Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education (한국과학교육학회지)

The Korean Association for Science Education (한국과학교육학회)
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Urban Teachers' Perceptions and Practices of Culturally Relevant Science Teaching

  • Nam, Youn-Kyeong (STEM Education Center, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota)
  • Received : 2011.05.25
  • Accepted : 2011.09.27
  • Published : 2011.11.30
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Abstract

This formative evaluation study presents a professional development program, "Earth Science Systems for Teachers (ESST)" held in a Midwest State in the United States. This study investigates how a professional development for urban teachers affects the teacher participants' perceptions of using the urban environment for their science teaching and their lesson unit development. The purpose of the program was to help urban teachers create science units using the urban geologic environment and its connection to urban students' everyday lives. The participant teachers' daily journal entries during the program, their lesson plans before and after the program, as well as their teaching reflections were collected as major data source. The teachers' daily journal entries were analyzed qualitatively and their pre-post lessons were analyzed quantitatively using a lesson plan analysis tool, Culturally Relevant Science Teaching Perspectives (CRSTP) was developed by the author. The lesson analysis tool was used to assess teachers' science lesson plans in the perspective of culturally relevant pedagogy and place-based pedagogy. The major findings include: 1) The teacher participants' field experiences in urban geologic sites and urban environments help the teachers to change their perceptions of using the urban environment as a teaching resource and 2) there were significant differences in their pre and post lesson unit scores based on CRSTP (P<. 01). The implications of this study are also discussed.

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