Urban Science Education and Building New Forms of Learning Communities

摘要

This past year I have been involved with an advisory committee charged with establishing a curriculum framework for middle school science in New York City (NYC). On the one hand, the directive of the committee has been straightforward: Generate a document that describes what middle school students should know and be able to do in grades 5-8. With guidance from national standards and New York State Frameworks, and our experiences in and knowledge of science and teaching, the task has been relatively clear. On the other hand, "what" one teaches is not only a function of the content and skills of science, but also is intimately connected to who is teaching, who is learning, and where that learning takes place. Thus, the committee also has had to consider the complexities of the urban education landscape. In other words, the curriculum framework to be developed needed to be responsive to the experiences of students from a variety of communities, such as multigenerational Puerto Rican students in the South Bronx, recent immigrants in Chinatown, or the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Likewise, the frameworks needed also to be accessible to teachers with a variety of experiences and subject matter knowledge and who are employed in a multitude of different kinds of schools, from small schools employing one science teacher to teach all subjects and all grades to science focused schools offering advanced science courses. This is a particular challenge given that the vast majority of middle school science teachers in the city must, at some point, teach out of their area of licensure. And again, the frameworks needed to be responsive to the reality that NYC middle schools are not equally resourced. Many city schools go without basic science supplies such as microscopes or triple beam balances.