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Urban science education studies: A commitment to equity, social justice and a sense of place

Posted on: Friday, 7 March 2003, 06:00 CST

Urban science education studies: A commitment to equity, social justice and a sense of place

Source: Scripps Howard

INTRODUCTION

Urban science education is a civil rights issue and that to effectively address it as such we must shift from arguments for civil rights as shared physical space in schools to demands for high- quality academic preparation that includes opportunity to learn science. (Tate, 2001: 1015)

Science holds a uniquely powerful place in our urban society. It opens doors to high-paying professions, provides a knowledge base for more informed conversations with health care workers, educators and business and community leaders, and it demystifies key urban environmental issues like air and water quality standards, population density, and toxic dump and building regulations. Our global society has a history of environmental racism and hierarchical relationships between those who know science (and how to manipulate scientific findings) and those who do not (Gourlay, 1992). Yet, some US-based studies suggest that the vast majority of urban students lose interest in and develop negative attitudes towards science by the time they complete middle school (Atwater, Wiggins, & Gardner, 1995; Hill, Atwater & Wiggins, 1995). This is not surprising given that students in urban poverty in the USA often have inequitable access to the kinds of science classes, teachers, resources and opportunities necessary for academic success in science. They experience a school science that focuses on behaviour skills, static conceptions of knowledge, and disciplining students through humiliation, stripping them of their cultural identities, their rights to learn, and their dignity as human beings (Oakes, 1990; Polakow, 2000). Clearly there is a critical need to address the particular science education experiences of urban youth, especially those from marginalized communities.

The need to address the science education experiences of all learners fairly and equitably - not just urban learners - dates back several decades, even centuries (Spencer, 1859; Wilkinson, 1857). The general trend in these and other early calls for science for all was to find ways to better link the work of scientists with the needs of society and one's role as a citizen as well as to formalize science as a legitimate school subject. The historical call of science for all tended to reside in the policy and planning sector, rather than in any systematic line of inquiry. Further, there had been no attempt to examine the specific needs of urban learners along these lines, despite decades worth of urban studies research outlining the inequities present in urban communities. It was not until the mid to late 1980s that scholarship in and around urban science education emerged as an area of systematic and scholarly research, although the field had not received any formal recognition by the full science education community until quite recently. Indeed, Settlage & Meadows (2002) point out that in the nearly six hundred pages of the Handbook of research on science teaching and learning (Gabel, 1994) there was not a single index entry for urban.

I chose to begin this manuscript with a quote from William Tate because he makes a case not only for why urban science education studies are important but also for why urban science education poses as a civil rights issue. Tate rests his case on the fundamental belief that urban science education presents us with an unequal situation. Urban children of racial and ethnic minority backgrounds and from high-poverty backgrounds disproportionately lack access to opportunities to learn science even though they may have gained physical space in school. In fact, he argues that to address urban science education in just and fair ways, the science education community must shift from arguments for civil rights as shared physical space in schools to demands for high-quality academic preparation that includes opportunities to learn science. This shift in discourse provides the science education community with an open invitation to engage in social justice issues, and to treat the opportunity to learn science as a civil rights construct. This quote from Tate captures, in essence, the very reasons why urban science education studies has become an area of research unto its own. As I hope will become clearer in this manuscript, issues of civil rights - indeed, issues of equity and social justice in the urban place - are central threads in a diverse fabric that comprises the core of urban science education studies.

There are many ways to frame a review around urban science education studies, and as I have reviewed the research in this area, I have struggled with what might be a helpful way to pull together this body of literature. I was tempted to construct a more traditional review, grouping the literature according to 'area' or 'theme' covered, such as systemic reform in urban centres, access and opportunity in urban schools, or culturally relevant teaching practices to name just a few key areas of study. But as I began to group the literature in these categories I felt challenged by the historical grounding of urban science education studies within the post World War II civil rights movements to consider deeper underlying issues that also frame urban science education. I also wanted to force myself to confront the question of just what makes something part of or separate from urban science education studies? Thus, I have decided to frame this review of urban science education along the following two questions:

What should we mean by `urban science education studies'?

What qualities or commitments signify the field of urban science education studies?

FRAMING URBAN SCIENCE EDUCATION STUDIES: WHAT MAKES A STUDY PART OF URBAN SCIENCE EDUCATION STUDIES?

