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The Possibilities and Limitations ofCurriculum-Based Science InquiryInterventions for Challenging the“Pedagogy of Poverty”Vandana Thadani a , Melissa S. Cook b , Kathy Griffis c , Joe A. Wise d

& Aqila Blakey aa Loyola Marymount University ,b University of California , Los Angelesc The Buckley School ,d New Roads School ,Published online: 05 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: Vandana Thadani , Melissa S. Cook , Kathy Griffis , Joe A. Wise & Aqila Blakey(2010) The Possibilities and Limitations of Curriculum-Based Science Inquiry Interventions forChallenging the “Pedagogy of Poverty”, Equity & Excellence in Education, 43:1, 21-37, DOI:10.1080/10665680903408908

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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 43(1), 21–37, 2010Copyright C© University of Massachusetts Amherst School of EducationISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10665680903408908

The Possibilities and Limitations of Curriculum-BasedScience Inquiry Interventions for Challenging

the “Pedagogy of Poverty”

Vandana ThadaniLoyola Marymount University

Melissa S. CookUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Kathy GriffisThe Buckley School

Joe A. WiseNew Roads School

Aqila BlakeyLoyola Marymount University

Low-income and minority students in the U.S. are disproportionately subjected to didactic, teacher-controlled instruction—a phenomenon called “the pedagogy of poverty” (Haberman, 1991). Thisstudy examined the role that curriculum-based interventions could play in addressing these equityissues in science education. Eight teachers from three demographically diverse urban schools par-ticipated. Teaching in intervention classrooms was more inquiry-based and less didactic than incontrol classrooms, and differences in control/intervention teaching were most pronounced at the twohigher-need schools. Learning benefits were found for intervention students at these two schools.Findings suggested both potential and limitations of curriculum-based interventions in challengingthe pedagogy of poverty.

An equitable science education must engage all students as producers, critics, and informedconsumers of scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, science education in schools serving low-income and minority students is often symptomatic of what Haberman (1991) identified as the“pedagogy of poverty”: A pedagogical system in which teachers, students, parents, and commu-nities work together to construct learning experiences that cast students as passive recipients of

Address correspondence to Vandana Thadani, Psychology Department, Loyola Marymount University, UniversityHall, Ste. 4700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. E-mail: vthadani@lmu.edu

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22 THADANI ET AL.

“basic” science facts. Inquiry pedagogy has long been heralded as a way not only to better teachscience basics but also as a way to engage students in the process of science itself, thereby enablingthem to become producers and critical consumers of scientific knowledge (National ResearchCouncil [NRC], 2000; Songer, Lee, & McDonald, 2003). The current study examines the extentto which a curriculum that positioned students in the role of knowledge-constructors and critics(instead of the more passive role of knowledge recipients) challenged instructional inequitiesthat have been observed in traditionally disadvantaged classrooms. In doing so, we assessed boththe promise and the limitations of curriculum-based inquiry interventions for promoting socialjustice in science education.

THE PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY IN SCIENCE EDUCATION

Nearly two decades ago, Haberman (1991) identified a teacher-directed, controlling, teachingstyle experienced by low-income and minority students. He called this style and the beliefs as-sociated with it the “pedagogy of poverty.” This pedagogical style focuses on activities, suchas “giving information, tests, directions, and grades; monitoring seat work; settling disputes;and reviewing tests and homework” (Songer, Lee, & Kam, 2002, p. 129), often “to the system-atic exclusion of other acts [e.g., cooperative learning or scientific inquiry]” (Haberman, 1991,p. 291). Students experiencing the pedagogy of poverty “spend [disproportionately] more timereading from textbooks and completing worksheets and are expected to be passive learnersrather than active users and producers of disciplinary knowledge” (Calabrese Barton, 2001,p. 905). And expectations for learning in these environments—by teachers, students, and others—are low:

The pedagogy of poverty is sufficiently powerful to undermine the implementation of any reformeffort because it determines the way pupils spend their time, the nature of behaviors they practice,and . . . their self-concepts as learners. Essentially, it is a pedagogy in which learners can “succeed”without becoming either involved or thoughtful. (Haberman, 1991, p. 292)

The pedagogy of poverty is antithetical to the goals of educational equity. Yet research onurban education suggests that this learning environment continues to be a grim reality for childrenfrom low-income and minority backgrounds (Calabrese Barton, 2001; Kozol, 2005). This trend issignificant for several reasons: First, the pedagogy of poverty is in marked contrast to teaching andlearning practices recommended by experts in science education (NRC, 2000)—it simply doesnot align with what is known about how children learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999).Second, classroom teaching is viewed as a central means of improving educational outcomes(e.g., on tests of achievement) for low-income and minority children (Darling-Hammond, 1998;Haberman, 1991)—outcomes which, in science, are disproportionately low when compared tothose of students from higher-income/majority backgrounds (Berliner, 2001; Grigg, Lauko, &Brockway, 2006). Third, in the area of science, the presence or absence of the pedagogy ofpoverty has implications for students’ economic and social opportunities. Proficiency in scienceopens opportunities for students to enter science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)careers—and it affects their ability to participate in the many ethical and social decisions thatare confronting our society, such as global warming and the development of alternative fuels

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 23

(Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007). Thus, it is important both to identify reforms that cancounter the pedagogy of poverty and to understand the role these reforms can play in furtheringhigh quality science education for all students.

