- Cory Buxton
- https://education.oregonstate.edu/people/cory-buxton
- Professor
- Supporting Students' Language, Knowledge, and Culture through Science
- https://sites.google.com/oregonstate.edu/lacuknosproject?pli=1&authuser=1
- Oregon State University
- Francisca Belart
- Assistant Professor and Timber Harvesting Specialist
- Supporting Students' Language, Knowledge, and Culture through Science
- https://sites.google.com/oregonstate.edu/lacuknosproject?pli=1&authuser=1
- Oregon State University
- Barbara Ettenauer
- https://lacuknos.oregonstate.edu/project-team
- GRA, PhD student
- Supporting Students' Language, Knowledge, and Culture through Science
- https://sites.google.com/oregonstate.edu/lacuknosproject?pli=1&authuser=1
- Oregon State University
- Karla Hale
- Instructor
- Supporting Students' Language, Knowledge, and Culture through Science
- https://sites.google.com/oregonstate.edu/lacuknosproject?pli=1&authuser=1
- Western Oregon University
Public Discussion
Continue the discussion of this presentation on the Multiplex. Go to Multiplex
Karla Hale
We are excited to engage on discussions about this project.
Cory Buxton
Professor
We are particularly interested in better understanding the connections between language development for science sense making, mapping culture & community connections to science, and knowledge building for informed decision making.
Karla Hale
We are excited to answer any questions and engage in discussions about this project.
Shakiyya Bland
Nickolay Hristov
Senior Scientist, Associate Professor, Director
Hi Karla! It is always nice to hear inspiring messages delivered in multiple languages. I am partial to the message about the importance of Science! How did the project start? The idea for it? What brought the team from OSU and WOU together and how did the concept for your video come together?
Karla Hale
Instructor
Hi Nickolay - it is great to hear that the video presented an inspiring message. This project is a continuation of the Lissell-B project designed and implemented by Dr. Cory Buxton and his team from the University of Georgia. Dr. Buxton, now with OSU, successfully applied to NSF for funding to continue this work through the LaCuKnoS project, which extends development of an instructional model through implementation. The implementation process includes professional development that supports educators to engage in and enact the model developed during Lissell-B. This model includes language, culture and science knowledge practices. The project includes many intentional partnerships that bring together teachers, researchers, families, and communities to participate in a cycle of improvement as we implement the model in afterschool STEM clubs across Oregon. The video was created using our educator partners during one of our professional development workshops and highlights the work done in the first year of the project. Thank you for your interest in the project!
Cory Buxton
Professor
Thanks for visiting our video! The Language, Culture and Knowledge building through Science (LaCuKnoS) project has three areas of interest with corresponding goals. We'd love to learn about other projects that are exploring the connections among language, culture & community, and knowledge building.
Language Development for Science Sense Making
Goal: Support students in making conscious language choices to represent “who they are” as well as “what they know” as they make sense of science in their lives (SFL: Halliday, 2004)Mapping Culture & Community Connections to Science
Goal: Foster students’ science interest and identity by learning to see their cultures, their communities, and their histories in relation to science (CRP: Paris, 2012)Knowledge Building for Informed Decision Making
Goal: Students learn to position themselves as competent knowers (LCT: Maton, 2013) as they apply evidence-based explanations to daily decisions and justice centered solutions to community challenges.Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
Jennifer Rosato
Thank you for sharing more about the goals, Cory! I'm wondering if you could provide a concrete example of a student using language that demonstrates "who they are"? I work in CS education and so trying to conceptualize how this would look like in CS as a discipline. I'm also curious if you (or any of the team) knows of any work that connects the use of academic language to identity as a scientist?
Thanks for sharing...has me thinking!
Cory Buxton
Professor
Hi Jennifer, and thanks for these questions.
