Science discourse in a middle-grade classroom attempting learning community-centered science instruction.

This dissertation focuses on the development of students' scientific literacy discourse in a middle grade science classroom as the teacher attempted to establish a learning community. Instructional design features included a change in teacher and students' roles such that authority over many classroom decisions was shared and students were encouraged to design their own investigations within the context of extended learning projects. The study followed the progress of two groups of four students, representing diversity in academic performance, gender, and ethnicity, over the course of four months. Target group discourse was recorded once every other school day and then transcribed. Accompanying field notes were written. Classroom artifacts, including a complete set of daily lesson plans, instructional materials, and student products, were collected. The interpretive framework, which highlighted different discourse practices and the instructional moves that supported them, evolved during data analysis as it was repeatedly tried out against the empirical materials through stages of data reduction, display, conclusion drawing, and verification. Analysis of the teacher's practice indicated that he initiated and maintained a classroom learning community by encouraging students to (a) think about their thinking by responding to questions that promoted such reflection; (b) share their reflections and other written products with each other and revise them through peer review; (c) decide for themselves which science content was relevant to their investigations; (d) share problem solving strategies; and (e) debate the meaning of terms so that a common understanding of science concepts could be developed. The teacher modeled and asked questions to promote these reflective and collaborative practices, successively withdrawing his active involvement in group dialogue as the term progressed. Analysis of students' discourse indicated that students increasingly developed independence from the teacher in selecting, developing, and using material and conceptual tools; built on each other's ideas during discussion and debate that allowed diversity of activity and opinion within the class; and progressed from describing observations in common sense language while discussing science content separately to integrating scientific concepts into their on-going dialogue about their investigations and creating novel artifacts that represented this integrated understanding.PhDEducationScience educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131338/2/9840658.pd