A PEDAGOGY OF INQUIRY AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING EQUITYIN SCIENCE EDUCATION

Reforms that promote inquiry-based science instruction have particular promise for challeng-ing the pedagogy of poverty because they disrupt the fact-based, teacher-directed, pedagogy ofpoverty described above (Songer et al., 2002). Inquiry-based science instruction can take manyforms, ranging from allowing students a great deal of freedom in the scientific questions theypursue and the methods they use for pursuing them to “guided inquiry,” which scaffolds studentsthrough some or all parts of the investigative process (NRC, 2000). Across enactments, how-ever, inquiry-based instruction emphasizes engaging students in the practice of science ratherthan learning content merely for the purpose of later replication. That is, it allows students toparticipate in the kinds of thinking and processes that scientists themselves use. Learners con-struct explanations of phenomena in their world by generating questions, making predictions,marshaling evidence, building explanations, and integrating scientific concepts with real worldexperience (Marx et al., 2004). In this environment, students, rather than merely receiving andregurgitating scientific knowledge, are frequently required to critique and/or produce it. Moje’s(2007) review of social justice research in literacy education offers a framework for thinkingabout how inquiry-instruction can promote education equity in science. In this review Moje iden-tified two ways in which to address educational equity: through a “socially just pedagogy,” whichprovides students with access to “equitable opportunities to learn” (p. 3) and through “social jus-tice pedagogy,” which couples access to learning opportunities with “opportunities to question,challenge, and reconstruct knowledge” (p. 4). The latter “offer[s] possibilities for transformation,not only of the learner but also for the social and political contexts in which learning and othersocial action take place” (p. 4). One aspect of social justice pedagogy involves providing studentswith “access to knowledge via access to ways of producing knowledge” (Moje, 2007, p. 8).Clearly inquiry-based instruction can contribute to the first goal (i.e., the socially just pedagogy)by providing students with richer learning opportunities than have been observed in classroomsthat serve minority and low-income children. But how does inquiry contribute to the second goal(i.e., a social justice pedagogy)? Inquiry apprentices children into scientific practice by teachingthem to generate questions and reason from and about evidence as described above, that is, “waysof producing” scientific knowledge. And by positioning children as either producers or critics ofscientific knowledge, inquiry-based learning disrupts traditional teacher-student roles. Studentsare required to take responsibility (albeit to varying degrees, in different inquiry projects) fortheir work. Their ideas (rather than teachers’ ideas or the ideas of some other scientific authority)become the central subject of discussion. Moreover, to the extent that inquiry-based instructionrequires students to generate arguments and critique their own and each other’s ideas, it againdisrupts the “teacher in charge” model of instruction (i.e., the social context) that is emblematicof the pedagogy of poverty (Songer et al., 2002).

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24 THADANI ET AL.

Curriculum-Based Interventions as a Means for Fostering Inquiry Learning

Although inquiry seems a promising means of promoting high quality science education intraditionally disadvantaged classrooms, how can teachers in these settings (who may have beenentrenched in more traditional teaching practices) be assisted to teach using inquiry approaches?Curriculum-based interventions that provide teachers with rich curricula and simultaneouslysupport their use of these curricula can be a tool for this purpose.

There is evidence that curriculum-based science-inquiry interventions can improve studentoutcomes in traditionally underserved educational settings. For example, projects conductedthrough the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) have found benefits ofsuch curricula in Detroit’s public schools, which serves a diverse student population in terms ofboth economic and racial/ethnic backgrounds (Marx et al., 2004). In one study, researchers foundincreases in middle school science students’ learning of curriculum-specific content from pre-to post-test; these findings were obtained for both high- and low-achieving students. Subsequentresearch examined performance on state standardized tests in science and found that LeTUSstudents out-performed children in the same district who did not receive the program (Geieret al., 2008). A related project (Kids as Global Scientists) conducted in Detroit elementary andmiddle schools also found increases in student learning from pre- to post-test; furthermore,qualitative teacher reports suggested that the learning opportunities provided by the project weremore personally relevant to students, that students were more enthusiastic about learning, andthat the curriculum provided both high and low achieving students with challenging coursework(Songer et al., 2002). These studies, which were large in scale and implemented well-designed,standards-aligned, science curricula, suggest the promise of curriculum-based interventions incountering the pedagogy of poverty.

Although curriculum-based interventions show overall promise in addressing educational eq-uity issues, there is little information about how these interventions play out in schools servingdifferent demographic populations. This is a noteworthy limitation because recent research hasfound that effects of such interventions can vary for students from different ethnic, racial, eco-nomic, or linguistic backgrounds (Lee, Deaktor, Hart, Cuevas, & Enders, 2005). Furthermore,if existing teaching/learning practices differ starkly in schools serving low-SES/minority ver-sus higher-SES/majority students, then differences in teachers’ and students’ prior experiencesmight, themselves, contribute to variability in intervention effects across school settings. Becauseschool-effects are likely to be strong in intervention research (i.e., because teachers in a schoolshare leaders, resources, and cultures), from an equity standpoint it is important for educationalresearch not only to identify whether interventions produce their intended effects but also to showhow those effects differ across contexts. The latter, we contend, can suggest explanations for howeffects are achieved.