There has been a growing interest in urban science education studies over the past ten years. As a result, a growing number of published articles in journals like Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Research in Science Education, and the International Journal of Science Education, have titles with words like 'urban' or 'city' in them. Yet, what makes a research project or published paper part of `Urban Science Education Studies'? I believe that the answer to this question lies in at least three different places. First, part of the answer lies in the history and tradition of urban studies generally. Second, part of the answer to this question lies in what we know about current science education practices and how those practices change with changing contexts. Finally, part of this answer lies in the questions, concerns and stories raised by those who live and work in urban centres, such as teachers, community workers, and families. I address the first two of these points below in order to lay down some boundaries around urban science education. This third point, or the concerns and stories of those who live and work in urban centres, is the hardest to ascertain and will be developed only as parts of the previous two points.

The field of urban studies more generally takes as its central concern the examination of urban life along the following set of themes: the origins, development, and nature of cities, the relationship between people and the built environment, urban economics, government and public policy, and the processes that shape city neighbourhoods over time, including downtowns, inner- cities, and edge cities (Gans, 1993; Spirn, 1998; Spirn & Huntley- Smith, 2001). Urban studies also emerges from a variety of key perspectives, including the historical, physical, environmental, social, economic, and political, and together give the field a distinct interdisciplinary flavour. Thus, the world of urban studies takes into account through multiple lenses how cities, both natural and contrived, are an interplay of natural processes and human purposes and wildly diverse along many frontiers. The major implication of the urban studies perspective for urban science education studies is that such an approach necessarily moves beyond simply being located in an urban setting to grappling with the constructs - the people, the structures, and the cultures - which frame life in that urban centre.

The science education community has a history of supporting research agendas that carefully consider context. Growing attention on the needs of developing countries (see special issue of The Journal of Research in Science Teaching 36(3), 1998), advancing scholarship on multiculturalism and diversity (see special issue of Science Education, 85(1), 2001), and increasing focus on practitioner-research (see special issue of Research in Science Education 29(2), 1999) all call attention to the complexity of context in science education research; and all call attention to just how much research and practice changes for the better (and for the worse) with changing contexts. As the special issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching 36(3), focused on developing countries illustrates, the constructions of scientific literacy and its manifestations among all citizens in one country differ sharply from the next. Such a stance on context suggests, as does urban studies, that grappling with the context is important.

These perspectives, taken together, suggest that urban science education studies are those studies that meet the following set of criteria: (1) tha the context of investigation is specifically urban and named as such, (2) that the research questions and methods which guide the work take into account the urban context as a central part of the investigation, and (3) that the analysis and subsequent knowledge claims made reflect a propensity towards generating a specialized knowledge based around urban science education. In short, any study included in urban science education studies has to push our understanding of urban science education forward, seriously and thoughtfully. It has to contribute to how we understand the intersections between students, their families and their teachers, science, schooling and the historical, physical, environmental, social, economic, and political aspects of urban life. Of course, one may argue against these criteria by suggesting that any study that takes place in an urban context is by default part of urban science education studies. However, I rely on urban studies in particular, and science education more generally, to argue against this point, because an urban context does not necessarily mean that such a context has been incorporated into the research questions, methods, or analytic framework.

WHAT QUALITIES OR COMMITMENTS MARK THE FIELD?

