Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2011) 6:13–32

DOI 10.1007/s11422-009-9240-3

Becoming a science teacher: moving toward creolized

Gale Seiler

Received: 12 September 2009 / Accepted: 15 September 2009 / Published online: 8 October 2009
! Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Although communities and schools in North America are increasingly diverse
and positioned in a global web, schools continue to adhere to Western norms and the
teacher workforce remains largely White, continuing an ideology of collective sameness
and conformity. Hybridization of teacher identity and of science teaching are suggested as
ways to advance an ethic of solidarity through difference (cosmopolitanism) with science
teaching as its vehicle. In this paper, I explore identity hybridization among non-dominant
science teachers as they merge identity narratives, or who they are around science and
science teaching, with who they are out-of-school. Our attention is focused on their
experiences of dis-identification with science in terms of diaspora, or the sense of being
taken away from what one knows and values. By generating a creolized approach to
science teaching, teachers create possibilities for greater student identification with science
in school, which in turn has potential for changing the face of who does science and of
science itself.

Keywords Identity ! Hybridization ! Non-dominant populations ! Science teaching !

If you’ve attended a black spoken word performance in Montreal lately, you may
have been treated to Parisian French, Haitian Creole, Jamaican patois and American
hip hop. It’s a reflection of the city’s black mosaic, which draws from the diasporic
cultures of the Caribbean and of North and South America, as well as from the
African motherland herself.
(Vincent Tinguely 2001; Montreal writer and performance poet.)
Globalization means many things and is experienced in many ways. People ‘feel’
globalization if they attend a performance such as described in the opening quote, or when
they hear unfamiliar languages spoken in their neighborhoods, or otherwise sense that we
now live in a smaller world where international borders are more frequently crossed and we

G. Seiler (&)
McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
e-mail: gale.seiler@mcgill.ca

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are increasingly drawn into a global web. Communities in North America are becoming
more diverse, and more and more students of non-European origins are attending schools,
particularly in urban areas, in Canada and the United States. This is happening in Montreal,
where I now live and work, as well as in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, from
which I recently relocated. But this is not without its difficulties as Appiah (2006) explains,
‘‘The challenge, then, is to take the minds and hearts formed over the long millennia of
living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live
together as the global tribe we have become.’’ (p. xii). This is the vision of cosmopolitanism
that Appiah believes is possible, and he challenges us to move closer to it.
Race thinking, a structure of thought that ‘‘divides up the world between the deserving
and the undeserving according to racial descent’’ (Razack 2005) has been described by
legal scholars in critiquing the suspension of fundamental rights and freedoms as a ‘nec-
essary’ weapon in the war on terror. The pervasiveness of this ideology counters the
emergence of cosmopolitanism, a moral solidarity built around difference (Appiah 2006).
In the face of these competing ideologies, it is perhaps time to think of the role of schooling
and science in advancing cosmopolitanism as a more hopeful ideology and one more
aligned with the orientation of education to social justice and equality of rights and
opportunities. Yet systems of both schooling and science take part in the ‘othering’ of
people outside of the dominant group. We see this in the face of the teacher workforce and
the face of academic and professional science.
Although many classrooms in urban areas are becoming more ethnically, racially, and
linguistically diverse, and young people experience the world as a relatively ‘small’ place
via the Internet, the teacher workforce in the United States and Canada remains largely
White, and schools continue to adhere to Western norms. Instruction privileges Western
values and educational practices, and science classrooms privilege Western science. Sys-
tems of schooling that historically have poorly served African American, African Cana-
dian, Caribbean Canadian, and Indigenous populations now must meet the needs of an
array of other groups as well. Many statistics could be cited to show increasing racial and
ethnic diversity in communities and schools, increasing multi-status self-identification, and
gaps in science achievement and science careers. Such statistics remind us that student
learning, access to science, global migration patterns, and historical, political, and eco-
nomic contexts are interrelated in complex ways and, considered together, they raise many
questions with regard to science participation among non-dominant1 populations. One set
of questions that emerges is about connections between science learning and who science
teachers are.2 Why are non-dominant groups under-represented in science teaching, and

1
In this paper I use the term non-dominant to describe people and groups who are racialized or Othered,
that is, marginalized primarily by their race and ethnicity but also by language, or religion, recognizing that
these statuses are often interconnected and overlaid. The groups I am concerned with are largely non-White,
but I use non-dominant because it captures issues of power more than other terms. In the United States, this
refers to historically Othered groups such as African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans and also
includes recent immigrants from some non-European countries. In Canada, this includes African Canadians,
Caribbean Canadians, First Nations, and non-European immigrants. Marginalized, non-dominant groups
elsewhere are African immigrants in France, the Maori in New Zealand, and the Aboriginal people in
Australia, to name just a few. These particular groups are of concern because they are/have been kept out of
mainstream social and economic advancement that those who can pass as Whites of European heritage have
access to. In Canada, the phrase ‘‘visible minority’’ is often used to refer to these groups. It is a telling phrase
because it conveys the exclusionary power associated with visible symbols of group membership such as
skin color.
2
For example, in the United States, only 7.9% of public school teachers in the United States are African
American (National Center for Education Statistics 2006) and, in science, only 4% of teachers in grades

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what can we do about it? How does the concept of identity help us to understand who
becomes a science teacher and how s/he comes to teach? What are the implications for
science learning for non-dominant students to be taught by science teachers with whom
they can or cannot identify or who represent science in a creolized3 form? And how might
creolized forms of science contribute to the development of cosmopolitanism? Under-
standings of these questions offer potential for changing the face of who does science and,
in time, for the (re)construction of science itself.
One way to approach these sorts of questions is through research focused on the
experiences of science teachers who are outside the dominant group and by theorizing their
position in terms of diaspora, the sense of being taken away from what one knows and
values. These include both voluntary and involuntary minorities and both recent arrivals
and multi-generational residents. By documenting and exploring the feelings of identifi-
cation and dis-identification4 with science and science teaching of members of such
groups, we might begin to recognize ways to welcome people from under-represented
populations into the collective of science-doers and science teachers and to advance
cosmopolitanism in schools and in science.
As movement patterns between nations heighten the diversity of many schools, issues
related to who our school children are and who their teachers will be become even more
pressing. In this paper, I use interviews and reflections along with video vignettes of
classroom teaching to explore the complexities of becoming science teachers for those
from cultural groups outside the dominant population. This paper is exploratory in
nature and relies on data resources involving current and prospective teachers of science
who are African Americans in an urban center (Baltimore) in the United States.
However, connections to teachers from other non-dominant populations are likely, and
much more work needs to be done in exploring the identities of teachers from other
groups. By doing this, we can begin to understand the fractures and (re)formation that
occur when non-dominant teachers learn to teach in a White Eurocentric system. I use
the concepts of identity hybridization and creolized science teaching5 as a way to
conceptualize teachers’ identities and experiences in relation to what they bring to
science teaching that might be suited to the education of non-dominant science students.
Recognizing that culture (including the culture of science) is continually produced by
those participating in it, affording opportunities for greater identification with and

