Students' ease in crossing cultural borders into school science

The purpose of this article is to fine-tune a grounded-theory scheme origin ally proposed in this journal by Costa (1995). Costa categorized students a ccording to the ease with which they succeed in school science; an ease rel ated to the similarity between their life-world culture and the culture of school science. In this article, I propose an additional category, "I Want to Know" Students, to her five-category scheme. These are students who are just as interested in science as Costa's "Potential Scientists" but who fin d school science intimidating in some way, though not as intimidating as Co sta's "I Don't Know" Students. By adding another category to Costa's scheme , researchers and teachers can better understand the range of differences b etween a student's life-world culture and the culture of school science. Th is understanding has direct implications for the ease with which students c ross cultural borders into school science. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.