I developed a list of 46 articled that I believe fit a loose application of the criteria described above (see Table 1). The selection of these articles, by the nature of what they report, place further boundaries on what is reported in this paper. First, the overwhelming majority of the articles focus on those aspects of urban life that contribute to the great divide between those urban communities that have and those that do not. In some cases, published reports reviewed here use the word 'urban' synonymously with `urban poverty' or `urban minority.' I want to avoid this assumption in this paper. However, because of the nature of the studies published in the science education literature, urban studies have taken a decidedly focused perspective on poverty, race, and language issues. Additionally, urban schools in the US, for example, are `more likely than ever to serve a population of low-income, minority students, given increased residential segregation and recent court decisions releasing schools across the country from desegregation orders' (Oakes, 2000: 5). To avoid the problem of using 'urban' interchangeably with `high-poverty urban' or `ethnic minority populations in urban settings' I use descriptors throughout my paper such as 'poverty' or 'race' to make these distinctions clear. After all, urban contexts are quite varied, and a study of affluent, white populations depending on the context of the research, could also fit under the umbrella of urban studies. Second, the vast majority of the studies I reviewed were situated in the United States. There were articles from Africa, Australia, UK, and Canada, but the distribution of articles makes the manuscript overwhelmingly USA-centric. I recognize that this limitation is partly my responsibility as I only reviewed articles available in English. To compensate for this obvious limitation, I have tried to make the US-focused analysis problematic by favouring articles and issues from other countries when possible and justified. Furthermore, I have tried to point out the differences in the urban issues of concern in the USA and how this may or may not differ from other geographic and national locations. Because the majority of the articles are USA-centric, I do not want to make the concerns of USA- based urban science education the truth regime for all of urban science education (the issue of resource availability in urban versus non-urban schools is quite different in the USA versus western Australia, for example). Third, I found that there was a great deal of gray area between those articles that 'fit' into urban science education and those articles that did not. Most of this gray area concentrated on what it meant for the authors of the paper to `grapple with' the urban context. In the end, I decided that if the authors framed in their overall theoretical framework and/or conceptual overview the concerns of their manuscript within urban education, then I chose to include the article in this review. For example, the series of articles by Okhee Lee and her colleagues (Lee, 1999, 2001; Lee & Fradd, 1998) generally focus on teaching science in non English language background (NELB) settings. A close look at their conceptual framework highlights how they ground their NELB concerns in the need to create an interdisciplinary conversation focused on science learning and teaching in urban classrooms and the need to promote and support high-quality science teaching in such urban classrooms.

Table 1:

To develop this list, I first examined the contents of the major journals in science education over the past decade for relevant studies. Second, I examined the reference lists in these studies, which led to additional articles. Third, I conducted a refereed journal wide search for urban science education articles through the search engines ERIC, First Search and Ingenta. I then analyzed these articles for questions asked, research frameworks, guiding assumptions, and findings. From this analysis emerged a set of commitments that appear to capture the essence urban science education studies:

A question of conditions: a commitment to equity,

A question of orientation: a commitment to social justice,

A question of context: a commitment to a sense of place.

I expand upon each of these commitments below (see Figure 1) and then use these descriptions to raise questions regarding the development of urban science education studies.

Equity is not a novel concept for science educators. Indeed, equity as a central analytic lens has experienced several resurgences over the past century, most notably during the 1960s when questions around access and opportunity were raised in response to the women's movement in western nations. Most recently, however, equity has become a key concept alongside the international push towards scientific literacies for all (Fensham & Harlem 1999). During the 1980s, science education researchers and policy makers in many of the western countries committed to reconceptualizing the goals of science education to focus on `science for all' rather than `science for scientists.' This shift in thinking is important because it fundamentally shifts the structure and function of science in schools to focus on helping students acquire what they need to know and be able to do to function in a scientifically and technologically advanced global society, rather than on the specific advanced needs of future scientists.

Figure 1:

In urban science education, the concern for equity is a dynamic issue and plays out in many ways. Equity is a defining concept in urban science education studies because of the vast differences in social class, language, racial, and ethnic minority backgrounds supported in urban centres. Thus any effort to promote science for all in urban centres means asking hard questions about access to material, human and social resources especially in urban areas that serve underserved population. However, urban science education studies have been shaped by the import of equity not only for the access and opportunity concerns but also for far more political reasons. Thus an equity framework also means asking hard questions about how access to resources intersects with how science gets constructed in classrooms, how achievement is measured and for what reasons, and how teachers and students are treated by each other and by those in powerful positions (administrators, policy makers, researchers).

An analysis of the urban science education studies literature indicates that there are (at least) two key challenges that frame the equity question: the challenge of resources and the challenge of policy and its enactment. In the next two sections, I review these challenges and how they have been problematized and situated within the local, systemic, and global urban contexts.

Redefining equity: the challenge of resources

Access to resources has been a strong current in urban science education literature. These studies generally fall into three camps: those studies that document the material resources to which urban youth have access in school and how that access differs with changing student population (i.e., race, class, and tracked ability); those studies that examine the impact that access to resources has on student achievement and attitude development in science; and those studies which question how we might begin to more comprehensively define resources and access to resources.

