Papers by Sara E D Wilmes
Science notebooks can support students in working in active, inquiry-based ways of learning. When... more Science notebooks can support students in working in active, inquiry-based ways of learning. When students use notebooks to document science investigations in rich and meaningful ways, notebooks can support not only the development of students’ content understandings, but also understandings about and engagement in science practices (Weibe et al., 2009). All too often though, student productions in science classrooms, such as entries in notebooks, are viewed as solely representative of individual understandings. This view serves to undercut the both individual and collective processes that constituted their construction, thus, inaccurately situating student representations as merely individual productions. In this presentation we show how an analysis of science notebook use in a primary classroom using the dialectic perspective of individual|collective revealed how aspects of students’ interactions with each other and with their notebooks are intertwined and co-constitute one another. This work emphasizes how viewing notebook use as individual |collective can reveal the dance of these inseparable aspects of interaction
Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 2016
Abstract This research examines the use of participatory structures with children in a fourth gra... more Abstract This research examines the use of participatory structures with children in a fourth grade classroom as they engage in an inquiry-based science unit. The dialectical relationship between structure and agency is central to exploring these children's investigation, as children engaged in an investigation designed partly by themselves, in collaboration with their teachers and each other. We consider to what extent participatory structures mediated children's agency in science investigations. Using a combination of ethnographic and design experiment methods, we zoom in on a case study of one child and his collaborative activities with peers, to contextualize the process and underscore the claim that participatory structures created spaces for children to take agency in different ways. Specifically we demonstrate how open-ended structures and participatory curricular design mediated his agentic participation and also transformed the structures of the class, as teachers and students were positioned in new ways.
Science Teacher Preparation in Content-Based Second Language Acquisition, 2017
Science Workshop is an integrated science and language literacy program piloted and implemented b... more Science Workshop is an integrated science and language literacy program piloted and implemented by primary school teachers in multilingual classrooms in Luxembourg. Grounded in theories supporting the integration of inquiry-based science education and language learning, Science Workshop consists of a teacher professional development program and instructional approach that engages students in inquiry arising from their questions in meaningful learning contexts. In this chapter, I detail the strategies and resources used in Science Workshop, a science program which is attuned to student’s voices as they question and conduct science investigations, and show how the program supported teachers in implementing integrated science and language literacy instruction at the primary level. Specifically, I discuss how Science Workshop supported the formation of heteroglossic language learning spaces within the confines of a system guided by monoglossic language policies.
Critical Voices in Science Education Research, 2019
This chapter illustrates the process of collaborative autoethnography (co-autoethnography) we use... more This chapter illustrates the process of collaborative autoethnography (co-autoethnography) we used to construct space, in order to critically explore ourselves, and the contexts we study. Through a co-autoethnographic process, we aimed to better understand our positioning in our lived experiences and to generate an understanding of how reflective critical research approaches could transform us, as well as the communities in which we were immersed. In this chapter, we share the process of our collective analysis of autoethnographic narratives (Coia L, Taylor M, Co/autoethnography: Exploring our teaching selves collaboratively. In L. Fitzgerald, M. Heston, D. Tidwell (Eds.), Research methods for the self-study of practice (pp. 3–16). Netherlands: Springer, 2009), which stemmed from our experiences living and conducting education research in multilingual and multicultural contexts. Our ethnographic method of data collection, analysis, and interpretation was generated from our journeys as researchers – moving to, living, and conducting research in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) environments. We share this process, and some lessons we learned, with the hope that other researchers may find co-autoethnography a cathartic methodology to explore and challenge their own perspectives relative to cultural and linguistic diversity in their lives and in their research.
Science Workshop is an integrated science and language literacy program piloted and implemented b... more Science Workshop is an integrated science and language literacy program piloted and implemented by primary school teachers in multilingual classrooms in Luxembourg. Grounded in theories supporting the integration of inquiry-based science education and language learning, Science Workshop consists of a teacher professional development program and instructional approach that engages students in inquiry arising from their questions in meaningful learning contexts. In this chapter, I detail the strategies and resources used in Science Workshop, a science program which is attuned to student’s voices as they question and conduct science investigations, and show how the program supported teachers in implementing integrated science and language literacy instruction at the primary level. Specifically, I discuss how Science Workshop supported the formation of heteroglossic language learning spaces within the confines of a system guided by monoglossic language policies.
We question the use of video analysis methodologies that are linked to and/or rooted in verbal co... more We question the use of video analysis methodologies that are linked to and/or rooted in verbal constructs. Starting with the perspective that science education is a practice that unfolds in interaction, and that prioritizing the spoken and written aspects of science learning does not present the complexities of communication and engagement in science classrooms (Jaipal, 2010; Kress, 2009), we present what we have been learning through analysis of the embodied ways students engage in science. We will demonstrate the processes we use to background the spoken in analysis in order to highlight the nonverbal ways in which Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) children engage in science investigations. This is significant given the rich cultural and linguistic landscape of the classrooms in which we work and the difficulties many CLD students experience with German as school language (Weber, 2008). Through the presentation of three examples arising from video analysis of interactions in multilingual classrooms in Luxembourg, we share how we background the verbal (Norris, 2004) in our analytical processes, and through doing this, question first, what does this brings to our video analysis in ever-growing multilingual school contexts, and second, what does this add to our understanding of science learning in general, and the role of nonverbal interaction in multilingual contexts with CLD students in particular.
Our research is embedded in the multilingual national context of Luxembourg, a small diverse coun... more Our research is embedded in the multilingual national context of Luxembourg, a small diverse country in Western Europe, and as such our research participants are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD). Luxembourg’s public schools reflect the diversity of the country, with 44% of students identifying as a nationality other than Luxembourgish, and 55% speaking a first language other than Luxembourgish (Ministère de l’éducation nationale, de l’Enfance et de la Jeunesse [MENJE], 2015). Certainly, students draw on a wide variety of resources as they make meaning in science, and a key resource in this process of meaning making is language, which serves to mediate learning as well as position participants in the learning process. However, for students with proficiencies in languages other than the ones used for instruction in schools (such as the students we work with), the nuances of how language(s) can serve as resource(s) for learning are crucial for researchers and teachers to consider and understand. Science, language, and learning are interwoven, connected, and we believe, inseparable, to the processes of science education. In this chapter we use a critical lens to deconstruct the use of language(s) in science education as we address the overarching question posted by the title of this section, “In what ways does language affect (and is affected by) the science educational process?” Throughout this process of deconstruction, we address several critical questions that arise from our research and lived experiences connected to Reconstructing Science Education within the Language | Science Relationship Reflections from Multilingual Contexts sara e. d. wilmes, christina siry, roberto gómez fernández, and anna maria gorges c h a p t e r n i n e t e e n 254 | sara e. d. wilmes et al. the relationship between science education and language. Specifically, we address the following interrelated questions: • Who decides which languages are used in classrooms? • How can we create classroom spaces that value diverse student resources? • What is the relationship between language used in science education, power, and agency
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Papers by Sara E D Wilmes
critical questions that arise from our research and lived experiences connected to the relationship between science education and language. Specifically, we address the following interrelated questions:
o Who decides which languages are used in classrooms?
o How can we create classroom spaces that value diverse student resources?
o What is the relationship between language used in science education, power, and agency?
We address these with the intention of drawing connections for those working with CLD students and in order to move towards reconstructing equitable dialogical science education practices. As we explore these questions, we hope that readers will draw connections to their own practices working with diverse students. We also underscore our position that these questions are only a few of the myriad of questions that we can ask ourselves as a field regarding the role of, and relationship between, language and science when examining science education.