RECOGNIZING THE CONCEPTUAL
CAPITAL OF THE ACADEMICALLY DIVERSE LEARNER IN THE SCIENCE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Dr. Richard E. Shope III, Director
World Space Foundation, Education Division
Abstract
The term “academically diverse
learner” (Tomlinson, 2001) refers to the recognition that each student has a
unique combination of interest affinities, performance capabilities,
socioeconomic, sociocultural, and language influences, and physical and
socioemotional conditions of well being. As learners enter the science
classroom, they bring a wide range of diverse contexts of meaning with them as
they encounter a science phenomenon. This therefore requires a variety of
diagnostic strategies that lead to a selection of appropriately adaptive and
differentiated teaching strategies (Tomlinson, 1999). To gain such insight,
teachers must diagnose not only the content of the students’ personal
conceptions but also the thinking processes that produced them (Strike and
Posner, 1992). That is, the teacher must look empathetically through the eyes
of the student. To accomplish this requires a high degree of self-awareness as
well as a willingness to examine one’s own hidden assumptions and dysconscious
blind spots. To look through the eyes of a student to perceive diverse contexts
of meaning is a qualitatively different process than
scoring a test to determine content knowledge. We propose a framework to guide
the science teacher to explore how to discover and leverage the conceptual capital of academically diverse
learners.
Introduction
One
implication of constructivist philosophy is that, as learners, we create
knowledge in the perturbations of our encounters with the real world, as we
draw from the available resources of our already-existing knowledge,
conceptions, notions, skills, experiences, creativity, and reasoning patterns.
Strike and Posner (1982, 1992) introduced and then later developed the notion
of a “conceptual ecology,” an overarching rationale for the organization and
evaluation of concepts, connected to theories of learning, knowledge, and
beliefs about science. An individual’s conceptual ecology consists of the rich
substrate of cognitive artifacts, features such as anomalies, analogies,
metaphors, epistemological beliefs, metaphysical beliefs, knowledge from other
areas of inquiry, and knowledge of competing conceptions. The adaptive learning
value of this ecosystem can be referred to as a learner’s conceptual capital. Learners advance from where they actually are,
as they construct knowledge from the ever-changing resources of conceptual
capital that are available, accessible, and relevant to the task at hand.
Awareness of a student’s conceptual ecology is achieved
through diagnosis of the student’s personal science conceptions. Diagnosis
consists of strategies that yield information that the teacher can use to
decide how best to guide a student toward advanced scientific understanding.
To gain such insight, teachers
must diagnose not only the content of the student’s personal conceptions but
also the thinking processes that produced them (Strike and Posner, 1992). That
is, the teacher must look empathetically through the eyes of the student into
the diverse contexts of meaning that shape the student’s conceptualization
process regarding a science phenomenon. For example, a unit about ice and snow
taught in Southern California among students who may have never experienced
wintry conditions must be approached differently than among students in
Northern Minnesota, for whom snow and ice is familiar. In either case, the
diagnostic challenge is to evoke expression of students’ personal conceptions
that indicate the conceptual capital they have to work with. This allows a
differentiation of instructional strategies that take advantage of students’
current understanding and to move toward more advanced conceptual
understanding.
By creating a rich substrate of
resources within the learning environment, teachers can leverage the conceptual
capital of each academically diverse learner, and cause that conceptual ecology
to increase in value. Building an inclusive approach to diagnose and
conceptualize the personal science conceptions of academically diverse learners
requires awareness of students’ conceptual capital, that is, their academic
strengths and learning potentials. The aim in each case, is to move away from
viewing the student through a lens of a static
deficit model, accentuating what the student may be lacking, toward a conceptual capital model that emphasizes
how to capitalize on existing and to
develop new academic strengths as the
teacher creates adaptive opportunities for each learner through differentiated
and rigorous academic activity. Our concern as advocates for the academically
diverse students is that rigor and differentiation are often in short supply
and that there is a tacit dysconscious agreement not to rock the boat to
overcome the historically difficult obstacles to enhance opportunity for
advancing scientific understanding.
Here we enter a veritable minefield
of hidden assumptions. To perceive the science phenomenon “through the eyes of
the student” the teacher enters an arena of making judgments based on the
ability to empathize with the students. To accomplish this requires a high
degree of self-awareness, especially with a willingness to examine one’s own
hidden assumptions and dysconscious blind spots. To look through the eyes of a
student is a qualitatively different process than scoring a test.
The term dysconscious refers to actions characterized by an existent, yet
unexamined and plausibly deniable, underlying assumption that leads to the same
consequences as if it were deliberately expressed. King (1991) describes
dysconsciousness as an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions,
attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation
by accepting the existing order of things as given. Dysconscious expression,
through words or actions, results in an effect as if the underlying attitude were deliberate, claimed, and
conscious in intent. For example, an offhand dysconscious remark by a teacher that the students in the classroom
are “low performers” within the earshot of the students, may have the
unintended, yet just as hurtful effect of putting students down, even if the
teacher can, with clear conscience, declare no harmful intent. Dysconscious
behavior among teachers is most problematic when a student’s capabilities are
underestimated by results of high-stakes standardized tests or by the effects
of dysconscious assumptions that cause a teacher to overlook evidence of a
student’s learning potential.
To counter these tendencies and to
enhance the capacity to “look through the eyes of the learner,” we
propose a practical framework to guide diagnosing and conceptualizing the
notion of the conceptual capital available to academically diverse learners,
drawing from both research and practitioner experience. We propose to use the
term academically diverse learner to
refer to dimensions of dynamic conceptual capital expressed as interrelated
value-categories, aspects of a person that are constantly changing and growing,
especially as opportunities arise as viewed from the perspectives of the
learner and the adults around the learner, especially the educator and the
familial caregivers. These
value-categories, as viewed from these perspectives, are offered as a starting
point toward developing a rigorous and dynamic conceptual capital model that can ultimately be articulated and
tested through research and advocacy. We suspect that this model will energize
and unify efforts to advocate for serving the science learning needs of academically diverse students.
Figure 1. Diverse Contexts of Meaning
Figure 2.
Diagnostic Worksheet for Preservice or Professional Development
Participants
1) self-diagnose, 2) write brief descriptions about themselves for each value
category, and 3) share with a small group of colleague. This results in gaining
empathetic insight into the conceptual capital that exists among peers and how
to lead activity for others.
Figure 2.
Transforming the Language of Recognizing Learning Potential
Diagnosing and Conceptualizing
Academic Diversity: Worksheet for Discussion
Guiding Questions: How can we better estimate the learning potential of
the academically diverse learner? What academic strengths and learning
potentials does the student have to work with?
Task:
Consider how to transform deficit model
discourse toward conceptual capital model
discourse by using examples that emerged from previous discussion.
|
|
Conceptual Capital Model
Discourse |
|
|
|
References
King, Joyce E.
(1991). Dysconcious Racism: Ideology, Identity, and the Miseducation of
Teachers. Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 133+.
Strike. K. A. &
Posner, G.J. (1982). Conceptual change and science teaching.
European Journal
of Science Education, 4, 3, 231-240.
Strike.
K. A. & Posner, G.J. (1992). A revisionist theory of
conceptual change. In Duschl,
R. A. & Hamilton, R. J. (Eds.) (1992). Philosophy of science, cognitive psychology,
and educational theory and practice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). The differentiated classroom: Responding to
the needs of all learners.
Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Tomlinson, C.A. (2001). Presentation at
the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, Barcelona.