Footnote 2 continued
9–12 are African American (Weiss et al. 2001). Similar data is not readily available in Canada. However, a
large interview study conducted among African Canadian youth in Toronto public schools revealed that the
absence of Black teachers was a primary concern of students (Sefa Dei 1996).
3
Although the terms ‘‘creole’’ and ‘‘creolized’’ have historically been used with a negative connotations,
I use these terms with great respect for the populations who, out of necessity, developed Creole languages to
counter oppressive situations and hope that we can use these terms in new productive ways that might help
to end continuing oppression.
4
When I use ‘identify’ as a verb (to identify) or the noun ‘identification’ (the act of identifying) I mean that
a person is able to see him/herself as connected to or present in the target group, that is, one or more of his/
her narratives aligns in some way with available narratives and positions in the group.
5
Hybrid science identities among students and teachers signal the generation of a creolized form of science;
similar to creolized languages, creolized science provides new opportunities for communication and par-
ticipation for those who contribute to it and employ it. Emerging from situations of diaspora, creolized forms
of science would combine (a) existing practices and symbols of science culture, (b) new practices and
symbols of science culture and (c) possibilities for expanded action both in science and in other fields
(Elmesky and Seiler 2007).

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participation in school science and, thus, in science careers can change science in the
longer term.

Gate-keeping in the science teaching profession

Some research has explored in general terms the role that identity plays in the development
of teachers. However, few studies have explored the identity of science teachers from non-
dominant populations. Reasons found in the literature for the lack of non-Whites among
the ranks of teachers in the United States and Canada include limited college access, family
expectations for first generation college students, bias in accreditation exams, and the lack
of a critical mass of non-dominant students in teacher education programs. But the bottom-
line is clear. Relatively few African Americans and members of other non-dominant
groups choose teaching as a profession while in college (Rushton 2001), and among those
who do choose teaching, some are turned away during the teacher preparation process and
do not enter classrooms (Berry 2005). In considering the small number of teachers from
non-dominant populations in preservice teacher education programs, Nieto (1999) notes
that ‘‘there is also evidence that the perspectives and needs of these students are often
ignored, further alienating them from entering the profession.’’ (p. 31). According to Delpit
(1995), students of color often feel devalued and alienated in teacher education programs
and in the profession of teaching, because many of their cultural and educational experi-
ences are different from those of the majority White teacher workforce and Euro-centric
institutions of science schooling.
The dis-identification of certain populations within the educational system is perhaps
most pronounced in the science disciplines with their strong Western orientation and what
Lemke calls the ‘‘mystique of science’’ (1990, p. xi) as impersonal and in opposition to
other ways of knowing and doing. One way to understand the forces acting to marginalize
non-dominant cultural, racial and ethnic groups from science education is to recognize that
the narratives associated with their experiences often run counter to the dominant norms
associated with science and science teaching, which are imbued with great power. Schema
and practices (Sewell 1992) around science are strongly enculturated and are tangible parts
of most teachers’ toolkits (Swidler 1986). Because of this, science teachers are generally
expected (by themselves and others) to act in certain ways and to enact certain practices,
and they are socialized to expect certain types of participation from students. Thus, their
own experiences in science and in science classrooms often bring prospective science
teachers, particularly those who are outside mainstream science, to question their own ‘fit’
as teachers of science, to leave untapped resources in their cultural toolkits while teaching,
or to not become teachers at all.
The following reflection was written by Donna,6 an African American female who was
switching careers from marketing to science teaching.7
When I thought about what my major was going to be as a teacher, I had decided it was
either going to be math or science. I said OK, if I’m going to do this I knew I was going to
be kind of out there, because I really hadn’t seen many African American females as math

6
Pseudonyms are used for the teachers.
7
By allowing the life experiences of those with different histories and perspectives to be given voice, as
suggested by critical race theory, we can call into question official knowledge. Thus, throughout the paper,
I show the teachers’ writing, reflections and oral narratives in relatively long stretches and in italics in order
to privilege their stories as counterstories to the dominant discourse of science and teacher education.

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or science teachers. But that’s when I remembered Ms James. In high school I had her as
my chemistry teacher, a Black female, and I really enjoyed her chemistry class. She was
the main reason that I went into science teaching.
I had another African American teacher in my first year of high school for biology, Ms
Glass. I was afraid of her, and breaking one of her preserved specimens is the only specific
memory I have of her. She wasn’t the teacher I wanted to be. However, Ms James was
different. She made science interesting and real and she was a real person. She was my role
model to get started to become certified to teach science.
I said to myself, she could do it and she did fine, and I understood chemistry from her.
She had her lab coat on. She was very enjoyable and she wasn’t stuffy at all, like many of
my other teachers were. So I think it’s important to have a mentor of some sort. I’m quite
sure she had no clue that this was going on or that this would happen this far in the future.
I think it’s important that African American females have mentors and decide that
they’re going to be very committed, because if not, they’ll get pushed out. The image of
science itself in the larger culture gives the perception that certain kids are supposed to
come to science and not do well, and the teacher will be a white man with a lab coat and it
won’t be fun.
Donna’s reflection illustrates several key points including the importance of seeing
oneself as a member of a particular group (e.g., science teachers), particularly for students
outside of the dominant culture to persist in science and teaching. Her reflection also
highlights her conceptualization of a scientist as a white male in a lab coat, an image that
exerts great power over marginalized students because it carries a message that ‘‘certain
kids’’ who don’t look like that image will not do well in science. Additionally, science is
often conceived of as serious business that ‘‘won’t be fun’’—a powerful set of schema and
practices that we will see impeded Donna’s teaching and her students’ learning until she
was able to enact a more hybridized identity in the classroom that was built on agentic
moves to use her cultural resources in new ways.
Donna was not a science major as an undergraduate; rather, her degree was in business,
and she worked in marketing for a number of years before enrolling in the masters program
to become certified to teach science. Because she did not have an undergraduate degree in
biology, she simultaneously took a number of biology content courses. As a product of the
Baltimore City Public Schools, Donna was committed to teaching in the city’s schools and
improving opportunities for students whom she saw as much like her. With this strong
desire to serve the students, she chose to become certified to teach biology.
Another reason why I went into it [biology teaching] is because my future goal is to
persuade minority women to get into the field. When I had a research course at the
university, that’s what I did my research on—What programs are in place that entice young
women to go into the sciences? So that’s my thing now. That’s what I’m working toward.
Because males will go into it, and of course White males, but women don’t venture out
there enough.
Although committed to recruiting non-dominant students to science, up to this point in
her life, Donna’s own experiences with science were limited. She never had the oppor-
tunity to work in a lab, or collaborate with scientists, or to participate in doing science in an
authentic or meaningful way. In short, her experiences with science had not led her to be
able to really see herself as part of a collective of people who do science, or to mesh who
she was as an African American female with the schema and practices of science. We will
return to Donna in the second half of the paper and look in detail at how she struggled to
join her out of school narratives with her narratives around science and science teaching.
By looking at two other African American teachers, we can see that identity hybridization

