How students design and enact physics lessons: Five immigrant caribbean youth and the cultivation of student voice
J Res Sci Teach 45: 881-899, 2008
Sreyashi Jhumki Basu
An array of data suggests that low-income, minority students are excluded from a high-quality physics education. The education literature proposes that cultivating student voice in classrooms helps youth feel a deeper, more meaningful connection with school. However, limited data exist in the physics education literature on how student voice is expressed. The purpose of this study was to use critical ethnography to explore how student voice developed in the context of a ninth-grade conceptual physics class. I developed case studies of five immigrant Caribbean youth from student, family and teacher interviews, participant observations and field notes. I relied on grounded theory as an analytic technique. Findings suggest that in expressing voice, youth designed lessons reflective of their identities, leveraged and enhanced their epistemic and positional authority (two new constructs I propose in this manuscript), and creatively utilized physics and school-sponsored resources. This information about how students express voice has implications for how they learn physics, how critical theory is connected with physics classroom practice, and how student identity, shared authority and youth agency develop in physics classrooms.
Showing posts with label Basu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Basu. Show all posts
2008-10-02
2008-02-12
Basu - Science Education 2008
Powerful learners and critical agents: The goals of five urban Caribbean youth in a conceptual physics classroom
Sci Ed 92:252-277, 2008
Sreyashi Jhumki Basu
email:sjb17@nyu.edu
Youth from low-income, minority backgrounds have often been marginalized from introductory courses, advanced study and careers in physics. Cultivating student agency may have the potential to improve access for diverse groups of learners. However, the implications of this lens for student learning have been minimally examined in the physics education literature. In this ethnographic study situated in a ninth-grade conceptual physics classroom, I discuss students' critical goals - the intentions, motivations, and desires for change that youth held. These critical goals were related to learning, voice, and participation in relationships and the world. I also describe how student goals demonstrate the idea of critical subject-matter agency in physics: students positioning themselves as powerful learners envisioning subject knowledge as a tool for change in their own lives and world. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/sce.20241
Sci Ed 92:252-277, 2008
Sreyashi Jhumki Basu
email:sjb17@nyu.edu
Youth from low-income, minority backgrounds have often been marginalized from introductory courses, advanced study and careers in physics. Cultivating student agency may have the potential to improve access for diverse groups of learners. However, the implications of this lens for student learning have been minimally examined in the physics education literature. In this ethnographic study situated in a ninth-grade conceptual physics classroom, I discuss students' critical goals - the intentions, motivations, and desires for change that youth held. These critical goals were related to learning, voice, and participation in relationships and the world. I also describe how student goals demonstrate the idea of critical subject-matter agency in physics: students positioning themselves as powerful learners envisioning subject knowledge as a tool for change in their own lives and world. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/sce.20241
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