Experiments, contingencies, and curriculum: Providing opportunities for learning through improvisation in science teaching

In this article, we examine how, through discourse processes, a third grade teacher and her students come to situationally define science in their cla ssroom. The reacher's use of particular discursive strategies promoted stud ent talk, thus providing opportunities for students to learn about science through the exploration of a set of anomalous results in a life science exp eriment. Drawing from social studies of science, we used a discourse analyt ical approach to examine the classroom members' logic of experimentation, t heir explanations and scientific decisions, and their accounts of the event s. These analyses allowed us to identify how particular teaching strategies afforded students opportunities to learn science concepts and about scient ific processes. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons. Inc.