Abstract
In reform-based science curricula, students’ discursive participation is highly encouraged as a means of science learning as well as a goal of science education. However, Asian immigrant students are perceived to be quiet and passive in classroom discursive situations, and this reticence implies that they may face challenges in discourse-rich science classroom learning environments. Given this potentially conflicting situation, the present study aims to understand how and why Asian immigrant students participate in science classroom discourse. Findings from interviews with seven Korean immigrant adolescents illustrate that they are indeed hesitant to speak up in classrooms. Drawing upon cultural historical perspectives on identity and agency, this study shows how immigrant experiences shaped the participants’ othered identity and influenced their science classroom participation, as well as how they negotiated their identities and situations to participate in science classroom and peer communities. I will discuss implications of this study for science education research and science teacher education to support classroom participation of immigrant students.
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Notes
I used bold letters for phrases when the participants emphasized the phrases by paralinguistic features such as tone of voice.
I italicized quotes spoken in Korean.
Fresh off the boat.
Yang (2006) broadly defined Jeong as a bond of affection or feelings of empathy to others while the concept of Jeong is hard to directly translate into English.
Kim is the most common Korean surname used by about 22% of Korean Americans (Shin and Yu 1984).
Korean given names usually consist of two syllables. When Romanizing names, to distinguish the two syllables, Koreans often leave a blank space or hyphen between the two syllables. The blank space may lead Americans to consider the second syllable as a middle name, and, in turn, the second syllable of a given name is frequently omitted unintentionally (Park 1999).
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Ryu, M. “But at school … I became a bit shy”: Korean immigrant adolescents’ discursive participation in science classrooms. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 8, 649–671 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-012-9406-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-012-9406-2