Differential access to resources. Most researchers are generally familiar with the chilling statistics that describe high-poverty and minority urban children's and their teachers' differential access to resources in US schools. Children attending poor, urban schools in the USA generally have limited access to updated scientific books and equipment and science-related extracurricular activities (Oakes, 1990). They also have limited access to certified science teachers or to administrators that support high-quality science teaching, such that students are either denied high-level science courses (because they are not offered) or they take courses with uncertified or unqualified teachers (Darling-Hammond, 1999; Ingersoll, 1999). Teachers in high-poverty urban schools are faced with large class sizes and limited financial or material support to implement innovative curricular changes (Huinker, 1996; Waks, 1991). Poor, urban students are disproportionately tracked into low-level classes where educational achievement typically focuses on behaviour skills and static conceptions of knowledge (Oakes, 1990, 2000). In fact, some studies have shown a complete absence of science in low-track urban science classes (Page, 1990).

The impact of resources on science learners. The impact of differential access to resources has been particularly detrimental to urban youth. Utilizing data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study along with a systems-wide lens to make sense of urban students' attitudes towards science, Webster & Fisher (2000), found that students' attitudes toward and aspirations in science were affected by their access to resources. They also found that students with limited resources tended to score lower on science achievement exams. This finding linking attitude, achievement and access to resources led the researchers to conclude that urban Australian students were placed at a disadvantage achievement-wise because urban schools were less adequately resourced than rural schools. When examined only in western Australia, however, this finding reverses. In western Australia, students attending rural schools do not perform as well nor do they have access to as many resources as students from urban schools (Young, 1998).

Systems-wide achievement studies in the USA have revealed findings similar to those of Webster and Fisher's study. Oakes' studies (1990, 2000), which analyze student scores on national exams and course taking patterns in California, reveal that although both achievement and course-taking have increased for all groups of urban students, serious gaps remain between white and nonwhite students and between high-poverty and non-poverty students, and that these gaps correlate to inequalities in opportunities to learn between schools and within them (Oakes, 2000). Atwater and her colleagues have engaged in a series of studies involving urban middle school youth and their achievements and attitudes in science. These studies, which measure the impact access to resources, among other criteria, has upon attitude toward and achievement in school science, reveal that urban students and, in particular urban students of colour, develop negative attitudes towards school science and their futures in science during the middle school years, with the majority of urban middle school students exiting middle school with negative attitudes toward science (Atwater, Wiggins & Gardner, 1995; see also Hill et al., 1995). They also report that student attitude in science is significantly influenced by how they perceive their science teacher and to a lesser extent the science curriculum. Similar outcomes have been measured by Ascher (1985) across the K-12 experience.

Thus, these six studies highlight the conditions under which many highpoverty and minority urban youth attend school and the impact the conditions have on their growth and development as science learners. These studies are important for they set a baseline measure of differential access and opportunity. They also challenge basic assumptions around how access to resources in urban contexts changes across countries and even within countries. They also allow researchers to ask questions that push beyond access and opportunity to what is meant by resources, which is the focus of the next set of cases.

Rethinking what counts as resources. The next series of articles challenges the science education community to expand how resources and their importance are conceptualized. Spillane, Diamond, Walker, Halverson & Jita (2001) have taken up this challenge at the school- based level. Their study, which focuses on 13 high-poverty Chicago elementary (K-8) schools' efforts to lead instructional change in science education, demonstrates the importance of framing resources in terms of material capital, human capital, and social capital, and more importantly how that capital gets identified, accessed, and activated. Using an in-depth case study of one of their 13 schools, where resources for leading instruction were extremely limited and unequally distributed across subject areas - more for literacy and math, fewer to none for science - Spillane et al. showed that successful changes in science education were brought about by school leaders who placed value on how leaders identified and activated material resources for science instruction, developed teachers' human capital, recognized and used social capital both inside and outside of the school, and then juggled all simultaneously with an eye toward accountability measures and the desires of the school community.

Important here are three points. First, that investigating the identification and activation of resources for leading science instruction requires looking beyond the particular school to the multiple contexts in which it is nested, through both inter-agency and historical perspectives. Second, that simply identifying and naming the resources necessary for leading change is insufficient. Understanding the activation process is essential. Third, by exploring resources in context, they also make a case for the fluidity of resources. Resources can and do change from school to school and leaders can and do make a difference in building a science programme through how they understand, identify and activate what is available to them.

