Abstract

Engineering design entails making value-laden judgments against ill-defined, ambiguous, and/or competing sociotechnical criteria. In this article, we argue that such conditions make engineering designers particularly susceptible to the potentially deleterious effects of mis/disinformation in the processes and practices of engineering design, their engagement with people and communities, and in the production and evaluations of the artifacts they produce. We begin by critiquing dominant approaches to engineering design education, specifically, engineering education's social-technical dualism and the ubiquitous ideology of depoliticization, which has exacerbated the effects of mis/disinformation in engineering design. We follow by outlining a framework for developing students' capacity for mitigating its effects in the specific context of engineering design thinking and making value-laden engineering judgments and decision-making. We envision three areas of opportunity for engineering design education to teach students strategies for navigating these challenges when engaging with (a) the processes and practices of engineering, which reflect the unique types of information students engage with across the design process, (b) people and their communities, including the strategic and careful performance of activities for gathering information, while mitigating the harms to misinformation and disinformation and maximizing the benefits of community involvement, and (c) the social and technical criteria of engineering design outcomes in the form of artifacts (e.g., products, processes).

Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Volume 62, Issue 2, Page 389-390, February 2025.

Abstract

A longstanding and significant disparity in representation across gender, economic status, ethnicity, race, and sexual identity exists within STEM doctoral training. Most of the research on the retention and attrition of minoritized PhD STEM students focuses on individual factors, rather than system level issues. To address these gaps, we qualitatively examined longitudinal experiences of 33 Asian American, Black, and Latiné female biomedical PhD students, using a structural violence framework. The researchers developed three themes: (1) institutional hostility toward core aspects of identity; (2) the importance of intersectionality and within-group variation in experiences with structural violence; and (3) students' growing awareness of structural violence in training. Findings have significant implications for the structure of doctoral training and interventions to create equitable training environments.

Abstract

In this study, Q methodology was used to identify 16 secondary school physics, chemistry, and biology teachers' views on competences in education for sustainable development (ESD). Our data collection instrument was grounded in the GreenComp competence framework developed by the European Commission. We captured three different viewpoints through by-person factor analysis. The largest group, with nine science teachers, prioritized promoting evidence-based instruction while avoiding the political, ethical, or value-laden dilemmas inherent in sustainability issues. While they advocated addressing critical thinking and system thinking, their reasons for avoiding the dilemmas varied. Some teachers feared that addressing such dilemmas might lead to preaching their own values to students, while others felt unprepared or believed that science should remain objective and value-free. The second largest group, with four science teachers, emphasize promoting nature and its well-being above all other competences. Unlike the dominant group, this group of science teachers held themselves responsible for encouraging students to care for nature and to change their attitudes to behave more sustainably. The third group of teachers stood out by advocating fostering collective action in science education. While all teachers agreed on the importance of promoting foundational scientific knowledge, they also agreed on excluding politics from science education. This stance was influenced by internal factors, such as their perception of science as empirical, their perceived role as transmitters of scientific knowledge, and a lack of expertise. In total, 12 out of the 16 teachers who participated in our study suggested that subjects such as history are more suitable for addressing certain ESD competences. Additionally, external factors, such as the role of parents and assessments, were cited as potential reasons to dismiss certain ESD competences in science education.

Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Volume 62, Issue 1, Page 1-2, January 2025.

Abstract

Equity-focused calls for elementary education reform recognize the importance of student and teacher translanguaging, yet nuances of how this process unfolds in early childhood science is an underexplored area. This study examines young plurilingual children's participation in science investigations, with a view toward understanding how open-ended pedagogical structures supported their communication and engagement as related to science learning. We examine the work of 4- to 6-year-olds as they participated in a 3-week unit exploring worms and draw upon translanguaging theoretical perspectives to interpretively analyze their interactions in science. Situated in the multilingual national context of Luxembourg, the study examines the interactions of these plurilingual children and their teacher as they investigated worms in varied open-ended pedagogical structures. Schools are trilingual in Luxembourg, yet approximately half of the students in the country's elementary schools do not come to school with proficiency in any of the three languages of instruction. Issues of equity in schooling are thus heavily bound in languages. The robust dataset incorporating video data were examined using multimodal interaction analysis, and three vignettes zoom in on children's actions, utterances, and materials in open-ended science learning spaces, providing rich examples of classroom structures that support meaningful translanguaging through students' agentic science communication. Young students' communication and science engagement are inseparable, and this study shows that these intertwine through translanguaging, in a process which is emergent when children are able to agentically draw upon diverse resources to make meanings.

