens for Equity Research: Uses of Time and Space in Two Diverse Elementary Science Classrooms

• In Event: Science Education, Capital, and Power

Abstract

Purpose
This is a comparative ethnography of two, very different diverse fourth-grade classrooms. One teacher was recognizably “excellent”, regularly enacting reform-based science instruction. The other teacher was eccentric, teaching science in ways that sometimes challenged our a priori definition of “excellent” instruction. Despite differences, both classrooms were highly effective in promoting science learning, engagement, and affiliation for nearly all students. We introduce a grounded theory of power to explain each classroom’s effectiveness and to provide methodological direction for others studying issues of power and equity.

Theoretical Framework
Our grounded theory of power involved two primary concepts: (1) little “p” power, which focused on historically enduring science classroom power hierarchies and the ways cultural arrangements of space and time disrupted or minimized those hierarchies and (2) big “P” Power, which focused on the ways arrangements of space and time provided students’ competence, affiliation and engagement with tools that hooked them up to broader networks of Power (Nespor, 1994). Extending our grounded framework, we drew on the concept of critical consciousness, highlighting the ways P/power works to maintain and challenge the status quo, promote individual empowerment, and/or collective agency (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1994).

Methods
This comparative ethnography is based on the following data per classroom: 30-40 classroom observations, 18-23 student interviews focused on their meanings of the classroom’s practices, digital pictures to document classroom uses of space, and teacher interviews. Using Spradley’s (1980) semantic structure analysis, we focused on each classroom’s uses of time and space (classic markers of culture). The most interesting dimensions of contrast and overlap between classrooms hinged on enactments of power. Working iteratively from data to assertions, we produced our P/power framework.

Results
The paper offers vivid portraits of each classroom, focused on cultural uses of time, space, and the production of P/power. We provide brief glimpses here.

Ms. Wolfe structured time so that students’ ideas, learning, and voices took precedence over curriculum pacing guides. Meanings of “good work” were co-generated; students who struggled academically found their ideas on par with their peers’ ideas because time was allocated for eliciting and recognizing their ideas.

Ms. Carpenter’s classroom reinforced status quo power relations between teacher and student, but blurred prototypical school curriculum (where content was integrated) and social boundaries (where kid-based genres accompanied “college-level” vocabulary). Appropriate content was not dictated by pacing guides or students’ developmental level, but by students’ questions. Everything was “shared”-- integrated content area instruction, classroom materials, and physical space. The boundary-defying nature of the curriculum, along with the shared value of helping one another, produced a sense of collective agency (“we are all good at science”).

Significance
Why do students from under-represented groups continue to have less access to excellent science education? We look to the distribution and enactment of power. We argue that current equity research in science education under-examines power because of the over-emphasis on cultural difference perspectives (Johnson & Carlone, under review). This paper provides methodological direction for studying power and equity in school science.

Authors

• Heidi Carlone, University of North Carolina - Greensboro

• Angela Johnson, Saint Mary's College of Maryland

• Julie Lynn Haun-Frank, Old Dominion University