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and comfort with creolized science can begin developing early in life, before entering the
classroom to teach.

Coming to science outside of school

In the science methods course that I teach at the university, I usually assign the participants
the task of producing written reflections on how each of them came to be a science teacher.
Mirroring the teacher workforce, most of the students in these courses each semester are
White females. Their reflections often tell powerful stories about their experiences in
science as female learners and doers of science. Over the past few years there have been a
few non-dominant pre-service science teachers in the teacher education program. Specif-
ically, there were two African American females, one Caribbean American female, and
two African American males in an alternative certification program, and one African
American female in the regular science teacher education program between 2002 and
2006. Three of these (Donna, Wayne, and Lucy) share their stories in this paper. These
non-dominant teacher candidates shared stories of science experiences, both in predomi-
nantly Black schools and in predominantly White schools, where they often felt ‘‘outside
of’’ science although they may have felt comfortable in a particular classroom. As we will
see, several of them described how their connection with science was first formed and
solidified not in school, but rather in out-of-school settings.
Wayne is now a veteran science teacher in Baltimore. An African American who grew
up in a relatively rural area of Maryland’s Eastern Shore (so-called because it is a peninsula
of land that forms the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay), Wayne switched his interest
from medical school to teaching as he neared the completion of his undergraduate degree.
While a pre-med major at a predominantly Black university, Wayne had opportunities to
work in his professors’ labs and to participate in summer research programs in medical
fields. However, he attributes his early interest in science, not to his schooling, but to where
he grew up.
When I was younger, we lived primarily on a farm; we had livestock and all that kind of
stuff. So animals and nature were always fascinating to me. That was the basis of my
science. And then there were a couple of teachers when I got into middle school and high
school that really did some good stuff. I remember going outside and doing dew points
with Mr. Dimatha and understanding the different clouds. I would say, ‘‘Pop, that’s this
type of cloud there.’’ I’m telling my dad. And when I got to biology we did dissections.
I took my manual home when we did the little preserved frogs. And I called two of my
buddies on the phone and told them we dissected a frog today and I was the little teacher in
the neighborhood. Cause I was 2 years older than those two guys. ‘‘Here’s how you do it.’’
And I’m showing them how to make the cuts and I’m diagramming the organs for them
and pointing out the different organs and things like that. They went ‘‘Wow.’’ And so they
got into it and got fascinated by it and one of my buddies, one of those kids, as a matter of
fact, became a naturalist and works in a park, and does a lot of demonstrations. We always
hear product of the environment as a negative thing, but for me being a product of my
environment was a positive thing.
If finding some strong connection to science is critical to persistence in science courses,
we can begin to see things that are lacking in schools serving marginalized groups who are
not succeeding in subjects such as science. Wayne developed a strong identification with
science through his interest in nature outside of school and transferred that to his science
classrooms as well as to interactions in his peer group in ways that afforded his success.

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Stories such as Wayne’s raise questions of how we can foster these or other sorts of
identification between science and youths’ experiences in the natural world, particularly
among marginalized populations, such as African American males.
Lucy, an African American female who was changing professions and becoming a
science teacher in her 40 s, had attended medical school and worked as a family practi-
tioner for a number of years. Having excelled in science at all levels of schooling, she
described her first experiences connecting with science in her grandmother’s kitchen.
My first exposure to the principles of scientific investigation was in the kitchen at my
grandmother’s elbow. She was the best cake baker in the county (at least). And she really had
cake-baking down to a science. Her cakes were the essential and defining element for the
finest church and social events. Every birthday, every funeral, every wedding, every holiday,
every family gathering, every anniversary, every homecoming, every banquet, every event
of note required one of Mom Holt’s cakes. Sometimes she made two or three cakes a day.
While she made many types of cake, her most famous, by far, was her pound cake.
For years I assisted my grandmother and was the crowned princess of pound cake. Then
things began to change. Some changes were good—like when grandmother bought an
electric hand mixer! Then the experimentation began. We had to find out exactly how long
to beat the batter with the mixer to reproduce the results of the previously perfected 150
strokes by hand. It turned out to be a minute and a half for the first mix, and then another
30 s after adding the eggs. This resulted in the greatest amount of fine air bubbles being
included in the batter with minimal gluten formation (which toughens the texture of the
cake). She began to experiment with supplementing the long-prescribed butter with
varying amounts of Crisco (up to 1/3 cup). Then came butter-flavored Crisco. She tried it
once or twice, but rejected it due to an artificial aftertaste. She liked to mix vanilla and
lemon extract at times—but cakes with only lemon extract were missing the depth of flavor
afforded by the vanilla. When vanilla-butter-nut flavoring came out, it was very popular
with some of the church ladies (the ones who used margarine). We tried it—once. It wasn’t
even in the same league. Pure extracts were the way to go—hands down. She tested pan
types. She tested temperature protocols (cold oven, warm oven, higher temp for first
15 min, higher temp for last 15 min), cooking times, resting times, turnout techniques,
ingredient brands, premixing ingredients, butter-softening methods, metal versus wooden
spoons, mixing bowl depth—virtually every variable possible in the process of achieving
perfect, reproducible results.
The leap from the cookbook to the textbook was not a large one at all for me. I learned
many things about science and scientific investigation in that kitchen. I learned about the
difference between physical change and chemical change. I had witnessed the difference
between sifting the dry ingredients together and combining them with liquid ingredients—
especially when baking powder was involved. I could tell if I had forgotten the baking
powder if I didn’t see the bubbles forming. But I couldn’t tell if I had forgotten the salt or
part of the sugar or flour until the tasting.
I learned the importance of following procedures in conducting investigations. I didn’t
learn the vocabulary until much later, but I had a clear idea of the importance of variable
isolation and manipulation. So, when I went to work at a medical research center and tested
dilutions of antibiotics on bacterial cultures isolated from patients to find MICs (minimum
inhibitory concentrations), I was not bored like many of my colleagues were. I had just
traded in one oven for another (the incubator) and one set of recipes for another (agar,
dilutions, etc.).
In my grandmother’s kitchen I learned about the reliability and reproducibility of
results, and what types of things threatened them. I also learned through inquiry. When I