STUDY OVERVIEW AND RATIONALE

This study examines the effects of a curriculum-based intervention in three economically anddemographically different school sites. The field study reported here was part of the larger,National Science Foundation (NSF) funded, Center for Embedded Networked Sensors (CENS)project (Thadani et al., 2006). Effects of a guided inquiry curriculum, developed through the

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 25

project, were examined across diverse school settings with a view to exploring implicationsfor equity in science education. Teachers at each school were randomly assigned to either theintervention or control conditions. Intervention teachers used the curriculum to meet targetedscience content standards and control teachers covered the same standards as they normallywould. An intervention and control group were used at each school (an aspect of research designthat has been absent from many prior studies), which enabled us to compare the intervention’seffects within and across school sites. The study addressed the following questions:

• Did control classrooms at the more impoverished schools in our sample see higher levelsof didactic, teacher-controlled science teaching relative to the more affluent school, thusreplicating existing findings on the pedagogy of poverty?

• How did teaching in intervention and control classrooms differ? Did the intervention resultin more inquiry-based, less didactic teaching practices across the three school sites?

• Did intervention students at the three schools outperform control students on measures ofcontent learning and investigation/experimentation skills? Did these effects differ acrossthe three school sites?

METHOD

Participants

Participants were eight urban (Los Angeles) seventh-grade teachers and their students. Teacherswere recruited from three middle schools, each having different demographics (Table 1). Twoteachers from School 1 (serving the highest proportion of low-income/minority students), fourfrom School 2, and two from School 3 (serving the lowest proportion of low-income/minoritystudents) participated in this study; all received a stipend for their participation. Teachers wererecruited from each school in pairs, so they could be assigned to either the intervention orthe control condition. Each teacher selected one class period to take part in the study; at eachschool, teachers were asked to work with each other to select classes that were comparable inachievement and composition and that were taught at similar times during the day. Schedulingconstraints made it difficult in some cases to find intervention and control classrooms that wereentirely comparable. Across schools, 177 students from target classrooms returned permission

TABLE 1Demographics at Each School

School % Free or[# participants] Reduced-Fee % % % % %(# classrooms) Lunch African American Asian American Caucasian Latino/a Other

1 [26] (2) 75 23 7 10 58 22 [73] (4) 36 68 2 7 21 23 [52] (2) 3 1 7 71 5 16a

a15% of students reported being of mixed ethnicity or did not report ethnicity.

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26 THADANI ET AL.

forms; 151 of these students (26 from School 1, 73 from School 2, and 52 from School 3)completed both pre- and post-tests of science content learning. Analyses are based on thesestudents.

Design

This study involved random assignment of teachers to either the intervention or control conditionwithin each school, periodic observations of teaching in all classrooms, and pre-post measuresof student learning. We opted for a between- rather than within-subjects design (i.e., assigningteachers to intervention and the control condition by examining them during two different classperiods) to avoid experimental contamination from treatment to control groups.

Prior to the study, all teachers were provided with a list of 7th Grade California (CA) StateScience Content Standards addressed by the intervention. Intervention teachers implemented theSensing the Environment (Griffis & Wise, 2005) curriculum,1 described below. Control teacherswere provided with an explanation of the standards and were instructed to cover them with theirclasses as they typically would. Teachers spent approximately three weeks in instruction relatedto the learning standards targeted by the study (with the exception of School 1, where bothintervention and control teachers took five weeks to complete their coverage of the standards).

Intervention

The Sensing the Environment intervention (Griffis & Wise, 2005) has been described extensivelyelsewhere (Griffis, Thadani, & Wise, 2008; Harven & Sandoval, 2006), so we only briefly describeit here. The curriculum unit was developed by two teachers in Los Angeles as part of the NSFproject, CENS, which deploys sensor arrays to collect real-time data of natural phenomena foruse in scientific exploration. The unit was designed to help middle school teachers teach studentsabout photosynthesis, transpiration, and natural selection through guided investigations of weathersensor data. It addressed three California state science standards: structure and function in livingsystems; evolution; and investigation and experimentation (IE).

The curriculum incorporated the following features of scientific inquiry: Students were guidedto generate a scientific question. They accessed and used authentic data (through the CENS sen-sor database) to make observations and to generate hypotheses. They analyzed data and graphedrelationships. They constructed evidence-based, scientific explanations of the data, marshalingevidence for scientific claims. And they learned to critique both the products and the process oftheir own and others’ investigations. The curriculum unfolded in two different phases: a series ofstaging activities during which students explored foundational concepts behind a driving question(“Why might plants in a local mountain range look different?); and an investigation where theyused these foundational concepts of plant structure/function to make sense of a complex dataset, which included temperature, humidity, and light intensity data from sensor networks, alongwith digitized leaf images. These processes were quite different from the pedagogy of povertydescribed previously. The intervention also included teacher training and support. This featureof the intervention was anticipated to be important because inquiry-based instruction (partic-ularly when it involves authentic, large-scale, and potentially “messy” datasets) is challenging