Kahle (1998) also challenges how we frame resources from a system- wide perspective. However, whereas Spillane and his colleagues draw upon a fluid conceptualization of resources and key in on the activation processes, Kahle quantifies a set of human, social, and material resources to make sense of how well a school is moving towards equity goals. Drawing upon Haberman's framework for a pedagogy of poverty2, Kahle has designed an `Equity metric:'

The Equity Metric provides both a broad and flexible definition of what constitutes equitable education in science as well as a reconceptualization of what can, and should, be measured to assess progress towards that goal. ...We find that equitable systemic reform of science education in urban schools involves: a cohesiveness of school and community around clearly understood and accepted goals of reform; responsible and accessible leadership; teachers who feel efficacious, autonomous, and respected; and a community that is supportive and involved. (Hewson et al., 2001 : 6)

As this quote suggests, one powerful aspect of the metric is that it develops a broad conceptualization of what constitutes resources and how those resources might be measured within school contexts. For example, one case study (Hewson, Kahle, Scantlebury & Davies, 2001) that applies part of the metric reveals that even in urban schools in the Midwestern USA, where Academic Achievement Plans with strong equity components were in place, students were still exposed to a science education that was inequitable along three resource fronts: students lacked home resources and the cultural knowledge to succeed in schools, teachers lacked high expectations for their students and did not engage in culturally relevant practices, and teachers closed their doors and their minds to reform efforts and engaged in little to no actual science instruction.

Both Kahle and Spillane argue for a broader conceptualization of resources in school science settings. However, it is interesting to note that their reasons for doing so are quite different. Spillane is interested in how teachers and leaders might use what is around them to build more just science education opportunities. Kahle is interested in setting standards for adequate resources in urban schools and making a case for how some of the overlooked but extremely important resources impact student achievement.

Kyle (1997, 1999) offers an additional impetus for broadening our framework for resources: global sustainability (of ecosystems, peoples, and cultures:

One fifth of our global citizenry reside in urban areas where air pollution (both indoor air pollution and urban air pollution) exceeds healthful levels. Throughout the world, human health and aquatic life is compromised as effluents are released to waterways with minimal or no treatment. While the green agenda remains an important focus of global environmental concern, perhaps it is time for science educators to engage students and community members in issues associated with the 'brown' agenda - the problems of poverty, pollution, and environmental hazards in urban communities around the world. In so doing, citizens may see the ways in which urban and global concerns are intrinsically linked. Science educators, citizens, community action groups, government agencies, and the private sector need to identify ways in which education can work to improve the urban environment as we strive toward sustainability (Kyle, 1997: 2).

Embedded in Kyle's message is the idea that not only does the science education community need to challenge the kinds of materials to which urban school children have access, but also we must consider the political, cultural, and social contexts as part of the resources to which youth have access as well. Equitable education in science, especially for urban youth in developing countries, will never be reached until the science education community does so.

Thus, the focus on resources in urban science education does more than simply tell us that resources are important. These studies provide a baseline understanding of how urban student achievement and attitudes in the sciences are directly linked to access to resources, for good and for bad. Furthermore, these studies urge us to consider how various 'conditions' within schools, communities and nations are centrally part of how resources ought to be understood and activated. Although the debate is rich and at times contentious across how the identification and enactment of resources ought to be framed as static measurable qualities or fluid contexts dependent upon arrangements - such richness opens up powerful lines of questioning and research.

Redefining equity: the challenge of policy and its enactment

During the 1980s, UNESCO and several western countries committed themselves to equalizing science learning experiences for all students (UNESCO, 1983). The challenge has been, however, not in finding support for the goal but in finding ways to translate such bold policy into classroom and community-based practices (Fensham & Harlem 1999). Several key questions have been posed by urban science education researchers regarding the design and implementation of policy in urban science education, which are worth examining here:

* What school-based, system-based, and community-based conditions frame the understanding and enactment of policy in urban science education?

* How does the science education community, or should the science education community, understand the impact of policy on teacher practice or on student outcome?

What school, system, and community-based conditions frame the understanding and enactment of policy in urban science education? This question has garnered attention at the local and systemic level in urban science education studies, primarily in the USA. At the local level, the question around conditions has been framed largely as: what barriers prevent or what conditions facilitate the successful implementation of equity-minded science education policy in urban schools? (Blumenfeld et al., 2000; Boydston, 1999; Kahle, Meece & Scantlebury, 2000) Several researchers have documented the turbulent conditions both leaders and teachers must work within to implement any new science education reform. Turbulent conditions take many forms, including distrust across decision-making and implementation levels, a lack of shared vision or understanding of urban education and the needs of urban learners, and sorely inadequate teaching conditions (Kahle, Meece & Scantlebury, 2000).