Abstract

Ideologies of language and race are deeply connected in the United States. Language practices associated with racially marginalized communities, such as African American Language (AAL) or Spanglish, are often heavily stigmatized. Such stigma is not grounded in empirical research on language, but rather in “raciolinguistic ideologies” that reproduce white supremacy and oppression in teacher education and in US classrooms—including science classrooms. Science education need not be this way, however. Translanguaging pedagogies can create space for students to use any and all types of languaging practices to engage in scientific sensemaking. Implementing translanguaging pedagogies to support scientific sensemaking will require science teachers to develop inclusive ideologies of language—not only the knowledge that multiple varieties of language are valid tools for sensemaking, but also the inclination and ability to formatively assess student thinking even when that thinking is not couched in canonical “science language.” In the present manuscript, we explore the relationships among teachers' language ideologies, their racial ideologies, their knowledge of language as an epistemic tool for teaching science, their self-reported assessment practices, and their actual responses to several different samples of student science writing—including a writing sample that includes an oft-stigmatized feature of African American Language. We show that teachers with more language-inclusive ideologies—that is, those who take a translanguaging stance, and thus value the use of AAL in classrooms—appear to be better at formatively assessing and responding to student science writing compared to teachers with more language-exclusive ideologies. We also show that seemingly race-neutral ideologies of language are in fact strongly associated with oppressive ideologies of race, and that these language ideologies predict teachers' science formative assessment practices independently of existing measures of pedagogical knowledge. We discuss implications for science teaching, teacher education, and science education research.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore translanguaging space as a transformative third space, where alternative and competing discourses are celebrated and where science learning and the development of science's discourse and epistemic practices expand across overlapping boundaries (e.g., home, school, and community). The study focused on Syrian refugee youth adapting to learning science in English in the Lebanese multilingual educational system that esteems international languages (English or French) over Arabic. Our research questions included: (1) What translanguaging practices and functions emerge during a linguistically responsive life science unit designed for refugee multilingual learners? (2) How does a translanguaging space act as a third space for refugee learners to engage in meaning-making and science practices and discourse around the topic of “respiration”? The study utilized a qualitative instrumental case-study approach to generate data around refugee learners' languaging practices and their development of science understandings, practices, and discourse. We also engaged in participatory methodologies that challenge boundaries between researchers and participants. The data sources were 22 Zoom recordings, students' work, and participant-generated feedback. Thematic analysis was used to analyze transcripts and students' work while adhering to trustworthiness criteria. Our findings center translanguaging as a justice-oriented pedagogy that enables a productive and “inviting” third space for refugee multilingual learners to make meaning of phenomena by bringing together and extending their semiotic and epistemic repertoires. Serving multi-tiered functions, translanguaging fostered dialogic connections that affirmed students' “outside” social spaces as valuable resources for meaning-making in science classrooms. The implications discuss design features that support a fluid and purposeful translanguaging third space for asset-oriented science learning.

Abstract

Science classroom assessment often requires multilingual learners to demonstrate ideas using only English-language resources. These assessments can provide an incomplete picture of students' knowledge and limit subsequent learning opportunities. Increasingly, science teachers are incorporating translanguaging pedagogies in their instructional practices. Less is known about students' perspectives of translanguaging in science. In this manuscript, we employ equity-as-access and equity-as-transformation lenses to investigate multilingual learners' perspectives about translanguaging as a formative assessment practice. Data came from a larger participatory co-design design study in a culturally and linguistically diverse middle school in the Mountain West. We qualitatively analyzed 8 focus group interview transcripts with 13 sixth-grade students from across 4 formative assessment cycles. Analysis was both inductive and deductive. Findings suggest that sixth graders have savvy, nuanced views about translanguaging that bridge equity-as-access and equity-as-transformation lenses. They saw translanguaging as both supporting their English language development and as an important practice to allow them to focus bilingually on their science ideas without translating everything into English. Additionally, they highlighted tensions associated with welcoming translanguaging in schools with de facto English-only languaging norms. This study has implications for teachers, assessment designers, and researchers. Findings signal structural/policy changes needed to authentically center translanguaging as an equity-oriented practice across science assessment systems.

