COURAGE AND THE RESEARCHER'S GAZE: (RE)DEFINING OUR
ROLES AS CULTURAL WARRIORS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE*

Alberto J. Rodriguez.-
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
New Mexico State University
P.O. Box 30001
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Telephone: (505) - 646 - 1067
E-mail: albertor@nmsu.edu

*A version of this paper was presented as a keynote address at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science, Austin, Texas.

January 1999.


 
 

Laying Down Invisible Boundaries

A middle school student wrote the following short essay about 11 years ago:1

School is like a salad in that it's boring but good for you. It's something your mom loves you to do because it has great long-term results, but in the meantime it's pretty dull. You eat your vegetables, and it's good for [your] health; you attend school and it's good for your mind. But salad is pretty bland and grows to be monotonous after a time. Such is school: It's a growing bore.

It took me years to acquire a taste for salad, and now I love it. School, however, I must still be in the process of growing to like because at this point, it still drags on. It's something that you know pretty well [that you] have to do, so you may as well make the most of.

As for radishes in a green salad, I could probably compare them to my friends. They add a little flavor and I like them.

Teachers? Definitely tomatoes. Bland and sloppy but entirely necessary. They do add a little color but they're devoid of any flavour.

 I wonder what this student would have said about teacher educators and researchers if she felt that her teachers were "tomatoes" and "devoid of any flavor" at that time? Would her opinion of teachers and teacher educators be different now that a decade has passed?

In this essay, I propose that we urgently need to (re)examine our roles as researchers and teacher educators in order to address the reproduction of social and educational inequalities in our schools effectively. As a point of departure, it is suggested that we engage in deconstructing the notion of educators as "cultural workers."

All those who teach and conduct research about teaching and learning are indeed cultural workers. This is so simply by the nature of our work, whether it is quantitative or qualitative research; and whether we choose to acknowledge it. Our work in education affects the culture(s) of teaching and learning by either reproducing the status quo or by adding effective ways to improve it. Yet, the continuation of pervasive gaps in student achievement in science and mathematics in national tests for the last twenty years (Rodriguez, 1998a; National Science Foundation, 1996) and more recently in international tests (Schmidt, 1998); the consistent gender differences in participation in science, engineering, mathematics, and technology-related fields (Rodriguez, 1998a; NSF, 1996); the consistently high drop out rate of Latinos/as for the past 26 years (Secada et al., 1998); all of these clearly indicate that being cultural workers is not enough. We need to become cultural warriors for social change. The analogy of teacher educator/researcher as cultural warrior more directly acknowledges the deep impact our work needs to have on education--and more clearly points to need to (re)define it. This is, of course, no easy task, and it requires that we find the political will and courage to manage the risks associated with not just talking about social change but with being an integral part of its process.

This leads to the main question I wish to address in this essay, how do we help improve the preparation of our teachers and the achievement and participation of all students in science? My answer is, "With courage." Courage has been the missing element in education reform in general, and in science education reform in particular. In the following sections, arguments are presented to illustrate that in the last 25 years of research in science education, we have accumulated a great of deal knowledge about teaching and learning. This knowledge has primarily served us as a research community, but it has had little impact on how teachers teach, on how students learn, and on the existing social inequalities that continue to make teachers' work so impossible. Therefore, by (re)defining our roles as cultural warriors, we will find the courage to manage the risks and the resistance to change we will most certainly encounter once the ruling hegemony is challenged.