For example, in a study of large urban district, Boydston (1999), in an indepth practitioner-research study of systemic reform in Miami, notes that leading the enactment of new policies in science education is a cumbersome and often unsuccessful process because of several layers of mistrust between teachers, administrators and policy makers. The mistrust runs far and deep and results in undermining of decision making around policy implementation at both the district and classroom level. Stevenson, Dantley & Holcomb (1999) address the lack of a shared understanding around the needs of urban teachers. Their report indicates that administrators from Urban Systemic Initiative (USI) school districts (districts funded by the federal government to improve student achievement in science by improving all levels of science education, but most particularly the professional development of teachers) understood the factors that influenced recruitment, retention, and attrition of science teachers in USI school districts, but did not prioritize those reasons in the same ways that teachers did. Songer and her colleagues (2001), in a study of technology-rich curriculum in Detroit public schools, demonstrate that even when a systematic programme for fostering inquiry, including accompanying professional development activities, can overcome barriers imposed by the district wide complacency towards a pedagogy of poverty, several persistent barriers remained, including inadequate space and materials, inadequate time, low content knowledge among teachers, large class sizes, high student and teacher mobility, limited instructional freedom, and unreliable internet connectivity. Ultimately in each of these cases, the enactment of new policies aimed at improving the science experiences of urban learners was not as successful as the policies intended.

What makes such turbulent conditions a uniquely urban concern, according to Songer, is that so many turbulent conditions amalgamate in the urban context. While each condition alone, such as lack of training or preparation time, large class sizes, or distrust between decision-making levels, may not be unique to urban schooling, the combination experienced over and over again across schools, departments and classrooms creates a pervasive pedagogy of poverty that is unique to US-based urban schools.

In taking a closer examination of these turbulent conditions, it is interesting to note how each researcher framed the challenge of enacting policies in such conditions. Although there is widespread agreement around what these conditions or barriers are in urban science contexts, there exists a diversity of perspectives in just how these barriers impact the implementation of policy in urban settings or why this might be the case. For example, comparing Boydston's study with Spillane's study, both of which are focused on leadership and policy enactment within urban schools, some interesting differences can be observed. The leaders in Spillane's study who had the space to identify and activate social and human resources appeared to then be able to use these resources to build a motivated coalition among teachers. The leader in Boydston's study who felt his role as science curriculum leader was consistently undermined appeared to be left with few opportunities to identify or activate social or human resources. The end result in Boydston's case study were pervasive feelings of frustration and distrust among the staff. These differences in findings help to shed light on just how much science education in urban schools depends not only on the availability of resources, but also the social context in which that reform takes place.

How does the science education community, or should the science education community, understand the impact of policy on teacher practice or on student outcome? The studies described in the previous section by and large documented the barriers to the successful enactment of new policies intended to bring about equitable urban science education. However, the next set of studies argue that although understanding barriers are important, there must be increased attention paid to how new policies often lead to the very kinds of disempowerment the policies intend to counteract.

The ideological underpinnings of policy and how those underpinnings determine what constitutes important, documentable outcomes of policy emerge in the evaluation of policy implementation in urban science education in several major publications. By ideological I refer to the system of beliefs, values and ideas that form the basis of the philosophies about science, urban learners, teaching, and schooling that undergird the policies under consideration (Rodriguez, 2001; Seller, 2001; Settlage & Meadows, 2002). Indeed, a central critique to emerge here is how the neoconservative agenda undergirding high-stakes testing as the way to urge on accountability ultimately contributes to the failure of policy enactment:

When applying a neoconservative framework to education, one imagines a system where components respond according to the principles of excellence and competition, such as when businesses survive or fail based upon their ability to respond to their clients. Likewise, neoconservative policy subjects individual teachers, building principals, and school systems to similar criteria. Instead of monetary gains as the measuring tool, test performance is the educational standard by which people and institutions are sorted into winners and losers. (Settlage & Meadows, 2002: 5)

Although the authors who champion this neoconservative- challenging perspective generally agree in both the nature and pervasiveness of conservative ideology in the success of policy implementation in urban schools, each author explores a different dimension of this process. For example, Settlage & Meadows (2002) examine the impact of the implementation of the high-stakes testing accountability policies upon urban science teachers. Using stories collected from teachers in high-poverty urban schools, these authors make the case that high-stakes testing policies have the potential to yield four key negative effects leading to the degradation of teacher professionalism: the erosion of urban teachers' professionalism, damage to teacher-student relationships, diminution of science curriculum, and disparate instruction based upon predicted individual test performance. They also argue that because the issue of policy design and enactment is politically rooted, then the response must be equally as politically rooted. Indeed, they argue that one potential solution is to help urban teachers resist testing reform initiatives. Although these authors may, in fact, agree with those studies which suggest that new innovative sustained professional development models are needed for urban science teachers (see Kahle, Meece & Scantlebury, 2000), they also argue that these programmes will do little to empower teachers or students when there is little articulation between what youth might learn and be able to do and how they are assessed.

