Abstract
This study reports the learning of elementary preservice teachers regarding diversity and teaching science in diverse urban elementary classrooms. From participating in a semester-long book club, the preservice teachers reveal their cultural biases, connect and apply their knowledge of diversity, and understand that getting to know their students are important elements for teaching science in diverse classrooms. These 3 things connect in ways that allow the preservice teachers to understand how their cultural biases impede student learning and gain new knowledge of diversity as they change their cultural biases. Implications of this study reveal that preservice teachers need opportunities to reveal, confront, challenge, and change their cultural models and to develop new models for teaching science in urban elementary classrooms.
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Notes
In this 9-year ethnographic study, Shirley Brice Heath narrates the story of three culturally different communities—Trackton, Roadville and the townspeople—located in the Piedmont Carolinas in the desegregated south, 1969–1978. Roadville is a White working-class community of mill workers; Trackton is a Black working-class community with a history of older generations of farming workers and recent generations of mill workers. The third community is composed of mainstream Black and White educated people. She used mainstream teachers as ethnographers. A major goal of the mainstreamers was to find ways to communicate more effectively with children in school and adults in the two communities.
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Moore, F.M. Preparing Elementary Preservice Teachers for Urban Elementary Science Classrooms: Challenging Cultural Biases Toward Diverse Students. J Sci Teacher Educ 19, 85–109 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-007-9083-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-007-9083-2