Classrooms as Places of Science

• In Event: Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Curriculum and Instruction in the Science Classroom

Abstract

This multi-case study examines how three teachers enacting ambitious instruction purposefully designed and maintained the classroom as a place of science in which students participated in disciplinary practices. A place of science is a location that shapes the norms, values, and history of disciplinary work. Each participant’s classroom promoted unique forms of science, yet the participants’ enactment of ambitious instruction produced a common use of classrooms – science became a public practice in which an anchoring phenomenon was puzzled over, modeled, and explained by the teacher and student over time. The results of this study suggest that a teacher’s pedagogical preparation and science background shape how they design classrooms as a place of science.

Author

• David Stroupe, Michigan State University