Science and education across cultures: another look at the Negev Bedouins and their environmental management practices In p. 986, second paragraph should read, “For example, Chris Andersen (1997) described how Basarwa (Bushman) collected water while living in the Kalahari Desert

Reframing understandings of cultural influences on learning science Abstract This review essay addresses issues raised in Valerie Frède’s paper entitled: Comprehension of the nightandday cycle among French and Cameroonian children aged 7–8 years.

On the importance of the relationship to knowledge in science education Abstract This forum paper is a reflection about the paper written by Valérie Frède and illustrates how it influences my work as a Ph.D. student in education. It focuses mainly on the relationship to knowledge and the clash between student culture and Western science culture in classroom. In this forum paper, I will briefly explain why these two ideas seems important to me, and then use the example of climate education to illustrate why it is important to inform a socioconstructivist and transformative way of teaching in science classroom. It also contributes to assert the responsibility we have, as teachers or researchers, to value youth initial conceptions about consensual concepts like night-and-day cycle or more interdisciplinary or complex issue like climate change.

Understanding the sciences: a quasi-Wittgensteinian note on NOS Abstract Aragón, Acevedo-Díaz and García-Carmona study prospective biology teachers’ understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS). In my comment, I would first like to step back and ask what it is to understand something, i.e. the sciences. I will turn to a quasi-Wittgensteinian epistemological tradition and suggest that, contrary to our habit to associate meaning with definitions, to understand something is, in fact, to engage in the normative practices around it. To understand the sciences then, we don’t need some definition; we need to engage in their practices. I will then turn to NOS research and suggest that NOS terminology, as well as certain NOS teaching practices, often fail to address two seemingly opposite mentalities, both of which prohibit understanding the sciences: scientism, i.e. the implication that there is in fact a definition of science; and relativism, i.e. the implication that, lacking a definition, science is a meaningless term. Both these mentalities could be challenged if NOS incorporated a quasi-Wittgensteinian account of what it is to understand something. In the last part of the paper, I will highlight some promising aspects of NOS research. To be specific, Aragón, Acevedo-Díaz and García-Carmona use the historical case of Semmelweis and childbed fever as a trigger to highlight certain elements of NOS and then facilitate reflective dialogue. Indeed, reflection over particular cases seems to be a promising way to understand the sciences; as a quasi-Wittgensteinian approach would suggest, it allows people to engage in the normative practices of scientific research. In the end, NOS researchers could benefit from such an epistemological account of understanding: avoid misconceptions such as scientism and relativism, as well as provide a strong theoretical background for their recommendations.

Culture as inter- and intra-personal mediator: considering the notion of conceptual porosity and its connection to culture as a concept Abstract This study reports a collective case study of five science education graduate students to highlight the role of culture as an influential component within their conceptual understandings of urban science education. Conceptual change theory was used as a theoretical framework to explore the negotiations that five graduate students experienced during a semester-long ‘Urban and Multicultural Science Education’ course geared toward increasing conceptual complexity (i.e., the ways students make connections between concepts). Negotiation—the way these students’ adopted, resisted, or considered new inter-conceptual complexity—was studied through how these learners activated and applied their understandings. Findings support that culture influenced the development of conceptual complexity for the themes studied by increasing the permeability of concepts to connect to one another—coined here as conceptual porosity. This complexity is represented through the inter-conceptual connectivity that developed temporally during learning experiences. Implications for these findings are discussed, as well.

The utility of citizen science projects in K-5 schools: measures of community engagement and student impacts Abstract The field of citizen science is one of the fastest growing sectors in informal education, specifically because of the new opportunities that are now available within today’s digitized and networked world. This paper describes a unique co-created citizen science project, WeatherBlur, which brought fishermen, elementary students, and teachers from island and coastal communities together with research scientists via an online platform to share, analyze, and interpret data about the local impact of climate change. The project was designed utilizing a sociocultural learning approach that integrated communities of practice, knowledge building, funds of knowledge, and place-based education theory. The study aimed to understand how scientists, community members, and students interact to promote learning and collaboration within an online learning community. In addition, the study addressed the impact of the program on elementary student learning outcomes in earth science and graph interpretation. Data analyses suggest that the model implemented provided a high level of interactivity across all ages and groups, and increased students’ understanding of earth science and skills in graph interpretation. Findings are used to describe the utility of using citizen science projects in K-5 schools.

