Supporting early years science education during COVID-19 crisis

Scientific Conference (2022, September 09)

In this proposed presentation, we aim to discuss the initiatives promoted by the SciTeach Center (University of Luxembourg) in response to the COVID-19 crisis, with a focus on the examination of the A/B ... [more ▼]

In this proposed presentation, we aim to discuss the initiatives promoted by the SciTeach Center (University of Luxembourg) in response to the COVID-19 crisis, with a focus on the examination of the A/B-Wochen online resources. The resources were developed with the aim of promoting young children’s engagement in science inquiry as well as supporting teachers in adapting their practices to a changing scenario. Pedagogical materials were launched online in May 2020, when Luxembourgish schools reopened under new and challenging conditions for teachers, children and families. We discuss how the notions of openness, access, and interest for both teachers and children were embedded in the design of the resources. Framing this initiative within the projects and practices of the research team allows us to highlight the collaborative structures such as distributed leadership that, eventually, made possible the quick transfer from research to adaptations tailored to support teachers’ needs. [less ▲]

Inquiry-based pedagogies as an inclusive practice: Approaches for in-service teacher education

in Andersen, Katja Natalie; Ferreira da Silva, Brigida Ticiane; Silva de Moraes Novais, Valéria (Eds.) Educação, Cultura e Inclusão: Contextos internacionais e locais (2022)

Working towards responsive science education pedagogies during a time of crisis: centering community, diversity and access

Scientific Conference (2021, January 30)

Children, teachers, and families internationally are navigating new terrains of remote learning and teaching during the COVID-19 crisis, and this extends to the University of Luxembourg's SciTeach Center ... [more ▼]

Children, teachers, and families internationally are navigating new terrains of remote learning and teaching during the COVID-19 crisis, and this extends to the University of Luxembourg's SciTeach Center team, a multidisciplinary group of educators and researchers dedicated to supporting primary and pre-primary science education. Luxembourg’s schools closed mid-March 2020, with rapid implementation of online/distance schooling. By mid-May, the national scenario started changing with deconfinement stages, and schools adopted blended in-person/distance structure of rotating “A” and “B” weeks of instruction, ending the year with two weeks of “back to normal”. What are we wondering about? The SciTeach team responded to changing circumstances with several initiatives to support science education within new structures. The team’s interactions in response to the pandemic and resulting outcomes are the focus of a case study utilizing ethnographic methods and discourse analysis. We are examining planning discussions and development of remote science education resources for in-service teachers, children, and caregivers, with a purpose of identifying essential steps in the process, and the resulting impacts of changes. Why is this wondering important? This wondering will elaborate an adaptation process as we transitioned to online modes of interacting, reflecting on the applicability of responsive pedagogies during crisis. This crisis has exposed issues of equity and access, in particular with the high percentage of students who do not speak the languages of instruction at home (more than half) and has given rise to questions about what structural changes will/can remain ahead. As our main goal is to support children’s engagement in science, we discuss benefits and challenges associated with these responses as they were developed not with the intent to only respond, but to offer teachers a sustainable approach to support students in engaging in science moving forward. What approaches frame our thinking? Grounded in sociocultural theoretical perspectives (Sewell, 1999), we understand the teaching-learning processes as cultural enactment, and we draw on translanguaging perspectives (García, 2009) and multimodal approaches (Kress, 2004). Our theoretical and methodological approach is grounded as bricolage (Kincheloe, 2001), and we hope to honor the diversity and complexity of engaging in research with participants. We seek to trouble the existing policy-based notions of science "proficiency" as we consider diverse ways teachers, students, and families engage in science education, with a particular focus on examining issues of equity and access during crisis. Why is our wondering important to equity, diversity and / or social justice in science education? The overarching purpose of this work is identifying the adaptation process and reflecting upon the resulting impacts of changes. Issues of access and equity are multiple, for teachers, children, and caregivers, and our wondering focuses on three questions: • How can we work towards resource-rich approaches for working with students – to build on what they know and wonder – and make openings for engaging in science inquiry? • How can we support equitable student access to science, given the range of languages and technology access? • How can we keep and nurture community during times of rapid unplanned changes, and shifting interaction structures? [less ▲]

Interaction rituals, emotions, and early childhood science: digital microscopes and collective joy in a multilingual classroom

in Cultural Studies of Science Education (2021), 16

In her original article, “Identity, Agency and the Internal Conversations of Science and Math Teachers Implementing instructional reforms in High-Need Urban Schools”, Stacy Olitsky (2021) takes us on an ... [more ▼]

In her original article, “Identity, Agency and the Internal Conversations of Science and Math Teachers Implementing instructional reforms in High-Need Urban Schools”, Stacy Olitsky (2021) takes us on an exploration of the identity development and agencies exerted by two teachers working to implement science instructional reforms in high-need urban schools. Olitsky (2021) utilizes Interaction Ritual Theory as a lens to examine a seldom viewed and even intimate aspect of teacher’s worlds, namely teachers’ self-talk. In this forum article I embrace the invitation extended by Olitsky, through an exploration of the interaction rituals that took place among students and a teacher working with digital microscopes in an early childhood classroom. I draw upon the theoretical lens of communitas to illuminate the power of collective joy that formed. Specifically, I will share two vignettes from a multilingual early childhood classroom to illustrate how teacher-guided and studentguided spaces afforded interactions that lead to the development of collective joy. I show how collective work with the microscopes allowed for joy and surprise to occur within a classroom of plurilingual students who are participating in their first schooled experiences of science. I conclude with a discussion of the power of student-driven instructional spaces as places for students working to learn science, and the language of instruction, to collectively experience joy as they explore. [less ▲]

Innovativer naturwissenschaftlicher Unterricht mit mehrsprachigen Kindern: Was lernen wir von den luxemburgischen Grundschulklassen? Nationaler Bildungsbericht

Report (2021)

Mit Kindern in den Himmel schauen. Ideen für den Unterricht.

