DESIGNING FOR DIVERSITY
The emphasis on dialogue and collaboration in project-based science makes extensive demands on the discursive and literacy capabilities of students, particularly when dialogue and collaboration are attempted in diverse classroom settings (Moje, 2000). Students may bring particular kinds of knowledge and experience that are unique to their cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds (Moll, 1988). Students may also lack the prior knowledge and experience necessary to engage in dialogue and collaboration around particular scientific concepts simply because they have not had access to certain experiences (Rodriguez, 1997). In addition, students may bring epistemological stances that are dissimilar to those valued in science classrooms. For example, students may not engage in everyday dialogue and activity that requires people to explain their reasoning for solving a problem, and thus a teacher's question to explain one's thinking may be confusing, or even insulting, to a student (Akatugba & Wallace, 1999). Finally, students may bring ways of knowing and funds of knowledge based on ideologies that actually conflict with scientific ways of knowing and knowledge. Throughout the day, middle school students encounter the language, discourse, and literacy of different disciplines. Students move from language arts to science to history class, experiencing different terms, concepts, and ways of communicating. The texts encountered in each classroom may present not only technical vocabulary unique to each discipline, but also different ways of examining and documenting experience (Gee, 1996; Lemke, 1990). When the discourses and literacies of electronic technologies enter this mix, learning to communicate in the ways of the disciplinein this case, scientific literacies and discoursesmay be quite challenging.
Thus, project-based curricula and professional development
efforts must incorporate an emphasis on the different types of diversity that
young people will encounter in science classrooms. We will include strategies
to build project-based curricula that are accessible to all students. We will
also provide opportunities for students to learn to navigate and communicate
in the many different discourse communities they encounter in a typical school
day.
Developing accessible curricula. Several strategies are useful for developing curricula that are accessible to students and that teach science in deep and meaningful ways. The key is that the strategies must draw from, incorporate, extend, and challenge student's community-based ways of knowing and funds of knowledge. One first strategy is to locate community problems related to the concepts under study and engaging youth in specific activities related to those problems (Merino & Hammond, 1998). Professional development can help teachers think about how to determine specific community issues and problems and how to map the science concepts onto community problem-solving activities. A second possible strategy is to involve parents and community members as classroom participants who discuss their knowledge and experiences regarding science concepts and related community problems (Moll, 1992). Students can translate community knowledge about science-related issues into scientific knowledge and back again (Heath, 1983), and they can conduct interviews and surveys with community and industry leaders (Moje et al., 2000).
Navigating discourse communities. It is important to provide opportunities for students to engage in and critique scientific discourse, such as making explicit how and why scientists communicate with one another, with the public, and with political leaders. Students might examine actual documents prepared by scientists on different sides of a science policy issue. In addition, students might examine how the same scientist writes differently about an issue when writing to another scientist and when writing to inform the public or representatives of a government agency. We will build on Moje's current project of constructing interdisciplinary curricula to extend these discourse and literacy activities by engaging science teachers in addressing issues of discourse and literacy while focusing on deep teaching of science concepts. These interdisciplinary links will help to build coherence and connectedness in the typical secondary school day, while also teaching young people how to navigate and challenge the diversity and boundaries posed by the disciplines.