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wanted to try other recipes, I was given a free hand. I got to the point where I could look at
a recipe and predict its final product based on the ingredient ratios. I began ‘‘doctoring’’
inferior recipes to see if I could manipulate them to produce satisfactory results. The fancy
words came later, but I learned the planning, patience, procedure, persistence and possi-
bilities of scientific investigation in my grandmother’s kitchen.
As young people, both Lucy and Wayne saw themselves and were seen by others as
doers of science. In Wayne’s case this occurred outside in nature, and in Lucy’s case in the
kitchen. Yet there were other dimensions to their identification with science. In both cases,
their membership in the target collective was made stronger by the involvement of a family
member with whom they also identified. For Lucy this person was her grandmother, and
for Wayne it was his father. In addition, Wayne seems to have been able to create a new
collective around science, which included a few of his ‘‘buddies.’’ In this new group, he
emerged as a leader, garnered respect through his knowledge of science, and found a use
for his identification with school science even outside of school.
With this keen sense of home-grown problem solving and logical testing, Lucy entered
her science classroom as a prospective teacher. She was assigned to do her internship in a
high-needs, low-performing school serving a nearly all Black population of students. After
a few short weeks, she was frustrated, wondering why her students apparently did not learn
what she taught in her first instructional unit. She explained, ‘‘I found myself totally
humbled by the students’ test scores after I finished delivering a magnificent unit of
instruction.’’ Although Lucy’s affinity for science had been forged experientially in her
grandmother’s kitchen and had been a strong part of her identity narratives since child-
hood, she was unable to teach in a way that would allow her students to build identities
with science in a similar manner; instead she felt it was her role to ‘‘deliver’’ instruction. In
Lucy we can see that identity is not carried pre-assembled into a situation, rather identity is
‘‘a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’’’ (Hall 1990, p. 394). In the classroom her
identity as one who came to know science through experience was contested; her identity
experienced ruptures and discontinuities, which Hall describes vividly.
It [identity] belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something that
already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come
from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they
undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essential-
ized past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power.
(p. 394)
Forming one’s identity, through this interplay of history, culture, and power, while learning
to teach is a challenge for all emerging teachers, but it has particular fractures and conflicts
for those who have experienced life as ‘others.’ Becoming a science teacher is in many
ways a diasporic experience for non-Whites and has elements of the traumatic character of
‘‘the colonial experience’’ that Hall talks about. Lucy experienced this as she struggled to
find a balance between the expectations of the school and her cooperating teacher and her
own sense of herself as a scientist, a problem solver, a woman, an African American, a
Christian, and a cake baker.

Identity in teaching

Identity is commonly thought of in one of two ways—either as a core, inner, self-identity

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because the individual and the social constitute each other, and identity is shaped by a
dialectical relationship between what Roth (2006) describes as who we are for ourselves
and who we are for others. As we form and re-form our identities, we access autobio-
graphical narratives that tell who we are for ourselves (e.g., ‘‘I am a mother.’’ ‘‘I am a
teacher.’’ ‘‘I want to be a teacher who makes a difference.’’), and we also access bio-
graphical narratives composed by others (e.g., ‘‘You are a teacher.’’ ‘‘An effective science
teacher should know all the answers.’’). Each time we enact parts of these narratives, or
make them public, we are engaged in identity work. As we use schema and practices that
are available to us (within our cultural toolkit (Swidler 1986) or repertoire) in a particular
social realm, we position ourselves in certain ways, take on certain roles, or represent
certain discourses or narratives. This reflexive identity work is fueled by what happens
during social interactions, that is, by what kind of response we get when we put our stories
out there. In this way, the (re)construction of one’s identity-in-action is shaped by the
options available to us and by a dialectic between the individual and the collective as
pieces are strengthened, diminished, dropped, added, or created in response to new situ-
ations. This occurs throughout life, including while someone is learning to teach, as s/he
moves from being a student, a mother, and a business person (or whatever else s/he is or
has been for much of her life) to becoming a teacher. But this is never a solo effort. The
process of acting out and combining identity narratives in new ways (and reconstructing
schema and practices) as a teacher involves other participants. In interactions, students and
others contribute to the enactment of a teacher’s hybridized identity, by responding in
certain ways when the teacher acts, and simultaneously they shape the collective, such that
the students’ own identities evolve, hopefully in ways that enhance their positions as
science learners.
The narratives that each of us draws on as we construct our identities arrive from many
fields and cultures in which we have participated and include ‘‘ways of being’’ related to
school and to science, as well as to home, family, and social, religious, and other groups in
which we participate. They comprise the schema and practices that make up the available
resources in our cultural toolkit. Some narratives or stories are more critical than others,
and these are often considered to make up a ‘core identity’ that is more frequently enacted
and thus more stable. These critical narratives are often those acquired from early and
strong family experiences; other critical narratives are those that are weighted with
institutional power, such as a diploma or academic label. Which schema and practices
(supplied by the available storylines) we draw from our toolkit at a given time depends on
the resonances in the field and the sense we have of what will work. For Donna, the teacher
mentioned earlier in the paper, stories of herself include being female, African American,
Christian, mother, wife, Baltimorean, 30-something, Temple University alumna, marketing
professional, confident speaker, and more. Yet in a science classroom as a teacher for the
first time, she experienced dissonance in relation to the culture of science and science
teaching, feelings associated with a diaspora.
To counter the authoritative, monolithic view of science, which creates responses of
alienation and discomfort, I suggest acknowledging the multidimensionality of students
and teachers and their experiences in a diaspora. I view both culture (including science and
science teaching) and identities as inherently heterogeneous. With this view we can value,
instead of disparage, hybridized identities and creolized science teaching. Drawing from
critical feminism, Hooks’ (1994) concept of personally engaged pedagogy meshes with
this view in that it acknowledges the multiplicity of identity and encourages particularly
female and non-dominant teachers to ‘‘bring all of their experiences and knowledge into

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the classroom’’ (Berry 2005, p. 35) in ways that can enhance the learning of students. But
doing this is a complicated process.