Book published by SCRIPT (2020)

A Critical Co/Autoethnographic Exploration of Self: Becoming Science Education Researchers in Diverse Cultural and Linguistic Landscapes

in Bazzul, Jesse; Siry, Christina (Eds.) Critical voices in science education research: Narratives of academic journeys (2019)

This chapter illustrates the process of collaborative autoethnography (co-autoethnography) we used to construct space, in order to critically explore ourselves, and the contexts we study. Through a co ... [more ▼]

This chapter illustrates the process of collaborative autoethnography (co-autoethnography) we used to construct space, in order to critically explore ourselves, and the contexts we study. Through a co-autoethnographic process, we aimed to better understand our positioning in our lived experiences and to generate an understanding of how reflective critical research approaches could transform us, as well as the communities in which we were immersed. In this chapter, we share the process of our collective analysis of autoethnographic narratives (Coia L, Taylor M, Co/autoethnography: Exploring our teaching selves collaboratively. In L. Fitzgerald, M. Heston, D. Tidwell (Eds.), Research methods for the self-study of practice (pp. 3–16). Netherlands: Springer, 2009), which stemmed from our experiences living and conducting education research in multilingual and multicultural contexts. Our ethnographic method of data collection, analysis, and interpretation was generated from our journeys as researchers – moving to, living, and conducting research in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) environments. We share this process, and some lessons we learned, with the hope that other researchers may find co-autoethnography a cathartic methodology to explore and challenge their own perspectives relative to cultural and linguistic diversity in their lives and in their research. [less ▲]

Interaction rituals and inquiry-based science instruction: Analysis of student participation in small-group investigations in a multilingual classroom

in Science Education (2018)

Language learners participating in inquiry‐based science instruction are often faced with the challenge of interacting in a language they have not yet mastered. With this challenge at the fore, this study ... [more ▼]

Language learners participating in inquiry‐based science instruction are often faced with the challenge of interacting in a language they have not yet mastered. With this challenge at the fore, this study uses interaction ritual theory to examine a plurilingual student's participation in inquiry‐based science. Interaction ritual analysis of the focal student's interactions with peers during small‐group science investigations at the microlevel (tenths of a second) and in real‐time revealed that positive interaction rituals failed to form at first. Over a period of 6 months, his persistent use of nonverbal and verbal participation strategies, and opportunities to engage diverse communicative resources, resulted in higher levels of synchrony with his classmates and successful interactions in the language of instruction. The findings present novel information about the nuances of the silent, embodied participation of language learners in inquiry‐oriented instruction. Further, the findings elaborate the claim that inquiry‐based science pedagogies created space for students to form successful interaction rituals that, in turn, supported the focal student's science engagement and language development. [less ▲]

A dialectic view of student science notebook use: the dance of the individual | collective

Presentation (2018)

Science notebooks can support students in working in active, inquiry-based ways of learning. When students use notebooks to document science investigations in rich and meaningful ways, notebooks can ... [more ▼]

Science notebooks can support students in working in active, inquiry-based ways of learning. When students use notebooks to document science investigations in rich and meaningful ways, notebooks can support not only the development of students’ content understandings, but also understandings about and engagement in science practices (Weibe et al., 2009). All too often though, student productions in science classrooms, such as entries in notebooks, are viewed as solely representative of individual understandings. This view serves to undercut the both individual and collective processes that constituted their construction, thus, inaccurately situating student representations as merely individual productions. In this presentation we show how an analysis of science notebook use in a primary classroom using the dialectic perspective of individual|collective revealed how aspects of students’ interactions with each other and with their notebooks are intertwined and co-constitute one another. This work emphasizes how viewing notebook use as individual |collective can reveal the dance of these inseparable aspects of interaction. [less ▲]

Underscoring the value of video analysis in multilingual and multicultural classroom contexts

in Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy (2018), 3(4),

This article presents multiple episodes drawing from three distinct research projects conducted in multilingual classrooms in Luxembourg, to underscore the value of video analysis in culturally and ... [more ▼]

This article presents multiple episodes drawing from three distinct research projects conducted in multilingual classrooms in Luxembourg, to underscore the value of video analysis in culturally and linguistically diverse classroom contexts. We show how video analysis that valorizes the non-verbal in interaction has the ability to reveal communicative resources often masked by analysis rooted in the verbal. From the examples presented, that span teacher and student interactions in both elementary and secondary classrooms, we make a methodological argument based on analytical approaches utilized in all three research projects to demonstrate how we have come to an expanded notion of voice in our research that is revealed through multimodal video analysis. Specific analytical approaches that illuminate the embodied and multimodal aspects of voice are discussed. We conclude by underscoring the benefits of embodied and multimodal approaches to video analysis for research with all students, but most importantly for students often marginalized through analytical approaches that prioritize the verbal. Finally, we discuss the implications of video research that works to highlight resource-rich views of teaching and learning across learning contexts. [less ▲]