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 27

(Marx et al., 2004). The challenge is likely to be greater the further removed existing practicesare from the inquiry-based practices. Thus the curriculum was coupled with teacher materialsthat were intended to support teachers’ learning as well as students’ (Davis & Krajcik, 2005).Teachers were provided a detailed guide that, in addition to providing lesson content, includedquestions that they could use to lead students through exploration of the content, common studentresponses and misconceptions, and strategies for reinforcing key concepts. Intervention teachersalso participated in a one-day workshop. During the workshop, one of the authors of this article(a middle/high school science teacher) modeled teaching with the intervention, teachers viewedvideos of pilot implementations of the unit, and they discussed strategies for instruction.

Procedures

Measures of Classroom Practice

Classroom teaching was examined using both quantitative and qualitative observational tech-niques. Quantitative data were gathered through a structured classroom observation protocolwith four components. Part 1 included a checklist of 11 items that described events that stu-dents/teachers should be engaged in if inquiry-based science instruction were taking place (e.g.,“Students generated predictions/hypotheses.”). These items were marked as “yes” if the eventoccurred during the lesson, and “no” if it did not. The number of items marked “yes” was summedto generate an inquiry checklist score, which could range from 0–11. Part 2 included a set ofsix items that were used to rate the degree to which inquiry-type events were characteristic ofthe lesson (e.g., “Students’ ideas [predictions] were the topic of discussion,” with 1 = not atall characteristic of the lesson to 5 = highly characteristic of the lesson). In Part 3, the samesix items were used to rate the proportion of students involved in those events (1 = none to5 = 75% or more). High scores on these three parts of the protocol indicated greater evidence ofinquiry-based teaching. In Part 4, a final set of three items described events that might be char-acteristic of a teacher-directed, primarily lecture-based lesson (e.g., “The students’ primary taskwas to memorize facts/procedures for later reproduction.”). These items were also rated on the1–5 degree scale described above; high scores here indicated a greater degree of teacher-directedinstruction. Items within each part of the observation protocol were averaged to derive a singlescore for degree of inquiry-type practices, that proportion of students engaged in inquiry-typepractices and the degree of teacher-directed instruction. The protocol did not assess the qualityof execution of any of these events. It assessed only the extent to which students were engagedin the activities that would likely be present if, indeed, inquiry (or teacher-directed instruction)were taking place.

The observation protocol was reviewed by a panel of university science education faculty andmiddle school science teachers who served as an advisory board for the project; their feedback wasused to revise it. To assess inter-rater reliability, two observers independently completed ratings onthe protocol in four classrooms. Cohen’s Kappa for the reliability of the Yes-No checklist itemswas .67, conventionally regarded as good (Bakeman & Gottman, 1986). Inter-rater reliabilityof the items rated on the 5-point scale was acceptable, r(58) = .71. One to two observationswere conducted in all classrooms to examine the extent to which teaching and learning practicesdiffered across the two conditions.

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Qualitative observations of classroom practice were primarily based on researchers’ field notesfrom the same lessons observed for the quantitative analyses. These notes were enriched withtranscripts of lessons from a few intervention classes, which were collected as part of a relatedresearch project (Cook, Wong, & Sandoval, 2008).

Learning Assessment

A two-part learning assessment was developed to measure students’ knowledge related to thetargeted content standards. The first part assessed students’ content knowledge of photosynthesis,transpiration, and natural selection; the second assessed scientific investigation (IE) skills. Theformer portion was worth 14 points and the latter was worth 8 points. Two items (out of 18total) on the original assessment were at floor performance on post-test (i.e., the items wereanswered incorrectly by almost all students); we dropped these two items from analyses. Aswith the observation protocol, the project’s advisory board reviewed the learning assessment;specifically, they evaluated each item on the assessment for the extent to which any 7th gradestudent proficient in the content standards covered by the unit could fairly be expected to answerthe question. The purpose here was to ensure that the assessment measured the learning expectedof any 7th grade student, not just intervention students. This assessment was given to interventionand control students a few days before and after learning standards had been covered. Studentresponses were confidential and available only to the researchers.

RESULTS

Teaching and Learning Practices

Quantitative and qualitative observational data were used for the in-depth examination of thedifferences in classroom practice across schools and conditions.

Evidence for the Pedagogy of Poverty and the Intervention’sPotential to Challenge it

We first examined: (a) whether teaching varied across socioeconomic lines, in concert withothers’ findings of the pedagogy of poverty; that is, was the teaching at the low-SES schoolsmore didactic and less inquiry oriented than the teaching at the high-SES school? and (b) whetherintervention classrooms at each of the school sites evidenced inquiry-based practices to a greaterextent than control classrooms, suggesting the intervention’s potential for disrupting the existingpedagogy. All measures on the structured observation protocols showed the same general pattern(see Table 2): The control classroom at School 1, serving the highest proportion of low-incomechildren, showed less evidence of inquiry-type activities (columns 1, 2, and 3) and more evidenceof didactic, teacher-directed instruction (column 4) than control classrooms at the other twoschools. This disparity suggested that the status-quo of teaching at School 1 was in concert withthe literature on the pedagogy of poverty described previously. Control classrooms at Schools 2