It never occurred to me to do it here

Our attention now returns to Donna during her teaching internship with a young, White
male cooperating teacher. Donna shared many aspects of her identity with the largely
African American students in her 9th grade biology classes in a high school in Baltimore.
However, through video analysis, we see her struggle within ‘‘the continuous ‘play’ of
history, culture and power’’ (Hall 1990, p. 394). While engaged in learning to teach, she
experienced contradictions, fractures, and feelings of misplaced parts as she worked to
develop a personally engaged pedagogy and to ‘become like herself’ in the classroom.
Early in the semester, Donna exhibited the traditional pattern of Initiation-Response-
Evaluation (IRE) described by Lemke (1990); her largely knowledge level questions
usually elicited brief, one-word answers from the students. Her goal seemed to be to obtain
the ‘right answer’ from at least one of her students, and she often eagerly asked ‘‘Who said
that?’’ when she heard a correct response coming from somewhere in the room. But she
often missed opportunities to promote deeper understanding among the students, either by
the use of additional questions, different types of questions, or by requesting further
elaboration of a student response. In a post-lesson discussion her cooperating teacher
suggested she try different ways to change her questioning pattern.
Coop: What I like to do is I play with them [the students]. I act like I don’t know, and
they’ll start to come up with a more clarified answer.
Donna: I do that for my nine year old. It never occurred to me to do it here. I do it all the
time with homework. All the time. I say, ‘‘I don’t know.’’ She says, ‘‘But you go to
college.’’ I say, ‘‘I still don’t know.’’ It makes her explain it to me.
Donna’s classroom use of the interaction patterns she used with her own children was
constrained by schema about her role as a science teacher (‘‘getting the information to
them’’) and the nature of learning science (‘‘to hear the ‘right’ answer’’).
Hall (1990) might refer to this as Donna’s White mask, a phrase to denote ‘‘the power of
inner compulsion and subjective con-formation to the norm.’’
I wanted to know that the students understood what I was trying to teach them. I thought
the only way to get an affirmation that I was effective was to hear the ‘right’ answer. At the
time, that meant I was a teacher. Getting the information to them as quickly as possible was
the goal, because biology was a tested area and can be seen as having complicated aspects
to it. At home, I understand my role as a mother is to develop as much as I can in my
children. Every opportunity must teach more than the obvious lesson. It just didn’t occur to
me that this ‘motherly’ practice could or should be applied in the classroom.

Hybridizing identity

At first reluctant to use certain parts of who she was for herself and her family, Donna
became able to do this more successfully as the semester progressed. The following
examples are intended to show how Donna experienced what it was like to teach with what
you have and who you are. Being an African American who grew up and still resides in

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Baltimore, Donna shared much with her largely African American students especially
related to racial, cultural, educational and geographic experiences.
I had known Donna for several years and had seen her in a number of contexts. She was
an accomplished speaker and was chosen as one of two student representatives from the
university to address the review team from the National Council for Accreditation of
Teacher Education (NCATE). Yet during the early weeks of her student teaching, Donna
seemed uncomfortable while engaged in teaching; she didn’t smile or laugh much while
leading a lesson; she tended to face the chalk board too much; her transitions were awk-
ward; and her explanations were hesitant. Although she interacted well with the students
when assisting them individually or in small groups, she did not act like ‘herself’ while
teaching to the whole class. Although Donna shared many aspects of culture with her
students, she did not initially draw upon them.

The science classroom as a site where identity is contested

Donna’s cooperating teacher was absent from class 1 day as he attended a professional
development activity. On this day, as Donna did a review of material near the end of a
class, she enacted a whole class, call-and-response activity.8 Correct student answers were
greeted with a loud class cheer of ‘‘Sho’nuff’’ to which the students came alive, clamoring
to produce an answer that would earn a shout-out, which Donna described as an ‘‘old
school’’ response from ‘‘back in the day.’’ Although the words of the response were ‘‘old
school’’, the interaction pattern was well known to Donna and to most of the students in the
biology class.
We [Donna and the students] just thought of that there; I didn’t plan it. What happened
was what I had planned ended early, and there was time to review. I thought they’d be
more open to cooperating if I made it something where they got to get up, and sit down,
and move, and shout and, you know, do some stuff. And while I was standing there, we
created the ‘‘Sho’Nuff’’ shout out. They really got into that. They loved being affirmed
with ‘‘Sho’Nuff.’’ Plus I related it to a TV show, because they watch TV Land.9 The saying
is from some 1970s show; I don’t know if it was Good Times or What’s Happening, one of
those shows. They knew what it was. So when I said ‘‘Sho’Nuff.’’ They knew it exactly,
right from the old TV show.
In those minutes at the end of class, Donna combined non-science schema and practices
with science teaching probably for the first time, and a number of aspects of this occur-
rence are significant. Whether Donna would have taken this step and acted in this agentic
manner if her cooperating teacher had not been absent on this day, or taken a similar step
on another day, is impossible to say. However, that Donna made these first inroads into
enacting a hybridized teacher identity on a day when her cooperating teacher (a White
male) was not present provides evidence of Donna situated ‘‘in the continuous ‘play’ of
history, culture and power’’ (Hall 1990, p. 394) related to her gender, race, and other
statuses.10

8
Call-and-response is an oral participation form common in West Africa and widely present in parts of the
Americas impacted by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
9
TV Land is a cable channel that shows ‘classic’ TV shows. In particular they broadcast some popular
African American shows from the 1970s.
10
The role that Donna’s cooperating teacher played both in constraining and affording her identity
(re)construction is explored in detail in another paper.

