Supporting students' language, knowledge and culture through science

通过科学支持学生的语言、知识和文化

• 批准号: 2010633
• 负责人: Cory Buxton
• 金额: $ 252.19万
• 依托单位: Oregon State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2010633&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Supporting; students; language; knowledge; culture

The Language, Culture, and Knowledge-building through Science project seeks to explore and positively influence the work of science teachers at the intersection of three significant and ongoing challenges affecting U.S. STEM education. First, U.S. student demographics are rapidly changing, with an increasing number of students learning STEM subjects in their second language. This change means that all teachers need new skills for meeting students where they currently are, linguistically, culturally, and in terms of prior science knowledge. Second, the needs and opportunities of the national STEM workforce are changing rapidly within a shifting employment landscape. This shift means that teachers need to better understand future job opportunities and the knowledge and skills that will be necessary in those careers. Third, academic expectations in schools have changed, driven by changes in education standards. These new expectations mean that teachers need new skills to support all students to master a range of practices that are both conceptual and linguistic. To address these challenges, teachers require new models that bring together current research about the role of language in science learning, the role of cultural connections in students’ science engagement, and how students’ science knowledge builds over time. This project begins with such an initial model, developed collaboratively with science teachers in a prior project. The model will be rigorously tested and refined in a new geographic and demographic context. The outcome will be to provide an integrated framework that can guide current and future science teachers in preparing all students with the conceptual and linguistic practices they will need to succeed in school and in the workplace.This project model starts with three theoretical constructs that have been integrated into an innovative framework of nine practices. These practices guide teachers in how to simultaneously support students’ language development, cultural sustenance, and knowledge building through science with a focus on supporting and challenging multilingual learners. The project uses a functional view of language development, which highlights the need to support students in understanding both how and why to make shifts in language use. For example, students’ attention will be drawn to differences in language use when they shift from language that is suited to peer negotiation in a lab group to written explanations suitable for a lab report. Moving beyond a funds of knowledge approach to culture, the team view of integrating students’ cultural knowledge includes strengthening the role of home knowledge in school, but also guiding students to apply school knowledge to their out-of-school interests and passions. Finally, the project team’s view of cumulative knowledge building, informed by work in the sociology of knowledge, highlights the need for teachers and students to understand the norms for meaning making within a given discipline. In the case of science, the three-dimensional learning model in the Next Generation Science Standards makes these disciplinary norms visible and serves as a launching point for the project’s work. Teachers will be supported to structure learning opportunities that highlight what is unique about meaning making through science. Using a range of data collection and analysis methods, the project team will study changes in teachers’ practices and beliefs related to language, culture and knowledge building, as teachers work with all students, and particularly with multilingual learners. The project work will take place in both classrooms and out of class science learning settings. By working closely over several years with a group of fifty science teachers spread across the state of Oregon, the project team will develop a typology of teachers (design personas) to increase the field’s understanding of how to support different teachers, given their own backgrounds, in preparing all students for the broad range of academic and occupational pathways they will encounter.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

通过科学构建语言、文化和知识项目旨在探索并积极影响科学教师在影响美国STEM教育的三个重大和持续挑战的交叉点上的工作。首先，美国学生的人口结构正在迅速变化，越来越多的学生用第二语言学习STEM科目。这一变化意味着所有教师都需要新的技能来满足学生的现状，包括语言、文化和先前的科学知识。其次，在不断变化的就业环境中，国家STEM劳动力的需求和机会正在迅速变化。这种转变意味着教师需要更好地了解未来的工作机会以及这些职业所需的知识和技能。第三，在教育标准变化的推动下，学校对学业的期望发生了变化。这些新的期望意味着教师需要新的技能来支持所有学生掌握一系列概念和语言上的实践。为了应对这些挑战，教师需要新的模型，将当前关于语言在科学学习中的作用、文化联系在学生科学参与中的作用以及学生科学知识如何随着时间的推移而建立的研究结合起来。本项目以这样一个初始模型开始，与先前项目中的科学教师合作开发。该模式将在新的地理和人口背景下进行严格测试和改进。其结果将是提供一个综合框架，可以指导当前和未来的科学教师为所有学生准备他们在学校和工作场所取得成功所需的概念和语言实践。该项目模型从三个理论构建开始，这些理论构建已整合到九个实践的创新框架中。这些实践指导教师如何同时通过科学支持学生的语言发展、文化维持和知识建设，重点是支持和挑战多语种学习者。该项目采用了语言发展的功能观，强调了支持学生理解如何以及为什么要在语言使用上做出转变的必要性。例如，当学生的注意力从适合在实验小组中进行同伴协商的语言转向适合在实验报告中进行书面解释时，他们的注意力就会被吸引到语言使用的差异上。整合学生文化知识的团队观超越了知识基金的文化观，包括强化家庭知识在学校中的作用，也包括引导学生将学校知识应用到他们的校外兴趣和激情中。最后，通过知识社会学的工作，项目团队对累积知识建设的看法强调了教师和学生理解特定学科中意义创造规范的必要性。以科学为例，《下一代科学标准》中的三维学习模型使这些学科规范可见，并作为项目工作的起点。教师将得到支持，组织学习机会，突出通过科学创造意义的独特之处。利用一系列数据收集和分析方法，项目团队将研究教师在语言、文化和知识建设方面的实践和信念的变化，因为教师与所有学生，特别是与多语言学习者合作。项目工作将在课堂和课堂外的科学学习环境中进行。通过与分布在俄勒冈州的50名科学教师的密切合作，项目团队将开发一种教师类型（设计人物角色），以增加该领域对如何支持不同教师的理解，根据他们自己的背景，为所有学生准备他们将遇到的广泛的学术和职业道路。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。