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 29

TABLE 2Scores on Observation Protocol Scales

Degree of Proportion of Students Degree ofInquiry Inquiry-Type Involved in Teacher-Directed

Checklista Eventsb Inquiry-Type Eventsb Practicesc

School 1Intervention 6 2.4 2.8 2.2Control 1 1 1 4.7

School 2Intervention 9 3.2 3.4 0.7Control 2.5 2.3 2.8 2.5

School 3Intervention 8 3.2 3.5 1Control 4 2.2 2.8 3.3

aRatings could range from 0–11, with higher scores indicating more inquiry practices.bRatings could range from 1–5, with higher scores indicating more inquiry practices.cRatings could range from 1–5, with higher scores indicating more teacher directed practices.

and 3 appeared similar in these data, though qualitative observations, which were more nuanced,suggested that teaching at School 2 was less inquiry-like than at School 3.

Data from the structured protocol also showed that at each school, more events indicatinginquiry-type learning took place in intervention classrooms than in control classrooms. Thefindings suggested that, at each school, the intervention had shifted pedagogy, to some degreeaway from didactic/teacher-controlled teaching practices. Qualitative observations were used toaugment our understanding of the quantitative findings. These painted a more nuanced pictureof differences in teaching across schools and conditions and suggested two points, which aresummarized and then illustrated through examples from each school. First, the findings suggestedthat, though intervention classrooms had evidenced more inquiry-type teaching than controlclassrooms across schools, the qualitative difference in teaching between the intervention andcontrol conditions was greater at the two lower SES schools than at School 3. This pattern, again,was an indicator that instruction varied along socioeconomic lines. Second, qualitative analysesprovided some insight as to the nature of change effected by the intervention and, in that respect,suggested explanations for how the intervention might counter teaching practices associatedwith the pedagogy of poverty. Specifically, observations showed that children in interventionclassrooms were engaged in the practice of science rather than simply learning about science.And by inviting students into these practices, teacher-student interactions were seen to shift suchthat they were less characteristic of traditional classroom roles.

To illustrate, at School 1 we observed both intervention and control classrooms performingactivities that involved looking at leaves under a microscope. In the former, students made predic-tions about which side of a leaf might have more stomata and then turned to the microscopes inorder to test their ideas. Along the way, student-driven talk ensued, including questions/discussionabout the nature of the stomata and reasons why stomata might be found on either side of the leaf.For instance, one girl predicted that she would find more stomata “on the top, porque [because]it’s more, it’s greener,” while another suggested that the reason a plant might have stomata onthe top of its leaves was because: “it could be helpful because the top might have more water.”

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These comments illustrated that students were engaged in scientific reasoning (hypothesizingan adaptive arrangement of stomata based on their understanding of the requirements for pho-tosynthesis). In another interaction during this lab activity, two students were seen defendingtheir observations (about how many stomata they had seen under a microscope) to their doubtfulteacher, claiming some degree of epistemic authority by virtue of their positions as observers. Inthe control classroom on the same day, instruction was quite different: the class began by silentlycopying the day’s laboratory procedures from an overhead into their notebooks. Next, they labeledthe parts of the microscope on a worksheet. The teacher then planned for students to “look atleaves” with microscopes, but after several perceived discipline problems the microscope activitywas aborted. These two lessons, which may have seemed similar in their planning phases—andwhich were intended to address many of the same content standards—differed dramatically inthe science-learning processes they required. While the control classroom vividly exemplifiesothers’ (Haberman, 1991; Kozol, 2005; Waxman & Padron, 1995) observation that low-incomeand minority students spend a disproportionate amount of time in passive learning activities, in-tervention students just across the hall were engaged in a lesson that bore many of the hallmarks ofimmersion in the practice of science: making and testing predictions and sharing ideas and data.

At School 2 quantitative findings suggested that both the intervention and control classroomsexperienced more inquiry teaching than their counterparts at School 1. At the same time, qual-itative observations illustrated that the teaching at Schools 1 and 2 shared some similarities interms of the kinds of learning required of students in intervention versus control classrooms. Forexample, during the introductory lesson for Sensing the Environment, intervention students atSchool 2 examined photos of a local mountain range to identify patterns in the landscape. Thoseobservations and inferences were used to generate questions and hypotheses about the plant lifeon the mountains. In a related lesson, control students at School 2 completed a worksheet on“Observation and Inference.” On the worksheet, students looked at cartoons and determined ifthe statements in the cartoons were observations or inferences. Although these two lessons weredesigned to address similar learning goals, each positioned students in different roles. Again,intervention students were participants in scientific processes; their questions and ideas were thefocus of that day’s learning. Control-group students’ role was fairly traditional. Their job was tolearn about scientific thinking by correctly answering questions posed and then evaluated by anauthority.