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24 G. Seiler

Donna’s actions on this day were unplanned and thus represent improvisation as she
drew from her cultural toolkit and tested the transposability of some of its resources. As
Sewell (1992) notes, the outcomes of such culturally creative actions are unpredictable
and, as illustrated in this case, are contingent on how her actions were taken up by the
students. Donna’s identity (re)construction was possible only in collaboration with her
students, and their attunement with her actions was crucial to the overall success of the
review activity. She uses ‘‘we’’ as she explains how the activity emerged from the class
collectively, and the students’ identities-in-action were also likely (re)configured. After the
positive response from students during this initial foray into personally engaged pedagogy,
Donna began to rely more on the cultural ways that she shared with the students, although
these countered her cooperating teacher’s classroom norms in some instances. She created
ways to access (in the classroom) who she was in her long-standing narratives and to
include aspects of herself as African American and female in her teaching of science.
As we will see in the following vignette, once Donna began to manifest previously
untapped aspects of her cultural toolkit, her efforts appeared to resonate with the students
and this could be seen and heard in the loudness and synchrony of their responses. This
validation by students was critical to the reflexive identity work occurring as she formed
and re-formed her identity in the classroom and found ways to use and create overlap
between who she was in and out of school. Donna’s teaching visibly changed to include
more body movement including swaying and hand gestures, livelier voice patterns, and
oral practices from African American culture (Boykin 1986). Analysis of the videotapes
indicated that students became more engaged and participatory as her teaching came to
represent a creolized form of science teaching.

Story of Chainsaw Charlie and Carpenter Carl

Donna began to let previously excluded schema and practices be manifested as part of her
teaching self, and who she was outside of class and who she had been historically became a
part of who she was in class. In teaching molecular genetics, Donna presented herself as a
storyteller (Fig. 1). Building on the often used reference to DNA as a ladder, Donna

Fig. 1 Donna as choir director

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Becoming a science teacher 25

Fig. 2 DNA as a ladder

created the story of Chainsaw Charlie who cut people’s ladders in half and Carpenter Carl
who helped the victims by building new ladders from each half (Fig. 2), and this evolved in
a 2-day lesson on DNA replication. In doing this, Donna relied on her orality, a culturally
acquired disposition of story-telling that she also uses as a mother and which holds a
central role in Black culture.
Donna had the basic story outlined in advance, but the classes didn’t go particularly well
until her role changed as she used the story in the last class period of the day.
I knew I wanted a story. I didn’t want to just say ‘‘OK, today we’re gonna learn about
DNA.’’ But it was a disaster at first. The first day I did the story, I didn’t do it as a
storyteller so much in the earlier periods. By 7th period I just thought to myself, you know
what, I’m just going to go and do it. And it turned out so good. Yeah. Instead of whatever
I’d normally do, I tried to enter into it [the story]. This time I just came out and I said,
‘‘There was this guy (claps hands once); his name was Charlie.’’ And I just went into the
story and I was adding stuff and they were all into it. In the earlier periods I just threw the
story out there but didn’t really make it a story, but by 7th period I elaborated and went on
and it became a story at that point. That’s when it worked. So I thought, OK, I have to do
that now.
Then the next day I had to go on with the story and explain about the guy that’s going to
repair the ladders and what happened to them, because you can’t have a story without an
ending.
And so Donna continued the story the next day, using it to build student engagement
and understanding.
And the second day I didn’t know if it was going to go that well because we had to
fuss at them because they weren’t acting the way they should. So we spent about 10 min
kind of fussin’ at them. And because they were so down, I said ‘‘I’ve got to do it again,
cause I’m never going to get them back if they don’t get into it.’’ And it turned out very
well.
Representing Donna’s use of storytelling through text on paper is limited in its effec-
tiveness. But, by describing her actions, I attempt to represent the vocal and body rhythms
of the story that she used and how her students and cooperating teacher responded.

123
26 G. Seiler

Particularly salient are her use of hand motions similar to a choir director (Fig. 1), a
cultural experience that was likely familiar to her largely African American students, and
her use of Black Vernacular English (Y’all).

Discourse Actions

1 Donna Let’s review yesterday. What did Donna walks toward the students, swaying a bit,
we talk about? I told you a story putting her hands behind her back
2 Students Uh, Chainsaw Charlie.
(mumbled, low response, overlapping
speech)
3 Donna Chain-saw Charlie. (pronounced in Donna smiles
three parts)
4 Donna All together now
5 Students Chain-saw Charlie. Donna puts both her hands in the air, moving her hands in
(in unison, in three parts, but not loud) half circles as if directing a choir. (Fig. 1)
6 Donna Oh y’all are pitiful Smiling. Donna brings her hand down in front, and holds
them outstretched toward the students
7 Students Laughter
8 Donna PIT-I-FUL. (louder, pronounced in Smiling.
three parts)
9 Students Chain-saw Charlie.
(in unison, in three parts, and louder)

Donna opened the lesson by reminding the students of the story that she had begun to
tell them on the previous day. Donna presented herself as a story teller when she used the
first person (‘‘I told you a story.’’), and her actions were aligned with that role, as her body
swayed as she walked toward them with her hands behind her back. In response to her
query about the story from the previous day, the students’ initial response of ‘‘Chain-saw
Charlie’’ was low and not in unison (utterance 2). Not content with the response, Donna
verbally cued them by modeling ‘‘Chain-saw Charlie’’ in three distinct parts (utterance 3)
and she used explicit directions (utterance 4: ‘‘All together now’’). She also signaled the
rhythm with her hands as they repeated ‘‘Chain-saw Charlie’’ the second time (utterance 5).
This time they were in unison but still not loud. The third time she raised her voice slightly
and evoked mimicry (utterance 8: pronounced Pit-i-ful in 3 parts) and the students
responded by chanting ‘‘Chain-saw Charlie’’ and this time in loud, 3-part unison and un-
cued.
The synchrony and positive responses that Donna received from the students as she
engaged in these new practices emanating from her non-school narratives were central to
the positive outcome of the reflexive identity work that Donna was undertaking and the
hybridization process that was shaping her identity in the science classroom. Who she was
as a science teacher expanded to include aspects of who she was as an African American,
mother, and churchgoer. Together with her students, Donna was creating a classroom that
resonated with her own and the students’ cultural practices and afforded structures that
supported the emergence of creolized science teaching.

