Studies of Sense-Making in Biology in Language Minority Classrooms....

这个项目将调查少数民族语言学生如何通过参与生物学(如行为学、植物学、生态学、胚胎学)的协作科学研究来适应新的科学意义形成形式。调查将立足于描述海地5-8年级学生发展的科学理解形式，并分析这些新兴形式是如何在课堂环境中构建的。在这个项目的框架内，理解包括：生物学的概念性知识，科学的意义形成实践，以及对科学的认识论信念。拟议的工作包括开发研究工具以探索学生对科学的理解的各个方面，指导双语课堂教师以合作探究的方式提高他们教授科学的能力，与儿童进行发展研究以确定他们的科学理解如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及课堂上的民族志研究，以分析学生的科学理解是如何建立在社会上的。通过对科学理解的社会建构方式的实证研究，本研究将为在科学贫民窟中构建意义社区提供理论基础和实践模式。它将以具体的意义构建实践为特征，促进少数民族语言学生科学理解的发展。此外，通过其对生物学的关注，它将有助于建立关于生物学概念变化的新兴知识库。//

This project nwill investigate how language minority students appropriate new forms of scientific sense-making through their participation in collaborative scientific inquiry in biology (e.g., ethology, botany, ecology, embryology). The investigation will be anchored in a description of the forms of scientic understanding that Haitian students in grades 5-8 develop and an anlysis of how these emerging forms are socially constructed in classroom settings. In the framework of this project, understanding encompasses: conceptual knowledge in biology, scientific sense-making practices, and epistemological beliefs about science. The proposed work encompasses development of research instruments to probe the various dimensions of students scientic understanding, direct work with bilingual classroom teachers to enhance their competence to teach science as collaborative inquiry, developmental research with children to determine how their scientific understanding changes overtime, and ethnographic research in classrooms to analyze how students scientific understanding is socially constructed. Through empirical study of the ways in which scientific understanding is socially constructed, this research will provide both a theoretical rationale and practical model for building sense-making communities in the science slassroom. It will characterize specific sense-making practices which engender the development of scientific understanding in language minority students. In addition, through its focus on biology, it will contribute to an emerging knowledge base on conceptual change in biology.//