In the most affluent school, School 3, differences in teaching between intervention and controlclassrooms appeared less pronounced than at Schools 1 and 2. For instance, both classroomsused leaves to directly observe transpiration in action. Intervention students measured the amountof water consumed by plants, while control students covered the leaves of a tree in the schoolcourtyard with plastic bags to see whether condensation occurred. In each class, these demon-strations were coupled with discussions linking different patterns of findings to the mechanismscontrolling transpiration. Students in both classrooms were given the opportunity to practice thesame kinds of scientific thinking, albeit through different learning activities. In these lessons,neither classroom had the participant structures characteristic of the pedagogy of poverty.

To summarize, qualitative observations suggested that teaching did vary along socioeconomiclines. In addition, the observations suggested ways in which the intervention might have disruptedthe status-quo pedagogy. It engaged students in the practice of science, and by doing so, shiftedtheir and their teachers’ roles. The findings have implications for social justice in education,which we discuss below.

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 31

Limitations in Intervention Implementation

Though qualitative observations suggested that the curriculum had opened rich learning oppor-tunities for students, particularly at Schools 1 and 2, these data also suggest some limitations ofthese achievements. The intervention curriculum’s enactment sometimes fell short of the level ofinquiry that the unit’s developers had intended, and the gaps between intended and actual imple-mentation appeared most pronounced at School 1 and least pronounced at School 3. To illustrate,consider differences in the way that CENS teachers at these two schools launched the unit. Bothmade an attempt to explicitly put students in the role of scientists. However the teacher at School1 told the students, “You guys are going to pretend that you are a scientist. You know how myhusband is a scientist? How he works at [a university]?” and “You guys are going to pretendthat you are plant scientists, so you’re going to be studying plants.” These statements portrayedthe upcoming unit as role-play and students as “pretend” scientists. The teacher at School 3, incontrast, offered students a very different position, telling them, “We’re going to be doing actualscience. We’re going to be using some of the [university] sensors that are in the Santa MonicaMountains to get some of our data, and we’re going to try to see what we can discover.” As thesestatements indicate, this teacher positioned students as doing “actual” scientific investigationsin class—a point that was emphasized by foreshadowing students’ upcoming use of data andequipment from a university, a place where “real” scientists work. These differences in discoursehighlighted that, although change had occurred, it was still (not surprisingly) in its early stages,a point that is discussed in more depth below.

Gaps in intended and actual implementation were not a function of teachers’ actions alone.Across intervention classrooms, there were instances of students “pushing back” at the teacher’sefforts to draw them into their new roles. For example, a student at School 1 was observedresponding to his teacher’s attempts at eliciting an open-ended explanation by monotonicallyreading lengthy textbook definitions. The student’s response illustrated the tension between therequirements of the new curriculum and his understanding of typical classroom talk. Similarincidents were observed in the intervention classrooms at the other two schools as well, andthey demonstrated that students did not always “play along” with the new roles teachers offeredthem.

Learning Assessment

Classroom observations had suggested benefits of the curriculum for changing classroom practice.Did student learning outcomes parallel those findings? Differences between intervention andcontrol groups were examined at each school using Repeated Measures ANOVA, with Time (pre-test vs. post-test) entered as the within-subjects factor, and Condition (intervention vs. control)as the between-subjects factor. This analysis enabled us to take initial knowledge differencesbetween intervention and control classrooms into account. For effects that were significant (alpha≤.05) or approaching significance (alpha ≤.10), we reported effect sizes (ES) as partial-eta-squared. Effect sizes of .01 are conventionally interpreted as small, .06 as medium, and .14 aslarge (Cohen, 1988).

There was a significant effect of Time on Content Scores at all three schools, F(1, 24) = 8.18,p = .009, ES = .25; F(1, 71) = 32.12, p < .001, ES = .31; F(1, 50) = 32.19, p < .001, ES = .39 at

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32 THADANI ET AL.

FIGURE 1 Scores by treatment, pre- and posttest.

Schools 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Students’ post-test scores were higher than their pre-test scores,indicating that learning did take place. At School 1 the interaction between Time and Conditionapproached statistical significance, F(1, 24) = 3.93, p = .06, ES = .14, with intervention studentsshowing greater gains from pre- to post-test than their control group peers. At School 2, thisinteraction was significant, F(1, 71) = 19.83, p < .001, ES = .22; intervention students madegreater gains than control students. At School 3, the interaction between Time and Condition wasnot significant, and F(1, 50) = .01, p = ns (Figure 1), showing no statistical difference acrossthe two groups. To summarize, in content learning, intervention students showed an advantageover control students at the two schools serving higher proportions of low-income and minoritystudents. No such benefit was observed at the most affluent school.

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 33

Findings on investigation and experimentation (IE) items were generally less robust. At School1 there was no effect of Time on IE scores, F(1, 24) = 1.15, p = ns, indicating no overall increasein IE scores from pre- to post-test. At Schools 2 and 3, there were statistical trends toward an effectof Time, F(1, 71) = 3.78, p = .06, ES = .05 and F(1, 50) = 3.50, p = .07, ES = .07, respectively;there was a gain from pre- to post-test here. At Schools 1 and 3, there was no interaction betweenTime and Condition, F(1, 24) = .02, p = ns; F(1, 50) = .34, p = ns, respectively. At School2, there was a trend for an interaction between Time and Condition, F(1, 71) = 3.03, p = .09,ES = .04, with control students’ scores increasing more from pre- to post-test than those ofintervention students (Figure 1, b). This difference is difficult to interpret because interventionstudents were close to ceiling on the pre-test; thus their scores could not increase substantially onthe assessment, whereas scores of control students, which started out lower on the pre-test, didhave room to rise. To summarize, IE findings showed less change from pre- to post-test overall,and the only differential benefit was a trend that was difficult to interpret but that favored controlstudents at School 2.

