Science Teaching as Nurturing Students' Professional Vision: Examining Tensions and Implications for Equity

• In Event: Advancing Equity in Learning and Doing Science

Abstract

In science class discussions we can observe how the students are coming to know scientific phenomena, and how they are learning to deploy scientific practices in doing so. In this paper, we conceptualize teacher actions that scaffold student understanding and deployment of such practices as a process of nurturing students’ professional vision of science. Using the instrumental case of a lesson by a focal high school science teacher Michelle, we illustrate how such nurturing of professional vision happens through the use of the practices of coding, highlighting, and producing graphical representations (Goodwin, 1994). We then highlight some tensions in learning through such a process and discuss implications for advancing educational equity.

Authors

• Sushil Shintre, University of California - San Diego

• Sherice Clarke, University of California - San Diego

• Andrea Sarah Gomoll, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Tarang Tripathi, University of California - San Diego

• Zaynab Amelia Gates, University of California - San Diego