Proceedings of the 5 th International Conference on the Learning Sciences, October 2002 Keeping Learning Complex: Contextually Authentic Science in an Urban Elementary School Setting Cory Buxton 342-E Bicentennial Education Center, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148 Tel: (504) 280-7048, Fax: (504) 280-1120 Email: cbuxton@uno.edu Abstract: This paper reports on what it means to create authentic science learning experiences for teachers and students in an urban elementary school context. Through work with teachers and students in the lowest performing elementary school in Louisiana, I explored approaches to science teaching and learning that leverage a developing understanding of contextual authenticity. This research focuses on learning practices by attending to what makes science relevant to urban elementary students and their teachers. The study highlights tensions between teaching that aims to promote rich and personally meaningful connections to science, and teaching that aims to promote the mastery of basic skills and facts seen as necessary to pass high-stakes standardized assessments. Learning for students in this setting is just as complex as it is for higher performing students, however, poor student performance on standardized tests has led many teachers to resort to teaching based on overly simplistic test preparation strategies. By reporting on both teacher and student learning in this setting, I provide insight into how a failure to keep learning complex may be one reason why science literacy “for all,” and success on the new high stakes assessments meant to measure this literacy, remains elusive. Background This paper reports on a study of the teaching and learning of science within the context of the lowest performing elementary school in the state of Louisiana (as determined by a recently developed state-wide academic accountability measure). Mae Jamison Elementary was one of 52 Louisiana schools labeled as “academically unacceptable” during the 1999-2000 school year. This rating was based primarily on student performance on high- stakes standardized tests as part of a new statewide school accountability program, the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program for the 21 st Century (LEAP21) (Louisiana Department of Education, 2001). Jamison Elementary was one of ten schools placed into “corrective action” and facing “reconstitution” in two years if student test scores did not increase significantly. As part of the plan to help Jamison address this problem, the University of New Orleans developed a collaborative intervention whereby a group of fourteen Jamison teachers agreed to go through a Masters degree program in curriculum and instruction as a cohort group, with all coursework offered at the Jamison school site. Once this relationship was established, we also began placing pre-service teachers in classrooms at Jamison for their practicum teaching associated with their teaching methods courses. The overarching project addressed each of the four major content areas, however, the research I report on in this paper focuses on how the teachers and their students explored ideas about teaching and learning science by engaging in thematic and interdisciplinary studies with a local environmental focus. The teachers involved were challenged to attend to what made learning about science personally relevant to their urban elementary students, while at the same time attending to the issue of how best to prepare the students to succeed on the LEAP exam. This study highlights the tension between teaching that aims to promote rich and personal connections to science on the one hand, and teaching that aims to promote the acquisition of Western canonical scientific knowledge in a low-performing urban school context on the other. Learning for students in this setting is just as complex a proposition as it is for higher performing students in suburban schools, however, poor student performance on standardized tests has led many teachers to resort to teaching based on overly simplistic test preparation strategies (Jorgenson & Vanosdall, 2002). It is worth remembering that the current standards-based education movement began as a discussion of teaching and learning processes (NCTM, 2000) but led quickly to a discourse focused primarily on assessment outcomes and accountability models. If students are to be tested for accountability purposes, we must be sure that this does not result in an oversimplification of our approaches to teaching and learning. Teachers must learn to utilize curriculum, instruction, and assessment as parts of an integrated framework for meeting the learning needs of all students. Of particular interest, are the kinds of substantive teaching