The Courage to Gaze Inward

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain. What was Twain's humorous cynicism then, has now become a serious social issue today. Many students--especially Latino/a children--continue to drop out (or are pushed out) of schools at an alarming rate. We have seen improvement in the drop out of rates of U.S. African and Anglo students, but the drop out rate of Latinos/as has virtually stayed the same for the last 26 years. In 1972, about 21% of U.S. Africans between the ages of 16 and 24 years old had dropped out of school. The rate for the same ethnic group was 12.6 in 1994--a drop of almost 9 percentage points in 22 years. In contrast, the drop out rate of U.S. Anglo students for the same age group changed from 12.5% in 1972 to 7.7 percent in 1994. On the other extreme, the drop out rate of 16 to 24 years old Latina/o students has consistently remained between 30 and 35% for over two decades! (Secada et. al., 1998; McMillen, 1994). In the meantime, demographic projections indicate that Latinos/as will be the second largest ethnic group in the U.S. by the year 2010 (Day, 1993; Secada et. al., 1998). We are heading toward a social and economic crisis if we do not address the current trend of low achievement and participation of the fastest growing ethnic group in the country. Jeannie Oakes has showed us how social inequalities in schools tend to have a multiplicative effect throughout the students' schooling (Oakes & Lipton, 1998; Oakes, Ormseth & Campbell, 1990). We also know that poor parental education is a major factor on how children perform and/or whether they stay in school (Peng, 1995; Romo & Falbo, 1996; Secada et al., 1998). Thus, it is no wonder that the cycle of poverty observed for those who drop out of schools is more pronounced in the lives of Latinos/as and their children. According, to the National Center for Education Statistics (McMillen, 1994), "over half of the dropouts not pursuing any further education in 1994 had at least one child (as either a cause or a consequence of their dropping out)" (p.51). In 1991, Texas, for example, held the unfortunate title of having the highest percentage rate of births to girls 14 years old and younger in the nation (Romo & Fabo, 1996). Latinas 15 years old and younger constituted 50% of the teen mothers in Texas in the same year.

What are the causes for these trends? While some would prefer to blame the victim for being caught in a spiraling cycle of poverty, a substantial body of research indicates that factors such tracking, grade retention, standardized testing, lower teacher expectations, peer pressure, family environment, low socioeconomic status, and parent's low educational background among others contribute to the observed gaps in student achievement and participation in science (Rodriguez, 1998a; NSF, 1996). It is ironic indeed that our students--and particularly traditionally underrepresented students in science2 -- are in such a predicament today. It is also ironic because, during the same last two decades, we have augmented our understanding of students' alternate conceptions on a variety of science concepts (Fensham, Gunstone & White, 1994; Gabel, 1994). We also have a better understanding of pre- and inservice teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning (Gabel, 1994; Carter, 1990; Zeichner, 1990; Kagan, 1992). Most of these studies have also been informed by individual constructivism--a theory that states that "children's learning is a process of personal, individual, and intellectual construction arising from their activity in the world" (Matthews, 1994, p 138). As a matter of fact, Pfundt and Duit (1991) compiled a bibliography of more than 1,100 studies informed by individual constructivism as the main theoretical framework.3 To continue the irony, even though research based on individual constructivism have been very fruitful, the technorational approach of this framework appears to have mainly benefited the science education research community. It has had little effect on teachers and students' lives in the classroom .

According to the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (cited in the NSF's 1995 Mathematics and Science Indicators), a typical elementary or secondary science class spent:

• Almost 40% of its time in lecture and discussion involving the entire class.
• About 20% of its time working as individuals reading the textbook or completing worksheets.
• About 25% of its time working with hands-on materials.
• And the remaining of the time on daily routines and non-laboratory small-groups. (NSF, 1996, 60). Furthermore, less than half of all high school teachers assign long-term projects, and most--who have computers--are not using them for instruction on a regular basis (NSF, 1996). The dissonance between what individual constructivist research suggests and how teachers continue to teach--again--is ironic. More specifically, while two decades of research based on individual constructivism has increased our knowledge of students' prior conceptions on topics such as heat, light, and various biological processes, thousands of children do not have heat, light, and little or no food every night. For instance, according the 1994 National Commission on Children Report (Stallings, 1995), every night at least 100,000 children are homeless in the U.S.; nearly 13 million children live in poverty--over 2 million more than a decade ago; and drop outs are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than students who complete school.

Given the continuing reproduction of social inequalities in schools; given the pervasive gaps in student achievement and participation in science; and given the high drop out rates of Latino/a students, we must have the courage as a research community to gaze inward and ask ourselves:

• What impact has our research really had on how teachers teach and on how students learn for the last two decades?
• Whose interests are being served by our work as science teacher educators and researchers? and
• How can we make better connections between our work and teachers' school practice, and students’ lives? Consider these two letters I recently received from teachers in response to a brief summary of one of my articles (Rodriguez, 1998a) that was published in the National Education Association’s magazine, NEA Today: (Jan. 1999) I read the article about your research on the latest issue of NEA Today. Needless to say, those of us who have worked with Hispanic students have known some of these things for a long time, but we don’t know what to do about it. I was excited to see the article.

I am a member of our school improvement team and we have just recently looked at . . .[our] scores for the district. We are a district in southeastern Iowa and our Hispanic population runs about 20% or so. The scores for our Hispanic students tend to be 10% percentile points below the district average and when we get to high school, they are only about half. We are at a loss as to what to do. One outspoken parent made a suggestion to me that we just retain the students until they are ready to go on. Now, if you knew me, you would know that it was no small feat that I maintained my cool with this comment and politely informed her that this was not a good option.

