Using literacy to learn chemistry: An ethnography of a high school chemistry classroom

Elizabeth Birr Moje, Purdue University

Abstract

This study represents a year-long ethnography that examined the nature of literacy events and practices in a high school chemistry classroom. The ethnography was based in a theoretical perspective that represents culture as the construction of multiple and complex social interactions through which meanings are negotiated. Interpretations of multiple data were conducted using constant comparative and hermeneutic phenomenological analysis methods and revealed one major assertion and several supporting assertions. Specifically, in this chemistry classroom, literacy was practiced as a tool for organizing thinking and learning in the context of a relationship based on caring and respect between the teacher and her students. Literacy was used by the teacher as one way of reaching out to her students in an attempt to build a relationship with them and to teach chemistry more effectively. She believed that if students could develop organizational strategies, then they would be more likely to experience success in chemistry. The students in this classroom interpreted the teacher's use of literacy in the context of the relationship she had established with them. Students interpreted the teacher's inclusion of literacy as evidence of her effectiveness and her caring for them, and they were willing to participate in or support literacy events that they believed contributed to their learning and success. The findings of this study support theories of literacy, teaching, and learning as socially constructed phenomena and suggest that the study of secondary literacy must be contextualized in classrooms and schools because literacy teaching and learning is influenced by social interactions between teachers and students. Resistance to such strategies among pre- and inservice teachers may stem from personal and professional life experiences and beliefs that contribute to the construction of discipline-specific pedagogical knowledges. Furthermore, these findings imply that more research is needed with respect to how teachers and students build and maintain relationships and how those relationships influence pedagogical and learning decisions and outcomes.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Dillon, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Literacy|Reading instruction|Curricula|Teaching|Secondary education

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