Integrated Science-Literacy in Urban Early Elementary Classrooms: Exploring Scientific Understandings and Discourse Genres

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This is a comprehensive program of educational research around teaching and learning of integrated science and literacy in primary (grades 1-3) urban classrooms. It builds on several years of preliminary, pilot work in 1st and 2nd grade Chicago classrooms that has resulted in several presentations and publications of emerging scholarship around two science topics' matter (different states of matter, changes from one state to another, the water cycle) and living things (plants and animals in different environments). This study will help to capture and understand the complexity of teaching and learning science integrated with literacy in diverse urban classrooms of young children. Such research is critical in the light of how little we know about science education in primary grades. The major interrelated objectives of the proposed research are to investigate: * how teacher and students construct shared knowledge on science topics in integrated units; * linguistic science language themes that children and teacher use and develop as they theorize about scientific phenomena, collect and analyze empirical evidence, and coordinate the two; * how informational texts inform and extend children's theoretical and empirical understandings of the science topics they explore; * the kinds of texts (and drawings) the children produce as part of their inquiries;how the children's ethnicity, culture, and gender influence and interact with the above issues; * the kinds of developmental routes that early elementary school children (grades 1-3) take in understanding science and the language of science; * how at-home, adult-child, science-literacy explorations that are shared and integrated in the curriculum affect children's development of science and science language knowledge, as well as how family members' involvement in these at home-experiences might enable them to foster and support children's education in these areas; and * the kinds of tensions that teachers confront in implementing such integrated units. Data sources will include: audio and video tapes of the various classroom activities and events described above, as well as audio-tapes of project staff meetings, teachers' research journals, and university-based researchers' field notes. In addition, written artifacts created by teachers and students (e.g., concept maps, posters, wall-charts) and various children's drawings and writings related to the integrated science-literacy inquiries are to be collected. Family members' responses to the at-home explorations will be gathered via surveys. The broader impacts of this research include: (1) promoting urban young children's opportunities to experience rich and meaningful teaching and learning, since the research explores pedagogical approaches and integrated curricular materials to enhance science/literacy education during the early elementary grades; (2) increasing the research capacity in science and literacy education of both graduate students and teachers; (3) uncovering and understanding factors that enhance the full participation of all Americans in the STEM enterprise; (4) highlighting approaches that can increase and strengthen participation by exploring scientific literacy and learning of low SES students of diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds; and (4) informing researchers, policy-makers, and school- and university-based educators by disseminating in various ways the understandings gained through this study.