Abstract

Understanding how racially and linguistically just teacher education programs (TEPs) support the identity(ies) and translanguaging stances taken up by bilingual Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teacher candidates (TCs) in their professional lives is important both for their development as teachers and for teacher preparation more broadly. Drawing on assignments, classroom observations, interviews, and data from professional learning community (PLC) meetings for three BIPOC dual language bilingual education TCs, this qualitative case study sheds light on translanguaging stance development and the intersecting identities that emerge for these TCs as they learn to teach through the theoretical lenses of translanguaging and raciolinguicized subjectivity. Findings show how the TEP learning contexts supported the development of bilingual BIPOC TCs' translanguaging stances as a critical part of their professional identities as linguistically justice-oriented science teachers. We argue that their translanguaging stance is a new way of being multilingual and is central to building an elementary science classroom culture with and for multilingual students. This study underscores how bilingual BIPOC TCs' prior knowledge and identities can be leveraged in teacher education and K-12 classrooms to develop their translanguaging selves. It also supports robust pedagogical preparation and linguistic justice through multilingual transpositioning of science identities.

Abstract

As a practical theory of language, translanguaging refers not only to speakers' use of multiple languages, but also to the deployment of other semiotic resources and artifacts in communication. To examine the use of semiotic resources and translingual negotiation strategies in STEM communication, this study explores the intersectionality of translingual communication and gender in a research group consisting of international engineering scientists (including doctoral students, postdoc and faculty) at a public university in the Midwestern United States. Using a translingual approach, we analyze the semiotic resources and translingual negotiation strategies adopted by these engineering scientists to resolve trouble-in-interaction and claim agency in group interaction. Data include eight audiovisual recordings of research group meetings (RGMs), transcribed following the conventions in conversation analysis for verbal and nonverbal communication. A turn-by-turn analysis of the chosen excerpts reveals: (1) members of the group adopt negotiation strategies to collaboratively resolve trouble-in-interaction, including entextualization (visualization in particular), recontextualization, and various verbal and nonverbal interactional strategies. In employing these strategies, they also skillfully integrate various semiotic repertoires such as gestures, body movements, environmental artifacts, and board work to facilitate the resolution of trouble-in-interaction and (2) female scientists adopt envoicing and interactional strategies to regain the floor to speak and display resistance when interrupted or ignored by their male colleagues. These findings suggest that while we embrace the affordances of a translingual orientation to STEM communication as it values the entire linguistic and semiotic repertoires of international STEM scientists, we should also acknowledge the existence of microaggressive acts against female members in RGMs. A more equitable and inclusive environment for intellectual engagement and group communication in STEM fields can only be created through the collaborative efforts of individuals, groups, and institutions.

Abstract

Recent reforms in science education shift the focus of instruction to supporting students' sensemaking about phenomena. At the same time, discussions of equity in science education have become more common and more contested. For emergent bilingual (EB) learners, there is growing consensus that these trends together imply valuing diverse linguistic and cultural resources that students draw upon to make sense of the world. However, asset-based pedagogies often do not attend to the role of oppression and the co-construction of linguistic and racial marginalization. Furthermore, culturally responsive pedagogies push beyond valuing student assets to challenge the end goals of education, emphasizing the development of critical consciousness. Through this case study of one thematic unit within a transitional bilingual physical science class, this study puts forth pedagogías entrenzadas as a purposeful braiding of asset and critical pedagogies that attend to science, language, and cultural responsiveness. The study took place in a Title I school in the suburbs of a large midwestern city where the majority of students are from Latin American immigrant families. Pedagogías entrenzadas are articulated through the analysis of classroom episodes that attended to language, science, and cultural responsiveness in combination. By attending to these three facets in braided ways, the teacher created ruptures in systems that structurally exclude EB students. We present three classroom episodes in conjunction with additional evidence from a larger data set to demonstrate the ways pedagogías entrenzadas created spaces where (1) generative themes and words created opportunities for holistic sensemaking; (2) there were opportunities to consider and critique language and science; and (3) heterogeneity in linguistic, cultural, and academic resources was upheld and valued. The implications of this pedagogical work extended outside of the classroom, where the teacher successfully advocated with colleagues for the creation of an asset-based bilingual science program.

Abstract

Multilingual youth, from nondominant communities, are often denied critical opportunities for engagement in robust sensemaking due to deficit-based perspectives and linguistic hierarchies. To advance equity, it is important to recognize all youth as epistemic agents and facilitate opportunities to take on intellectual positions. Drawing on translanguaging theory and critical sociocultural learning perspectives, we examine how a monolingual science teacher employed translanguaging as a dignity-affirming stance, pedagogical practice, and disciplinary tool, providing multilingual girls with intellectual positions to engage in robust sensemaking. Using video-interactional analysis, we explore a case of sophisticated sensemaking orchestrated by the teacher's discursive and embodied moves, following the girls' translanguaging practices and disciplinary ideas. Our findings demonstrate how a teacher's translanguaging stance, enacted as a pedagogical practice and disciplinary tool, supported him in developing interpretive power, revealing the multilingual girls' social, cognitive, and communicative brilliances.