Building consensus views or interrogating metanarratives? Musings on teaching the nature of science Abstract This article is a response to María del Mar Aragón, José Antonio Acevedo-Díaz and Antonio García-Carmona’s article, which investigated pre-service teachers’ understandings of epistemic and non-epistemic aspects of the nature of science (NOS) based on the historical case study of Ignaz Semmelweis and childbed fever. We situate the study in contemporary mainstream debates on teaching NOS and argue that science educators ought to focus on conveying specific aspects of NOS in-depth, instead of covering a general check list of NOS tenets in their classrooms. Furthermore, we argue that there are multiple ways of narrating the story of science, the protagonist of science classrooms, and that educators should also be conscious of the metanarratives regarding science that get conveyed in their narratives.

V-Note: a video analysis tool for teacher|researchers Abstract In the Fall of 2017, I was introduced to V-Note, a software tool for analyzing audio and video in the classroom. I quickly adapted to using V-Note in research as it is easy to navigate, widely accessible, and most necessary features are included for free. Through this paper, I explore some possible applications of V-Note in education research. I first begin by examining the theoretical perspectives through which I approach using V-Note as a research tool, such as the embrace of reflexivity, hermeneutic phenomenology, multilogicality, polysemia, and polyphonia. Using these theoretical perspectives, I utilize event oriented inquiry to investigate clips from a graduate level class with a special focus on quality of teaching and learning, emotions, and wait time between speakers. As I investigate video vignettes from our class using V-Note, I share these vignettes with class members and invite participants to reflect back upon events together. As we re-watch and analyze the events in the video using V-Note, we learn from each other and in turn, change our practices in the classroom.

Comprehension of the night and day cycle among French and Cameroonian children aged 7–8 years Abstract In this article, we compared French and Cameroonian schoolchildren’s initial conceptions and comprehension of the night and day cycle in order to test for cultural influence. Forty students aged almost 8 years (Grade 2) were individually interviewed in their schools about night and day dynamics before they had received any teaching in astronomy. Results indicated that French children have significantly more heliocentric knowledge about the night and day cycle than Cameroonian children who propose rather a geocentric view, underlining the impact of cultural mediation (e.g., artifacts, media, and personal accounts). French children, who grow up in a mechanistic culture, give explanations of the night and day cycle based on the Earth’s rotation, whereas their Cameroonian peers, who live in an animistic society, mainly propose movements of the Sun to explain the cycle (consistent with their observations and local cosmologies). Regarding the organization of this knowledge, we found that only a few children had a coherent model of the night and day cycle. It did not appear to be influenced by cultural context, as both the French and Cameroonian children’s conceptions were mainly fragmented.

Understanding social bonds during science inquiry using V-Note software Abstract Amy Goods’s software review article V-Note: A video analysis tool for teacher | researchers stimulated our interest in adopting this software to understand social bonding dynamics in a group of 10th-grade science students’ during a science inquiry project. Three of us employed V-Note to analyze two video files for the same lesson in which the student group completed an inquiry about the effects of mass on speed using a marble and ramp. Subhashni provides her perspective as teacher | researcher, James offers an analysis as an independent researcher, and Alberto is the classroom researcher who designed a larger project investigating the interplay of social bonds with science learning of which this study is a part. Alberto also drew upon a more extensive set of data sources including social bond diaries completed by students, and reflective dialogs with the class. Rebecca interprets the three video analyses, as an independent researcher who did not access the video data. Our independent analyses and additional data sources produce diverse understandings about the impact of shifting social bond status on science learning and science inquiry. Outcomes include differentiation between social bonds and social roles adopted by students during the inquiry. Data analyses also reveal the researchers’s different ontologies and epistemologies. We also showcase V-Note’s capabilities, affordances, and constraints for social inquiry. Implications for further research on social bonds in science education are presented.