Our committee will meet again on the afternoon of the 13th. I was wondering if you could possibly send me some concrete ideas of things that would be better options to look into and research.

I think the district is ready to do something, but I don’t want to just pass it off as low socioeconomic status or test bias. I know these things figure in, but I think there is a lot more to it that we aren’t doing. . .I would appreciate any help you could offer.

                     (Chris Clark, ESL/Science Teacher from Iowa, Jan. 1999)4
  I have read your article in the January ’99 issue of NEA Today. This is a topic that greatly affects the high school where I work, which has a student population of 97% Latino.

We know all about the problem. What we need to learn is about solutions. We know that we are getting very under-prepared students in from our feeder schools—that’s part of the problem. We also know the problems and statistics in our school.

Please let us know what you think some solutions are. The district is open to all ideas it can get. . .

(Marilyn Smith, Science Teacher from California, Jan. 1999)

 We need to reflect on what our research has contributed to address the sense of urgency in these teachers’ letters. If we have the courage to expand our conceptualization of what accounts as useful research, we will find, for example, that feminist post-structuralist frameworks are more focused on social transformation (Reinharz, 1992). For instance, Patti Lather (1991) building on the work of others has suggested that we consider catalytic validity as an additional construct to assess the impact of our work with the Other. She explains that catalytic validity represents the degree to which the research process re-orients, focuses and energizes participants toward knowing reality in order to transform it, a process Freire (1973) terms conscientization (p. 68).
  Feminist poststructuralist frameworks can also help us avoid the conceptual traps embedded in our positions of privilege by seeking to implicate ourselves--reflexively--in the process of change. In this way, we can also avoid leaving the Other--the researched--to be the one doing all the transformative work while we retreat to the safety of our offices. Mimi Orner (1992) makes this point clear when she states that Feminist post-structuralist theories offer powerful tools for analyzing the mechanisms of power locally and the possibilities for change. In education, the call for voice has most often been directed at students. Where are the multiple contradictory voices of teachers, writers, researchers, and administrators? (p. 88)
  Another alternate orientation for conducting socially transformative research is sociotransformative constructivism (STC). Elsewhere (Rodriguez, 1998b) I suggest how STC is an orientation that draws from multicultural education (as a theory of social justice) and social constructivism (as a theory of learning). STC was used in a yearlong study with preservice science teachers, and most of them found it useful in learning how to teach for diversity and understanding. My hope is that STC could add to the repertoire of ideas and strategies of those who believe that working for social justice is an imperative today, and that it starts where our everyday practice begins. As feminist post-structural frameworks seek to transform oppressive contexts in terms of gender, STC seeks to transform oppressive contexts in terms of teaching and learning in the classroom. Hence, STC affirms that knowledge is socially constructed and mediated by cultural, historical, and institutional contexts. However, this orientation goes beyond this affirmation by creating praxis with the participants to collaboratively deconstruct the structures of power that sustain the ruling hegemony. Power, then, is a central construct in STC--power is the currency of social change.

These orientations can help us examine our privileged power positions. The power we hold as a research community over whether our research and our teaching are used to transform the pervasive social inequalities in schools today. We must find the courage to gaze inward as a community and be willing to expand our research agenda to include ourselves as subjects of our own studies. We must be willing to hold ourselves accountable for whether our work is socially transformative and responsive to the lives of those who give our profession purpose.

Now consider another important aspect of doing socially transformative work. The aspect having to do with resistance to change.

The Courage to Hold the Other's Gaze

Sometimes sociotransformative work is labeled "new age tripe" or "touchy feely" by those who fail to understand the courage needed to take risks associated with working against the grain. This work is often difficult and emotionally draining because of the energy it takes to manage the racist and/or sexist hostility wielded by those who feel threatened by social change. Therefore, whether you are male or female, Anglo or Latino; whether you are of any ethnicity, or of any sexual orientation, if you are working for social justice, you will encounter those who will seek to silence you, to "place" you, and to intimidate you.

Using my previous work and the work of others, I have grouped the resistance to social change and to educational reform reported in the literature into two broad areas. These are: Resistance to pedagogical change and resistance to ideological change. Even though these are closely linked, it is useful to discuss them separately to illustrate their complexity and their role in sustaining the status quo.