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Becoming a science teacher 27

Table 1 Matrix written on the board and used to explore analog and target aspects of the story
Character/ Do? Molecule Do?
prop

Chainsaw Cut ladders in half Helicase Breaks hydrogen bonds that hold the
Charlie strands of DNA together
Carpenter Makes 2 new ladders by constructing 2 Polymerase Joins nucleotides together; makes new
Carl new halves for each of the original strands of DNA according to template
halves strand
Ladder Used to climb up on things DNA Carries genetic information

Donna elicited responses from the students to fill in the matrix

The story as a bridge to science understanding

Later in the same class session, Donna used a matrix on the board (Table 1) to more fully
develop the analogy and draw comparisons between DNA replication (target concept) and
the story (analog). By doing this, the story became more than a means for Donna to engage
the students and establish synchrony with them. In this part of the lesson students formed
associations between the analog and target concepts as Donna wrote them on the board—
associations that are needed to effectively use an analogy as a bridge between current
knowledge and new knowledge.
This combination of story telling and science content is an example of creolized science
teaching. It draws on both traditional teaching practices and symbols of science culture
(analogy of a DNA molecule as a ladder, functional analysis, and comparing attributes of
analog and target) and mixes them with practices and symbols from another culture
(African American story-telling and call-and-response). The tired old comparison of DNA
to a ladder is culturally customized through the story of Chainsaw Charlie and the way
Donna told it and engaged her students in it.
Donna’s use of the Sho’Nuff review activity and the Chainsaw Charlie story represent
significant events in her development as a teacher. They show how she stepped beyond
traditional approaches to science teaching and organization of lessons and expressed her
own multidimensional cultural toolkit as she shaped a hybridized identity-in-action. As the
semester progressed, Donna’s teaching provided many opportunities for students to be
actively involved in the lessons. She describes how some students, who never laughed and
rarely spoke, began to do so.
Every topic had a different thing we were doing, because I was trying to do some
different stuff, and keep them up and keep them moving. So it was different almost all the
time. And that was because once we did the Chainsaw Charlie story, I thought they’d be
open to see ‘‘What else is she gonna do?’’ So I tried to keep it interesting all the time, with
different stuff. And they got moving, and they got to do things, and I got kids who’d never
say anything to get up and move and participate.
As she enacted a more hybridized approach to teaching science, students engaged with
the content in new ways. Donna’s teaching approaches represented a collage of practices
from multiple places and experiences and as they changed, so did the ways her students
experienced the classroom and science learning. Similar to what I have found elsewhere in
my research, the emerging cultural resonances afforded new responses toward science and
new ways for students to experience science class, which may be vital for poor and

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immigrant youth. And who comes to participate in science and how they do so has
potential for (re)shaping (rather than reproducing) science itself.
Although Donna brought a familiarity with the students’ geographic, social, religious,
and racial experiences and ways of being to the classroom, her identity was still ‘‘a matter
of ‘becoming’’’ (Hall 1990) each day as a teacher. During her internship, Donna made
great progress toward becoming a teacher who employed a personally engaged pedagogy
as her identity hybridized, that is, she began to feel comfortable using her multidimensional
narratives in the Biology class and was energized by the students’ responses. These
responses were crucial in the transformative outcome of the identity work that Donna was
doing.
In working with prospective African American science teachers in Baltimore, I have
found that they often feel discomfort with the idea of mixing their narratives as African
Americans with science teacher narratives and often hesitate to use their cultural dispo-
sitions in teaching. However, visits to Wayne’s classroom have provided evidence that he
effectively uses aspects of his cultural repertoire as African American, Christian, athlete,
coach, country dweller turned urban dweller, and hip 30-something guy. In fact, a visit to
Wayne’s class provided Donna with a way to rethink certain aspects of science classroom
norms.
I observed another teacher at the high school (Wayne) who taught me the philosophy of
‘‘good noise’’ and I liked that, so I’ve kept that idea. When I visited his class, I was
amazed; I’m thinking, there’s all kind of noise happening in here, and they’re still doing
their work and doing what they’re supposed to do. And I asked him about that and he said,
‘‘There’s noise and then there’s good noise. And I like good noise. I like them to be
involved and talking to each other. That doesn’t bother me.’’ And from that I wrote a paper
for a grad course, the preacher, and the church experience. I equated him with a preacher
and how he had that call-and-response with the kids. He’d repeat something and they’d
repeat it back, and he’d say it again, and they’d repeat it back, and he would ask them
questions and they’d would say it as a group, just like a preacher and his congregation.

What are we really trying to do in science teaching?

For severely marginalized students, many of whom are on the verge of dropping out,
access to mainstream science and rules of participation in it is certainly important, but it is
not the only issue. Keeping youth engaged, interested, and in some way motivated to stay
in school is a necessary step for many non-dominant young people and their teachers.
Certain marginalized populations in the United States and in Canada suffer disastrously
high dropout rates. I believe that science has greater potential than other subjects for
student engagement because the nature of science is built on curiosity and understanding of
the surrounding world. The stories of Wayne and Lucy as youth illustrate this. Ironically
school science courses often serve as gatekeepers, pushing students out of science and out
of school through insistence on conformity and sameness.
This raises the question of what we are really trying to do in science teaching. What
group is the target community or what collective are we hoping students will identify with?
What biographies and autobiographies can youth access to see themselves in science? We
can explore Lucy and Wayne’s identification with science more closely to try to answer
this. Lucy and Wayne seem to have been able to use their identification with science
developed outside school to effectively identify with science inside school, and this
enabled them both to be successful students in high school, which propelled them into

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Becoming a science teacher 29