Rodriguez (2001) in his work with the Miami-Dade Urban Systemic Initiative and Seller (2001) in her work in Philadelphia high schools both use ideological arguments to question how the science education community ought to think about the 'outcomes' of policy enactment. Rodriguez takes a methodological stance and suggests that attention must be drawn away from the tendency to consider student outcomes (based on standardized tests) as the main indicator of success in systemic reform. Rather, attention must be paid to the insights that might be gained from studying the particulars of promising initiatives with special attention paid to the strategies with the greatest potential to impact issues of access, participation, and achievement of traditionally underrepresented students in science in urban school contexts. However, Seller takes a pedagogical stance and suggests that the science education community ought to conceptualize school success through the recognition that the everyday lives of African-American, inner city males are rich sources of science and that within them lies great potential for curriculum development.

Taken together, these studies ask tough questions around the unintended consequences of policy enactment, the narrow constructions of equity, and the unspoken expectation that as part of the model for success all students will assimilate to dominant science culture. Together, they argue that the push towards higher standards as the way to achieve the basic egalitarian drive to promote scientific literacies for all in urban settings is often easily overwhelmed by a top-down model of accountability. Teachers, students, parents and community workers - all the beneficiaries of increased attention to the nature of and need for scientific and technological literacies - have become 'other' to the formative dimensions of the equity-building process. It seems that these arguments, more deeply rooted in the politics of schooling, must make their way into the formative dimensions of policy at both the local and systemic level in urban settings. It also seems that the arguments more deeply grounded in documentation and critique of the barriers that prevent successful implementation of reform must also understand how those barriers are sometimes held in place by deep- seated ideologies.

A question of orientation: a commitment to social justice

The second core value woven into the fabric of urban science education studies is a commitment to social justice. This second area of study has its roots in the critical traditions (critical, feminist, multicultural and poststructural theories). In urban science education studies, a social justice perspective has been delineated by a desire to understand the ideological nature of science, schooling, and school science and the impact these understandings have on urban youths' visions of science, success in science, and participation in science (Brickhouse & Potter, 2001; Calabrese Barton 1998a; Calabrese Barton & Darkside, 2000; Fusco, 2001; Hammond, 2001). A social justice perspective also has been expressed by an effort to document how schools as systems and teachers and students as agents within those systems help to perpetuate and interrupt the economic, social, and political forces that shape life in urban schools (Seiler, Tobin & Sokolic, 2001; Tobin, 2000; Tobin, Roth & Zimmerman, 2001; Tobin, Seiler & Walls, 1999). Finally, a social justice perspective is rooted in action and in an urgent need for the multiple stakeholders in education to engage in a collective struggle to transform schools and address societal problems. Indeed, the central struggle shared by those studies that fall under this heading is creating new spaces of interacting, knowing, and being for teachers and students to engage in epistemological and ontological critiques that will help to transform their understandings of the place and practice of science in creating a more just world.

Why separate the commitment to social justice from the commitment to equity? After all, equity issues are part of social justice issues. However, I have chosen to tease the two commitments apart because I wanted to key in on how power relationships frame the commitment to social justice. The previous equity-based studies tended to focus more on conditions within urban settings - largely resources and policies. The studies presented in this section reveal more about people (students, parents, teachers, administrators, etc.) and their interactions through relations of power in urban contexts. In what follows I trace the urban science education literature through the following two issues:

* Challenging the implicit purposes and goals of school science;

* Building new understandings of school science: what is science, why teach it, and who is it for?