When we say helping students use language to show who they are, we mean that science curriculum and science teachers often either explicitly and implicitly privilege a progression of replacing students' everyday language with both a general academic language of schooling and a more specific disciplinary language. While there are, of course, good reasons for students to become proficient with these language genres and registers, the unintentional message that is often received by many students is that their language and ways of communicating are inappropriate and in need of replacement. So using language in ways that maintain "who we are" means using language that maintains our connections to our families, our communities, our cultures and we don't need to give these things up to have a place in science. At a practical level helping students understand this can take many forms. One way is to make time for explicit talk with students about language choices. Another is to model how scientists use all kinds of language in their day to day doing of science and its only in "final form" science that is written up for publication that the language takes on its more formalized and technical register.
This of course, connects to your second point about identity. I can recommend work by Heidi Carlone for some valuable perspectives on science identity with connections to culture and language, and also the work of Shakhnoza Kayumova, who has a video in this showcase.
Hope that makes sense!
Jennifer Rosato
Yes, that helps. Thank you for the detailed response and the resources!
Barbara Ettenauer
GRA, PhD student
Thank you everybody for watching our video! My name is Barbara and I am part of the research team. Anyways, I am looking forward to having some great discussions.
Rebecca Sansom
Thank you for sharing your work. I see the potential in your project to engage with local communities around issues of language and science. I wondered if you did any work to engage with Hispanic communities outside of schools in order to increase the cultural relevance of the science students were learning.
We are working with teachers in rural Utah, who serve many Spanish-speaking students as well as students from Native American tribes. One of our goals is to engage with the community to create science lessons that are responsive to these students' lives and experiences, so I wondered what we could learn from you!
Cory Buxton
Professor
Thanks Rebecca for this question and for sharing a bit about your project. Our project has a strong emphasis on connecting science to community strengths, resources and needs and on designing lessons that highlight place based and community based challenges. For example, we're developing a series of forestry lessons that highlight various stakeholder perspectives in communities across Oregon.
We want to do more to have community members play a more active role in helping to shape our lessons. Can you share about when you've had success engaging community stakeholders in your planning process?
Rebecca Sansom
Thank you so much for your response, Cory. We are just getting started this year, so we are still finding our way in terms of creating relationships with local community leaders. We will be working with teachers who live in these rural communities and teach in rural schools or schools on reservations. So, our current strategy is to try to help facilitate relationship building between those teachers and the local leaders, which we hope will make for stronger ties to the community and greater trust among leaders and teachers/schools. Because we're just getting started, we don't have a success story to share, but hopefully we will soon!
Cory Buxton
Professor
That sounds like exciting and valuable work! One person whose work I can recommend in this vein is Debbie Pushor at the Univ of Saskatchewan. They have been at this for a while working in native communities in Cananda and have a really nice framework for these partnerships.
Cynthia Orona
Thank you for the recommendation, I will definitely look her up for various projects.
You project is very encouraging, as so many students from other culture think that they are incapable of doing science. I'm not sure if they think that because they are struggling with the language or have just never had the opportunity to be taught science on "level playing field." Do you have any thoughts about that?
Channa Comer
STEM Educator
Hello and thank you for sharing your work. The statement about science as a language and that having access to scientific language is empowering is in my opinion, particularly valuable. l also appreciate your offering subtitles in both English and Spanish.
I wonder if there are other cultures (e.g., Native American) represented in your community in Oregon and if there are, how are they being included in this work? I am also interested in hearing more about specific practices and professional development activities that you have planned or have already completed.
Finally, what are the criteria for the success of the project? How will success be measured?
Shakhnoza Kayumova
Dear Cory and the team,
Thank you for this exciting research project and the video. This is an exciting and much-needed work. I am curious about some of your (or teachers' practices) approaches that are oriented as Language Development for Science Sense-Making. Could you give us some examples of what "language development for science sense-making" looks like in students' science sensemaking process and teachers' pedagogical enactments?
Cory Buxton
Professor
Hi Shakhnoza, and thanks for this question. I'll link here to the practice briefs we developed this year on practices that support language development for science sense-making. Teachers have been trying out and modifying these practices this year and we'll be adding to and modifying them over the summer to share again with teachers at our August workshop.