college where they were also successful. The difficulty for students in many marginalized
populations is that any collective with which they already align themselves is generally one
not associated with learning or with science. Membership claims to collectives such as
neighborhood groups of skilled basketballers, rappers, dancers, cooks or caregivers are
generally not valued in school. But are there hybrid communities that can bridge this gap
between collectives that students identify with and school or science collectives?11 Where
and how can we imagine and create such hybridized communities, which allow access to
an array of identity narratives? How can a teacher’s identity construction be a part of this?
And how can such hybridization advance the goal of cosmopolitanism, in the face of
marketplace reforms such as accountability and standardization in education?
We must be careful not to think of these hybridized communities and identities and
forms of creolized science teaching as something less than the traditional forms. To help in
this mindset, let us consider the idea that, even in mainstream White schools, successful
students identify with a hybrid community. It seems an unlikely stretch to think that
students in most high schools identify with an authentic community of scientists. Rather,
I argue that in most successful science classrooms a hybridized or creolized community
emerges—one that both students and teacher contribute to and identify with. We might call
this a community of science doers or learners rather than a community of science or
scientists at large. Most high school students do not do authentic science, but they do
school science, and in most schools this is a mixture of school norms, community norms,
and a particular approach to science employed by the teacher. Thus, a form of school
science and the identification of participants with it emerges to a greater or lesser degree in
many schools, and this occurs with the most ease in schools where the student and com-
munity norms are closer to White, mainstream school norms. Successful science class-
rooms and teachers have found ways for students to identify with an emergent community,
and that can take different forms in different places and for different students.
Lucy and Wayne’s teachers probably had no idea of the complex identity construction
process that was going on in their classrooms that enabled these two African American
students to be successful in science in the predominantly White high schools that they
attended. Lucy and Wayne found ways to create hybridized science identities involving
their lifeworlds, which included their families, and they were able to transfer this alignment
as doers of science to what was going on in the classroom. Many White students do this as
well. I am suggesting that this same thing can happen in science classrooms with low-
achieving, marginalized students, if there are opportunities and spaces for their narratives,
their ways of being and doing, and their interests to be engaged. The creolized forms of
science and the hybridized community will differ from an authentic community of sci-
entists, but it already does in most high schools. In predominantly Black schools it will
look different from a collective of science doers in a predominantly White school, or
Latino school, or First Nation school, or a racially and ethnically mixed school, and it
should.
Just as creolized languages evolved to serve the purpose of allowing the speakers of a
non-dominant language to participate in business transactions, so might the evolution of
creolized science teaching and participation afford participatory opportunities for mar-
ginalized students in school and in science. In other papers (e.g., Seiler and Elmesky 2007)
we have shown that engaging students’ cultural narratives such as movement expres-
siveness and orality can assist youth in developing feelings of membership with a culture
of science, where they typically feel alienated and unmotivated. Generating a new,

11
Sfard and Prusak (2005) refer to this as the gap between actual and designated identities.

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30 G. Seiler

creolized science community, with which they can identify because it has stories available
that they can access, creates room for their own stories to be performed.

Solidarity through difference

Many successful science teachers of non-dominant students enact hybridized identities and
creolized science teaching to varying degrees to facilitate student identification (as opposed
to dis-identification) with science. Donna is an example, as is Wayne. As a new teacher,
Lucy struggles to fuse aspects of who she is for herself with who she is as a science
teacher. As we saw with Donna before she began to use the rich resources in her cultural
toolkit, an emphasis on conformity to traditional ways of science and science teaching can
result in the loss of much creativity among teachers. Not only might this keep potential
science teachers out of the profession, it might also result in squandered possibilities for
stronger identification of students with science.
By fostering creolized forms of science in their classrooms teachers can enable students
to seek membership both in a community of science and with other collectives that are
significant to the students, such as youth who can dance, create a beat, spit a rhyme, grow
tomatoes, or bake a cake. Elsewhere, I have used the idea of ‘‘remixing’’ of cultures to
represent this idea (Elmesky and Seiler 2007). Remix refers to an alternative version of a
song that is different from the original version in noticeable ways. It is a common phe-
nomenon in hip-hop as verses are added to songs and beats conserved or modified to build
on the audiences’ familiarity with the original song while also extending it in new
directions to appeal to new listeners. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (2004) points
out that much creative art as well as technological innovation has been derived in this way,
and he advocates for a participatory remix process that might advance society in many
arenas. I suggest that science is such an area. Urban centers have historically been char-
acterized by social and cultural diversity, and currently that diversity is augmented not only
by immigration but also by increasing global connectivity and interdependence. While not
belittling the negative impact of neoliberal economic and political policies that are asso-
ciated with globalization, perhaps there are opportunities in globalization for recon-
structing the figured world of science to create a more just system of access to it. Thus,
science would be aligned with the idea of cosmopolitanism in which solidarity is fostered
through difference and not assimilation and sameness.
The question of how creolized science teaching in schools might reach outward and
contribute to change in the culture of science beyond the walls of schools is an important
one. The answer lies in understanding that change in science will not be immediate. By
recognizing science as a construct, we can envision the possibility of gradual (re)con-
struction of science through participation of ‘others.’ Using Sewell’s (1992) notion of
structure and agency as dialectically linked, science can be seen as (re)constructed through
participation in it, therefore changes in who takes up roles in the professions of science has
potential for transforming science.
Enhancing students’ ability to identify with school science is not a trivial endeavor.
We must consider how we can prepare teachers to effectively use their out-of-school
schema and practices to teach science in ways that create classroom collectives with
which marginalized students can identify in some way. Exploring the development of
identity hybridization, personally engaged pedagogy, and creolized science teaching can
perhaps help us to understand: the low number of non-dominant science teachers; the
relationship between this phenomena and the lack of success for non-dominant students

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Becoming a science teacher 31

in science; and the nature of the culture of science. Thus, there is great need for
research focused on the experiences of such teachers. It is important to understand not
only how we can encourage them as they become science teachers, but also to
understand how to afford the evolution of all teachers to be able to teach in ways that
use the multiplicity of their stories to engage students and to develop creolized ways of
science participation.
This is not to say that the cultural, racial, or ethnic backgrounds of teacher and students
must match, but rather that science teaching can exist in an array of creolized forms.
Unlike a monolithic view of science that often turns students away, experiencing science
with a teacher who enacts a multidimensional identity and a personally engaged pedagogy
(even if the teacher is from a different cultural background) creates a less rigid and
authoritative view of science, which welcomes students of all types who might otherwise
see themselves as outsiders. In a transnational, hybrid world, such science teaching may
play a part in countering race thinking and advancing the challenge of creating cosmo-
politans (citizens of the world). For it is only by widening the gates of science, and
admitting students of all populations and experiences, that there is hope of (re)configuring
science and fostering cosmopolitanism in and through science.

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Weiss, I., Banilower, E., McMahon, K., & Smith, P. (2001). Report of the national survey of science and
mathematics teachers. Chapel Hill, NC: Horizon Research.

Author Biography

Gale Seiler teaches science education as well as sociocultural theory as an associate professor at McGill
University in Montreal. Before obtaining her Ph.D., she was a high school science teacher for 16 years,
teaching in a variety of settings from Baltimore to South America. Her current research is school-based and
explores the teaching and learning of science among urban students from non-dominant groups and the
development of teachers who are able to work with students and parents from communities that are
marginalized. In 2005, Gale founded the Baltimore Freedom School, a summer program that is part of a
national Children’s Defense Fund initiative to empower African American youth.

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