Resistance to Pedagogical Change

Resistance to pedagogical change is defined as the resistance to changing one's perception of what constitutes being an effective teacher. This type of resistance is hardly discussed in the science education literature, but it is clearly reflected in the lack of impact teacher education programs have had on how teachers teach for the last two decades (Anderson, 1994; Carter, 1990; Kagan, 1992; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Previous work with preservice and their cooperating teachers illustrate how difficult it may be to help teachers appreciate the value of constructivist, student-centered learning even in collaborative projects. For example, in a longitudinal project with high school preservice science teachers and their cooperating teachers, we sought to establish a collaborative and individual constructivist community of learners (Erickson, Mayer-Smith, Rodriguez, Chin, & Mitchell, 1994). This approach was found to be fruitful by most participants. However, there still were some cooperating teachers and preservice teachers who saw this approach as untenable in terms of covering the rigorous science curriculum and in terms of maintaining class control. Preservice teachers, participating in the same project, sometimes, under the pressures of establishing student-centered learning from the university advisors, and under the pressure of covering the curriculum and maintaining class control from their cooperating teachers, felt they needed to play a "survival game" to keep everyone satisfied (Rodriguez, 1994; 1993). This, in turn, put preservice teachers in a position that learning to teach for understanding (quality learning) must take second place to just "surviving." As Ellen--a preservice teacher in the collaborative project--explains:

Quality learning has fallen by the wayside because of trying to deal with these much bigger issues. The quality of learning is sort of the icing or the frill to me right now, at this point. I think when I start teaching it will be more important. Right now, I just find that I have a lot of variables to contend with. And minimizing those variables is sort of survival. (Rodriguez, 1993, p. 219) This type of resistance to pedagogical change arises from a need to accommodate the demands of learning to teach in borrowed classrooms while trying to satisfy often perceived to be contradictory demands from teacher education programs. We need to explore ways to help preservice science teachers spend more time learning to be effective science teachers, and spend no time feeling like they have to--as Ellen puts it--"play the game" (Rodriguez, 1993).

Another more direct type of resistance to pedagogical change is observed when preservice teachers see student-centered, inquiry-based, multicultural, and collaborative learning as odd and incongruent approaches to how they were taught at school. Some of them feel that these approaches are "too slow" to be useful. Others state:

I disagree with the blanket idea that cooperative learning is the best way to learn science. My own experience has been that learning on my own was better when it came to: 1. problem solving; 2. academic achievement; 3. preference--I usually prefer individual work, except for laboratories (Rodriguez, 1998b, p. 610) Hence, it is often difficult to encourage preservice teachers to expand their conceptions of teaching and learning when for over 15 years they have been engaged in what Lortie (1975) calls an apprenticeship of observation on how to teach. That is, an apprenticeship that has unfortunately been mainly focused on the transmissive model. This situation gets even more complicated when preservice teachers are placed with well-established and experienced teachers whose advanced science classes are full (of mainly Anglo, male students), and who follow a strict transmissive model of teaching. The discourse of reform found in major national documents rarely mentions anything on how to approach these well-established teachers, and on how to help them and/or preservice teachers see the value of alternate forms of teaching. Similarly, the discourse of reform does not address how to encourage these well-established teachers to reflect on the social and economic implications of not having a diverse student population in their classes. For example, it could have been useful if the National Research Council (NRC) Science Education Standards (1996) had explained why only 4% of all the students who took any of the science advanced placement exams in 1995 came from Latina/o, U.S. African, and First Nations ethnic backgrounds (Rodriguez, 1998a). Students from these ethnic groups represent almost a third of the total U. S. population, yet NRC Standards do not even name any of the ethnic groups that make up this country in the entire document.

Given the types of resistance mentioned here, should not major reform documents more explicitly provide arguments in support of the proposed changes? Should not they also provide guidance on how to manage the resistance that follows change like a shadow?

One thing is for certain--it takes courage to address this type of resistance head on. Ignoring it, on the other hand, is easy because it sustains the continuing dissonance between teacher education program goals and how new teacher graduates end up teaching. Complacency takes no courage.