Language Practice L1: Choosing Language based on Topic, Purpose & Audience
https://bit.ly/3lc1LtO
Language Practice L2: Using Multimodalities and Translanguaging to Make and Share Meaning
https://bit.ly/3lc2gnG
Patti Parson
This sounds like a much-needed direction in STEM education, focusing on making it culturally and community-relevant, but putting the student at the center of all that. Like others have said, it'd be interesting to hear more about the language part of the project. The rest I can envision; language I am lacking the vision of how that works in the classroom. Thanks.
Cory Buxton
Professor
Hi Patti,
Thanks for your interest in our language practices. I linked our practice briefs describing our current language practices in the comment just above. We're working on a 3rd brief with some additional language practices now. Teachers find these practices sensible and are able to integrate them into existing lessons they teach.
Kimberly Welty
I love that you incorporated multiple languages in your video introduction and agree that the more we involve people from different cultures and backgrounds, the better our understanding of the world will be and the more accessible science will become to everyone. Thank you for what you are doing!
Barbara Ettenauer
GRA, PhD student
Thank you Kimberly for your valuable feedback. It is very much appreciated.
Nazia Tasnim
Hi Dr. Buxton and Team,
I really love the way you are redefining science education and including science teachers and educators in your project. Can you tell me what kinds of contents you're delivering in the PDs? And I am interested to see if you have observed any changes in the science classrooms yet.
Karla Hale
Cory Buxton
Professor
Hi Nazia and thanks for your question. Our PD content is focused on model lessons that have embedded our practices for supporting the 3 strands of the work (language, culture, and knowledge building). We currently develop model lessons in three areas: (1) forestry and forest related topics (forestry is a big thing in Oregon); (2) general science (highlighting the role of models in science) and (3) social problem solving -- topics that connect to community challenges and strengths and to using science to evaluate claims and inform decisions.
Sue Allen
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks for the inspiring vision! I really appreciate the community-level investment in education, as happening not just in the classroom.
Could you say a bit more about why you chose to focus the work on "rural and remote" teachers in particular? Also, with internet access being a major obstacle in many rural communities, how has this kind of community-focused, place-based project been impacted by the pandemic?
And one more question - I realize it's still a fairly new project, but how are you planning to assess the project outcomes?
Karla Hale
Karla Hale
Instructor
Hi Sue - thank you for your interest in the LaCuKnoS project. Recognizing the value of bringing STEM resources to remote and rural teachers, the project partners with an established community of Science educators through the Science and Math Investigative Learning Experiences (SMILE) program. While the pandemic has certainly created some challenges for engaging with these communities, it has also provided opportunities to develop some technology and tools that have allowed us to connect in different ways virtually. Because the communities and schools have had to bridge these technology gaps, we were able to provide virtually professional development to the teachers and engage the students, families, and communities in virtual math and science events. In terms of assessment, the collection of data includes quantitative analysis of student surveys designed to measure aspirations in STEM and several qualitative measures including teacher focus groups, teacher logs, student concept maps, and family interviews that are already providing evidence for our iterative cycle of improvement and driving our implementation decisions for the next year. Thank you again for your interest and please let me know if you have any additional questions.
Sue Allen
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Karla!
Lisa Janosik
Cory, in your May 12/12:20 am reply to Jennifer you said, "the unintentional message that is often received by many students is that their language and ways of communicating are inappropriate and in need of replacement." resonated with me. I have engaged many teachers in conversations about the downfalls to front loading science vocabulary and insisting that student use only the science language without a deeper understanding of what it truly means or the connection to them personally or culturally. I am excited to share your work with others. I invite you and your colleagues to drop by the BioFab-pk-12 Resource Review page https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentations/2489.html presented by Barbara Hopkins.
Tara ONeill
Thank you for sharing this work. The multilingual structure of your video is powerful. I am not sure if you are looking for other spaces to share this work but as part of my project, students, community partners and faculty at UH Manoa have created the STEMS^2 Symposium. The 4th annual symposium will be held this summer June 28 - 30th online and in-person (in Hawaii). We would love to learn more about this work and invite you to the conversations that take place at the symposium. If you would like more information than what is on the website please feel free to email me at toneill@hawaii.edu