A Cartesian conception of material space views each part as external to every other part: "partes extra partes." Because two material things cannot occupy the same space, each of it exists in itself, separated by a boundary from everything else, including other things. This ontology is the origin of thinking the world in terms of…

As part of a series of investigations in which we explore the integration of verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication into a dialectical, sense-constitutive unit during science lectures, this study adapts the notions of catchments (i.e., repetitions of essential features of the gesture-speech dialectic) and growth points (i.e., moments in…

To understand students' argumentation abilities, there have been practices that focus on counting and analyzing argumentation schemes such as claim, evidence, warrant, backing, and rebuttal. This analytic approach does not address the dynamics of epistemic criteria of children's reasoning and decision-making in dialogical situations. The common…

With increasing technological changes and needs in society, technology and engineering education has received much attention in school science. Yet, technology traditionally has been subordinated to science or simply taken as the application of science. This position has resulted in a limited understanding of teaching technological and engineering…

For many students, the experience with science tends to be alienating and uprooting. In this study, I take up Simone Weil's concepts of "enracinement" (rooting) and "déracinement" (uprooting) to theorize the root of this alienation, the confrontation between children's familiarity with the world and unfamiliar/strange…

Triadic dialogue, the Initiation, Response, Evaluation sequence typical of teacher /student interactions in classrooms, has long been identified as a barrier to students' access to learning, including science learning. A large body of research on the subject has over the years led to projects and policies aimed at increasing opportunities for…

Learning science interpreted in existing theoretical frameworks often means that students are assimilated, accommodated or enculturated from the entity of the vernacular world to the entity of the scientific world. However, there are some unsolved questions as to how students can best learn purely a new language or new knowledge of science. The…

The aim of this study is to advance current understanding of the transactional processes that characterize students' sense-making practices when they are confronted with multiple representations of scientific phenomena. Data for the study are derived from a design experiment that involves a technology-rich, inquiry-based sequence of…

In recent years, school science has been the target of increasing critique for two reasons. On the one hand, it is said to enforce "epic" images of science that celebrate the heroes and heroic deeds that established the scientific canon and its methods and thereby falsifies the history and nature of science. On the other hand, the…

Lecturing is an important aspect of the culture of science education. Perhaps because of the negative associations constructivist educators make with lecturing, little research has been done concerning the generally invisible aspects of the (embodied, lived) "work" that is required. Traditional research on science lectures focuses on…

Lectures are often thought of in terms of information transfer: students (do not) "get" or "construct meaning of" what physics professors (lecturers) say and the notes they put on the chalkboard (overhead). But this information transfer view does not explain, for example, why students have a clear sense of understanding while they sit in a lecture…

The purpose of this article is to describe a best practice: an approach to teaching chemistry that our quantitative research has shown to produce large differences between experimental and control groups in terms of achievement, pro-environmental attitudes, values, and motivation. Our interest in teaching chemistry by focusing on sustainable…

Laughter is a fundamental human phenomenon. Yet there is little educational research on the potential functions of laughter on the enacted (lived) curriculum. In this study, we identify the functions of laughter in a beginning science teacher's classroom throughout her first year of teaching. Our study shows that laughter is more than a gratuitous…

Most academic science educators encourage teachers to provide their students with access to more authentic science activities. What can and do teachers say to increase students' interests in participating in opportunities to do real science? What are the discursive "resources" they draw on to introduce authentic science to students? The purpose of…

Presents a teacher's reflection on his teaching using two different perspectives. The first perspective uses the cognitive apprenticeship metaphor as a tool for analyzing and understanding teaching. The second, a methodological perspective, uses conversational analysis to arrive at microanalytic descriptions and conceptualizations of teaching. (PR)