Resistance to Ideological Change

The other form of resistance--and perhaps the most difficult to manage--is resistance to ideological change. This is defined as the resistance to changing one's beliefs and value system. A growing body of research on multicultural education clearly points to the strong resistance pre- and inservice teachers wield against learning to teach for diversity--against ideological change--against the notion that ALL children can learn (Ahlquist, 1991; Cochran-Smith, 1991; Cochran-Smith, 1995; Goodwin, 1994; Jordan, 1995; McInstosh, 1989; Rodriguez, 1998b; Scott, 1995; Tatum, 1992). Consider this reaction by an Anglo, male, physics major, preservice teacher during a science methods class discussion of gaps in student achievement and of the need for multicultural education:

I don't see what the fuss is all about; if women and minorities want to do well in science, they are just going to have to work as hard as white males! (Rodriguez, 1998b, p. 604) At the same time that some of us are managing this type of resistance to ideological change, we hear increasing calls for equity, for closing the gap, for making science more "girl-friendly," for teaching "science for all Americans." These radical changes for how schools function today is trumpeted no less by the NRC Science Education Standards, the National Science Foundation, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Project 2061, the Association of Educators of Teachers in Science, and by many others to name a few. Yet, the continuing missing element in these calls for reform is specific guidance on how to effect change and on how to manage the powerful resistance we encounter when seeking to implement the proposed changes. This resistance is sometimes even dangerous and offensive. This year, my colleague and mentor, Rudolfo Chavez-Chavez (1998), shared in a keynote given at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Teacher Educators how some students react to his multicultural education classes. He explained, "I have been told in my course evaluations that I should not try to ‘act’ smart since I am a Chicano. I have had "drive-bys" on my office door. That is, things have either been torn off the office door or anonymous, malicious notes have been left for me to read" (p. 9). Chavez further poses a question that we must all consider seriously: "Would you feel comfortable with one of these students as the future teacher of your child?" (p. 9).

Kathryn Herr and her associates (Anderson, Bentley, Gallegos, Saavedra, 1998) provide another key example of how preservice teachers resist learning to teach for diversity. Herr explains that sometimes preservice teachers "fight back" as follows:

When I was giving that secondary workshop on gender. . .I worked for an hour and half, working the line on gender and the issues gender raises in education. Afterward people stood in line to talk to me and the first guy who came through in line said, "Well, all I really wanted to say was how much I like your hair and the way it flows and looks so good." And I thought "I just worked for an hour and half on gender and you stand in line to tell me you like my hair?" But what it did to me was I just shut up.

The next person in line, a man, explained to me that he could understand how men end up raping women because some women don't respect them like they're supposed to. What I was registering was I real threat. He went on to say that no wonder women end up alone, without a relationship with a man. So then I thought "Oh, okay, these are your tactics of fighting back because for an hour and half I got to run the show about gender." (Anderson et. al., 1998, p. 289)
 
 

 Examples of this and many other powerful narratives on resistance to learning to teach for diversity, and the strategies teacher educators use to counter them, can be found in Rudolfo Chavez-Chavez and Jim O'Donell's edited book, Speaking the Unpleasant: The Politics of (non) Engagement in the Multicultural Education Terrain (1998). These narratives and effective strategies for counterresistance, however, cannot be found in any major education reform document that calls for equity, for closing the gap, for making science more "girl-friendly," or for teaching "science for all Americans."

Therefore, to become more effective teacher educators, we need to acknowledge the resistance to pedagogical and ideological changes that exist in the process of seeking social transformation. In this way, we can begin to (re)define our roles as cultural warriors and begin to muster the courage to hold the other's gaze--the courage to ask ourselves: Are our teaching and research having the kind of socially transformative effect the present condition of education demands? In what ways can we rethink our teaching and research practices so that gender issues and multicultural education are more directly addressed? Are issues of gender and diversity only addressed in the classes of colleagues who do not look like me? Are gender issues only addressed in my female colleagues' classes? What can I do to support them and to add meaningful discussion of these topics in my own classes?

The Courage to Be(come) Cultural Warriors

We must dare in order to say scientifically that we study, we learn, we teach, we know with our entire body. We do all these things with feeling, with emotion, with wishes, with fear, with doubts, with passion, and also with critical reasoning. . .We must dare as never to dichotomize cognition and emotion. . .We must dare so that we can continue to do so even when it is so much more materially advantageous to stop daring (Freire, 1998, p. 3).
  Using the words of master teacher, Paulo Freire, to guide me, a summary of the arguments and recommendations I have made so far is presented in three general areas: A. Using multiple theoretical frameworks to inform our work; B. Expanding our research agenda; and C. Agency. Each one of these is elaborated below.