Challenging the implicit purposes and goals of school science

The studies in this area focus on how the conflicts that emerge in science class between the culture of urban schooling, the culture of science, and the cultures of home frame urban science education. In a series of articles focused on urban high school science teaching, Tobin and his colleagues (Tobin, 2000; Tobin, Seiler & Walls, 1999; Tobin, Roth & Zimmerman, 2001) illustrate how institutionalized low expectations, student resistance, and teacher knowledge fuel social reproduction among inner city youth. Tobin's arguments are complicated and layered, and it is worth taking a moment to examine each of these points. Tobin suggests that low expectations for high-poverty, AfricanAmerican youth are sustained in schools as part of the 'normal' process of schooling through activities and mandates such as tracking, teaching to the test, the unequal distribution of academic resources across tracks, curricula geared towards minimal attainment, and beliefs such as low-track youth will be difficult to teach. He argues that these very actions make low expectations a part of schooling.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this study is not the descriptions of low expectations, but rather the stark descriptions of the social reproduction that take place among youth even when science instruction is being led by someone knowledgeable of these critiques and actively working to thwart the negative cycle enforced by institutionalised low expectations. Indeed, Tobin reports that students reproduced the culture of low expectations and student failure largely by engaging in multiple forms of resistance, including resistance to high expectations, resistance to learning, resistance to the teacher, and resistance through school absence. Tobin's studies are supported by similar findings from another study: Griffard & Wandersee (1999) report that in depth case studies of two African-American female high school students provided evidence for a cycle of `cognitive disengagement' perpetuated by complex cultural factors that permit cognitive passivity, confidence- without-- competence, and attention to behaviour over learning.

Tobin's experiences teaching in an high-poverty urban high school led him to conclude that breaking the cycle of institutionalized low expectations and social reproduction among inner city youths is an extremely complicated and deep-seated issue. He argues that if we are to uncover these damaging dimensions of schooling, we need to rethink not only curriculum practices but also who we are as teachers and the spaces we create and occupy consciously and unconsciously with and against students in the classroom. He shows how a master teacher of non-inner city youths alone cannot break this cycle even with the best of intentions without attention to how the worlds of teachers and students collide. In the end, Tobin (Tobin et al., 2001) contends that one viable way of helping new and experiences teachers generate this kind of knowledge is through co- teaching.

It is interesting to note that studying the hidden purposes and goals of school science was not an explicit part of Tobin and his research team's original research programme, but rather a crucial artifact that emerged from their efforts to study what it means to engage high-poverty high school youth in a rigorous, high- expectation, student-focused science curriculum. However, Tobin's studies raise questions about a socially just science education because they have implications for how the implicit purposes and goals of schooling keep youth outside of the cultures of power that frame schooling and science in daily life.

Other studies in urban science education have dealt directly with the culture of power. A case study of Miguel, a young Puerto Rican father raising children in a US inner city, reported by Calabrese Barton & Yang (2000), provides a contextualized glimpse into social reproduction in urban high schools and how that process is indelibly linked to who has (easy) access to the culture of power of school science. Their detailed portrait of Miguel reveals a life fraught with contradictions. Outside of school, Miguel enjoyed, excelled at, and was supported in science as was evidenced by his successful black market herpetology business. Inside of school, however, Miguel was counselled away from science (and other academic courses) and eventually dropped out of school all together, a decision supported by his family who saw more relevance in his role as worker than as a student. Confounding cultural expectations and differences taught Miguel that science was not for him, kept the rules for participation in the `school science culture of power' invisible, and reinforced Miguel's belief that only `special people' were invited to become scientists. Miguel's science story is supported by earlier research, though not solely urban, that revealed that students of colour were more likely to belong to those typologies that reflected difficult transitions between home and school, whereas white middle class students were more likely to belong to those typologies where the transition into the world of school science is smooth and unproblematic (Costa, 1995).

These studies begin to paint a deeply contextual portrait of how the implicit purposes and goals of schooling in urban science education work against social justice. Each one of these studies describes how high-poverty urban students' rejection of school science rests in some sort of conflict between the culture of schooling, the culture of science, and the culture of home. Yet, each of these studies also shows how all of the cultures collude to keep inner city students out of science. Although cognizant of these contradictions, none of the studies presented here use that very powerful space of contradiction to push forward our understandings of culture, power and a just education. Finding these spaces of contradiction and using them in deeply contextual ways may help to thicken our understandings not only of what teachers know (and need to know) and the spaces they occupy (and need to occupy) but also of what youth know (and need to know) and the spaces they occupy (and need to occupy). Furthermore, understandings of the implicit purposes and goals of urban science education would be served by an in-depth set of policy studies that provide analyses, both content- wise and conceptually, of the major reform documents in various national contexts, that drive science for all in urban settings.

Building new understandings of science: what is science, why teach it, and who is it

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