van Eijck Hsu Roth - Science Education 2008

Translations of scientific practice to "students' images of science"
Science Education online publication

Michiel van Eijck, Pei-Ling Hsu, Wolff-Michael Roth

In the science education research literature, it often appears to be assumed that students "possess" more or less stable "images of science" that directly correspond to their experiences with scientific practice in science curricula. From cultural-historical and sociocultural perspectives, this assumption is problematic because scientific practices are collective human activities and are therefore neither identical with students' experiences nor with the accounts of these experiences that students make available to researchers. "Students' images of science" are therefore translated from (rather than directly correspond to) scientific practices. Drawing on data collected during and after preuniversity biology students' internships in a scientific laboratory, we exemplify the role of these translations in the production of "students' images of science." A coarse-grained analysis based on existing research showed our data to be comparable with earlier studies on "students' images of science." A fine-grained analysis shows how "students' images of science" were coproduced along a trajectory of translations that was determined by the use of particular actions and tools, and a particular division of labor in scientific practice. We propose to reconceptualize "students' images of science" as particular coproductions at a given point in time. The methodological and educational implications of this proposal are discussed.

Roth Tobin Ritchie - Science Education 2008

Time and temporality as mediators of science learning

Wolff-Michael Roth 1 *, Kenneth Tobin 2, Stephen M. Ritchie 3
1Applied Cognitive Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8W 3N4, Canada
2Urban Education, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY 10016-4309, USA
3Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Q'ld 4059, Australia
email: Wolff-Michael Roth (mroth@uvic.ca)
*Correspondence to Wolff-Michael Roth, Applied Cognitive Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8W 3N4, Canada

Few studies have focused on understanding how teaching and learning in classrooms are mediated by other dimensions of the organizational systems of which education is an integral part. Our 7-year ethnographic study of an urban high school shows how time and temporality constitute key practical and theoretical resources to the actors in the cultural organization of schools, a product of transactions involving individuals and artifacts that traverse multiple cultural fields, each with its own distinctive structures. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92:115-140, 2008

Received: 6 May 2007; Revised: 17 July 2007; Accepted: 18 July 2007

DOI: 10.1002/sce.20238