A. Using multiple theoretical frameworks to inform our work

It was argued that individual constructivism has been the dominant theoretical framework guiding most studies in science education for over 20 years. Although science education research based on this orientation has been very fruitful, it appears to have mainly benefited the science education research community. That is, to date, there is little evidence that findings from this body of research have had an impact on: How teachers continue to teach; how new teachers learn to teach; how students learn; and most importantly on the pervasive gaps in student achievement and participation among traditionally underserved children and children from Anglo and Asian5 ethnic backgrounds.

The continuing and escalating reproduction of social inequalities in schools demand that we, as a research community, gaze inward and explore our role in sustaining those inequalities by virtue of the work we choose to do or not to do as privileged intellectuals in the culture of power. It was suggested that by using theoretical frameworks such feminist poststructuralism and/or sociotransformative constructivism—for example—we could begin a process of making our research more socially relevant and responsive to the realities of today’s schools.

B. Expanding our research agenda

It was also suggested that a substantial body of research from the multicultural education and learning to teach literature support the notion that pre- and inservice teachers displayed two major types of resistance to change. Resistance to pedagogical change (i.e., resistance to changing one’s perceptions of what constitutes being an effective teacher) and resistance to ideological change (i.e., resistance to changing one’s values and belief systems). What we now need is to acknowledge that these types of resistance exist, that they are embedded in the process of change, and to begin exploring effective strategies of counterresistance. That is strategies that provide meaningful examples of how teachers can carry out the often complex and risky changes we expect them to implement in their classrooms. This also means that we, as researchers and teacher educators, must work in the trenches with teachers and provide them with the onsite and continuing support they need to see our (their) proposed changes through.

C. Agency

Agency refers to the conscious role we choose to play in helping bring about social change for the collective benefit of all, especially those in lower hierarchical power or disadvantaged positions than ourselves. This involves moving away from the notion of suppressed subjectivities. That is, the modern and positivistic illusion that for our work to be "scientific"; it must be "objective." If we follow Freire's advice (in the above quote) and if we dare not to separate cognition and emotion, then we will embrace our ethical responsibilities and ensure that the researched also benefits from our research. We often see a form of truncated agency even in studies that claim to "give" voice, or to "empower" the other. We must distinguish between agency and truncated agency in terms of how the researcher participants benefited from participating in the study. Doing research on the Other, providing robust analyses of their disadvantaged positions, and using strong theoretical frameworks to support our claims, does little to change the very oppressive forces we eloquently describe. This is of course unless we embed a form of catalytic validity into our research. That is, a way of conceptualizing our research as valid by the degree to which participants and researchers have substantially improved their condition as a direct result of their involvement in the study. This also implies the long-term benefits of having acquired new insights and understandings of one's own abilities for transformative action.

To close, I must return to the original question, how do we help improve the preparation of our teachers and the achievement and participation of all students in science? My belief is that what we really need is courage. We have accumulated a great body of knowledge and ideas about learning, about teaching, and about the social issues that prevent students from learning, and teachers from teaching. What we need then is to muster the courage to manage the resistance and the risks associated with helping implement our proposed changes. This will take the collective effort of our research community, but it must start at the individual level. To have the courage to escape the entrapment of our own privilege is to take a step closer to understanding how our actions and inactions make us either pawns for the status quo or effective agents for transformative social justice. We must have the courage to expand our gaze as researchers and teacher educators and rise to the challenge of becoming cultural warriors for social change.
 

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Footnote

1 Another young colleague teaching at the same school gave this essay to me during my first year of teaching. I do not recall if the student who wrote the essay was in his class, or other details about how this essay came to be. I only know that I kept it to remind me of my own schooling and of the teacher I did not want to become. Back

2 Traditionally underrepresented students in science are women and students from Latina/o, African, First Nations (Native Americans), and from some Asian ethnic groups. Back

3 Individual constructivism is so widely used in science education research that the word constructivism has become a blanket term in the literature . For more a detailed discussion of the various "faces" of constructivism see Rodriguez (1998b). Back

4 To honor the dozens of responses I received from teachers in regards to the NEA article, I wanted to at least include the real names of the teachers who wrote the letters included in this paper. Both of them agreed to let me use their real names. Back

5 Following Lee's (1996) suggestion the term "Asian" is used here with caution to avoid the "model minority" stereotype. There is more cultural, socioeconomic, and academic performance diversity among peoples grouped under this general ethnic term, but these are rarely reported. Back

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