DISCUSSION

This study investigated whether a curriculum-based science intervention could address equitygaps in science teaching practices. Classroom observations showed that the control classroomat School 1 (serving the highest proportion of low-income and minority children) evidencedthe most teacher-directed and least inquiry-based instruction. The control classroom at School3 (the most affluent school in our sample) incorporated more inquiry-based teaching than con-trol classrooms in either of the other schools, and School 2’s control classrooms appeared tofall somewhere between this range. The observations also suggested that the intervention hadpromise in addressing this equity gap in pedagogy. Relative to control classrooms, interventionclassrooms across the three schools evidenced more inquiry-type teaching and learning. However,the difference between intervention and control conditions was most pronounced at School 1 andleast pronounced at School 3, suggesting that the intervention’s benefits in the way of shiftingpedagogy were disproportionately greater in the lower SES schools.

The intervention appeared to benefit not only teaching/learning practices but also students’learning (again, notably along socioeconomic lines). Intervention students made greater gains oncontent learning from pre- to post-test at Schools 1 and 2. These results were in line with ourobservations of teaching. That is, if teaching in the three control classrooms was representative ofscience teaching at each school, then our observations suggest that the intervention fit well withthe general instructional approach at School 3 (which may be why its effect on student learningwas limited there). At Schools 1 and 2, on the other hand, the intervention was a new way oflearning. This inference is supported by informal comments from School 3′s intervention teacherdemonstrating familiarity and comfort with inquiry approaches, and School 1′s interventionteacher, indicating that the intervention was a new way of teaching. The intervention showed nobenefit to students’ IE skills. Others have also observed that content learning gains tend to be morerobust than gains on IE-type skills (Marx et al., 2004); thus, these results were not surprising. Thefindings echo the widely recognized point that inquiry experiences need be integrated yearlong,into all aspects of the curriculum (NRC, 2000).

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34 THADANI ET AL.

Limitations of the Study

Doing research “in the trenches” (in authentic rather than contrived settings) requires someloss of experimental control. Methodological limitations of the study included the following:First, the intervention was multi-faceted, including curricular materials, teacher support, andtechnology. It is not possible to disentangle the effects of any single feature and we argue thatit is not meaningful to do so, as educational interventions are generally more than the sum oftheir individual components. Rather, inclusion of teacher training/support materials is crucial toinquiry interventions because inquiry is a departure from traditional, didactic practices and thusis challenging for teachers. Thus, curricular materials should be both educative and be coupledwith teacher training to develop teachers’ capacity to teach well in schools serving low-incomeand minority children.

Second, we elected not to have teachers serve as their own controls because we were concernedthat they might amend existing practices in control classrooms once they had been exposed to thetreatment. Though the study’s design did not eliminate teacher effects, pre-existing differencesin students’ knowledge was controlled for statistically.

Third, the scope of the intervention was (a) to model the development of inquiry-based curricu-lum materials that integrated authentic data from novel sensor technologies and (b) to examinewhether these materials could be used effectively across diverse classroom contexts. Despitethis limited scope, the intervention benefited teaching practices (i.e., teaching practices in theintervention classrooms incorporated more features characteristic of inquiry than control class-rooms) and student learning (i.e., intervention students showed greater gains in content learningthan control students), particularly at the two lower-SES schools. These findings illustrated thepotential of curriculum-based reforms for enriching the educational experiences of traditionallyunderserved students. This is a point we take up more extensively below.

Methodological Lessons: Doing Intervention Research In Diverse Contexts

This study revealed methodological issues that have implications for conducting educational-intervention research in a way that is sensitive to student diversity. First, findings highlight theneed to account for school-level effects in educational research. Because schools vary in theirdemographic compositions and teachers and students within schools share resources, leadership,and school culture (Hewson, Kahle, Scantlebury, & Davies, 2001; Lee et al., 2005), interventioneffects may vary across schools. In our study, comparisons between schools yielded importantinformation about the relative effects of the intervention in different educational contexts andprovided stronger evidence of intervention effects than pre-post or treatment-control compar-isons alone. Second, we found that student participation was most difficult to garner at the schoolthat served a large proportion of racial/ethnic minority (primarily Latino) and low-income stu-dents. This was due to both lower rates of returned parent permission forms and higher rates ofabsenteeism during assessments and resulted in decreased statistical power.

Finally, assessment results revealed the challenges of assessing learning in diverse settings.Average performance at School 1 was relatively low, even at post-test, while average performanceat School 3 was relatively high, even at pre-test. This pattern suggests that an easier assessmentmay have been more sensitive (i.e., better for detecting learning gains) at School 1, and a

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CHALLENGING THE “PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY” 35

more challenging assessment would have been more sensitive at School 3. Devising a learningassessment that is comparable across contexts is difficult. Yet, from an equity standpoint, it isclearly important to study educational interventions in a range of settings.

