From here to equity: The influence of status on student access to and understanding of science

The purpose of this article is to extend our understanding of groupwork in the science classroom-to use the sociological construct of status (defined here as a student's perceived academic ability and popularity) to explain i nequitable participation by group members and to identify strategies that p romote reasoned consideration of all ideas within groups. Toward these ends , I investigated three classes of one sixth-grade science teacher at an urb an, ethnically diverse middle school. Students in these life science classe s used an instructional strategy and curriculum designed explicitly to addr ess differences in their access to and understanding of science: the Comple x Instruction model of groupwork and the Human Biology Middle Grades Life S cience Curriculum. Over the course of two units, I examined the powerful in fluence of status on student-student interactions during groupwork and stud ent performance on science tests. I used quantitative observation instrumen ts and semistructured student interviews to ascertain the quality of groupw ork implementation, audio- and videotapes of target groups to study the rel ationship between status and participation, and a Rate of Talk Instrument a nd unit tests to determine if students' participation during groupwork infl uenced their achievement in science. Because status issues were not fully a ddressed by teacher and curriculum, inequities in both groupwork participat ion and science learning persisted. Three recommendations for groupwork ref inement are offered: the consistent implementation of interventions designe d to amelio-rate status differences; the strategic assignment of procedural roles to ensure student access to group materials, discourse, and decision s; and the overturning of students' conventional notions of intelligence-wh at they think it means to be smart. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.