The Promise and Limitations of Curriculum-Based Interventionsin Promoting Equity

This study illustrated both the promise and limitations of curriculum-based inquiry interventionsfor promoting equity in science education. With regard to their promise, such interventionsare, first, in line with the “socially just pedagogy,” in that they allow access to high qualitylearning experiences (Moje, 2007). They can provide students with more authentic, demanding,and engaging work (Newmann, Bryk, & Nagaoka, 2001; Songer, Lee, & Kam, 2002) than theteacher-controlled approaches that are emblematic of the pedagogy of poverty. Beyond access,inquiry-based curricular interventions can also promote a “social-justice pedagogy” in that theycan alter students’ social and political roles in the classroom (Moje, 2007). That is, by immersingchildren into the practice of science, inquiry interventions position students in more empoweringlearning roles. Students learn to use scientific knowledge to generate and critique scientificproducts and processes, and their thinking becomes the center of instructional processes. Ourstudy found that the intervention disproportionately benefited students at the high-need schools,both in the way of the teaching and in the way of learning. The relatively low cost of these benefitsspeaks to the potential power of inquiry-based teaching for challenging the pedagogy of poverty.Ironically, others (Desimone, 2002; Songer et al., 2003) have suggested that reforms are leastaccessible to students from minority backgrounds and that one contributing factor may be beliefsabout who is or is not capable of benefiting from educational interventions. The conventionalviewpoint is that low-performing students must master the basics before they can move on toricher learning processes (Knapp, Shields, & Turnbull, 1995). Our findings support the assertionthat all students are capable of doing inquiry science (Hewson et al., 2001).

These benefits notwithstanding, it is also important to recognize the challenges faced bycurricular reforms—the primary one being the systemic nature of the pedagogy of poverty.Recall that the implementation of the intervention sometimes fell short of inquiry principles(e.g., intervention teacher positioning students as “pretend” scientists, engaging in role-playrather than real scientific practice, and students “pushing back” on the new roles that inquirydemanded). This was not surprising because inquiry-based teaching is difficult. However, the gapbetween actual and intended implementation was most pronounced at School 1; moreover, somediscrepancies arose because of students’ rather than teachers’ actions. These observations areillustrative of the challenges faced by curriculum-based reforms for addressing the pedagogy ofpoverty. Teaching, including teaching that is characteristic of the pedagogy of poverty, involves“a system of interacting elements” (Hiebert & Stigler, 2000, p. 7); it is a product of teachers,students, communities, and societies (including funding and policy), and it includes each of theseconstituents’ beliefs and prior experiences. Its systemic nature is what makes the pedagogy ofpoverty so insidious; teachers and students who are most entrenched in it are likely to have moredifficulty using such interventions faithfully because inquiry-based practices run so counter totheir prior experiences and beliefs. Thus, it would be naı̈ve to view access to inquiry curricula assufficient for eradicating pedagogical inequities.

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Nonetheless, the findings from this study and others (Geier et al., 2008; Marx et al., 2004)suggest that when teachers use inquiry-based curricula, their teaching practices can be influencedin a way that moves classroom interactions toward a more socially just pedagogy (Moje, 2007),even when their efforts are in their early stages, and despite all of the challenges discussedpreviously. Thus, the charge of science educators, reformers, and researchers is to create andunderstand the conditions under which curricular-based interventions can succeed, both acrossdiverse contexts and in the long-term.

NOTES

This article is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation’s Center for EmbeddedNetworked Sensing and under NSF Grant Nos. CCF-0120778 and 0352572. An early version of this workwas presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Francisco,CA. We thank Jennifer Abe, Joe LaBrie, Nancy Palaez, Michael O’Sullivan, and Barbara Gonzalez for theirthoughtful critiques of this manuscript. We thank Karen Kim, Kelli Millwood, and Aletha Harven for theirassistance with data collection and Erin Yamauchi for her assistance with data analysis. We also thank theCENS Education Advisory Board for their feedback on data collection instruments and the teachers andstudents who participated in this study.1. The Sensing the Environment curriculum can be accessed at http://interactive.cens.ucla.edu/education/InquiryModule/

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Vandana Thadani is assistant professor of Psychology at Loyola Marymount University. Her researchinterests are in psychology and education, specifically classroom teaching and its measurement, teacherprofessional development, and the relationship between teaching and student outcomes.

Melissa Cook is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include inquiry learning, classroom discourseprocesses, and student identity construction within social contexts ranging from virtual worlds to scienceclassrooms.

Kathy Griffis is the chair of the Science Department at The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, CA. Sheis a high school science teacher and a member of the CENS 6–12 Science Education Faculty.

Joe Wise is the director of the Center for Effective Learning at New Roads School in Santa Monica,CA. He has 37 years of classroom experience in science education and serves as educational consultant ona number of NASA, NSF, and private foundation grants.

Aqila Blakey is a practicing clinician. Her research interests include equity in education, coping amongethnic minorities, ethnic minority mental health service utilization, and therapy (particularly couples’ therapyand substance abuse prevention/intervention) outcome research.

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