Connections.

Wolff-Michael Roth

Rowhea Elmesky

Penny J. Gilmer

Catherine Milne

 

Research Foci and Priorities

My personal research focuses on the teaching and learning of science in urban high schools and is set in the Bronx of New York City. The foci of my current research is on the ways in which science achievement and its fluent uses in social life are mediated by such factor as immigration, ethnicity, race, native language, gender, and social class. I am interested in the ways in which culture is produced, reproduced, transformed and hybridized to form creolized and canonical forms of science. Central to my project is the role of emotions and ways in which cogenerative dialogues can be used as fields of production that allow for improved science curricula and expand the range of outcomes and their applicability to the students’ lifeworlds.

In addition to my own personal research agenda, I have developed a network of research squads in New York City. I have two research squads that meet weekly. Each consists of 5 teacher researchers undertaking research in his or her own school, in collaboration with teachers in the school and high school students who serve as researchers. Two researchers in this group are situated in Philadelphia and we communicate weekly about their research using videoconferencing.

I have a research mentoring project that involves research squads based at universities in New York City—where assistant professors in the colleges of science and education collaborate with me to undertake research with teacher and student researchers in New York City schools (K-12). These research squads are located at Queens College (led by Sue Kirch and Sonya Martin), Hunter College (led by Karen Phillips), and New York University (Cath Milne). Less involved, but nonetheless associated with my mentoring activities are faculty at Brooklyn College (Konstantinos Alexakos) and Barnard College (Maria Rivera).

These activities are supported presently by my NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar award.

Finally, the research in urban schools—employing cogenerative dialogues, coteaching, and a theoretical frame and associated methods that are grounded in sociocultural theory—provide a basis for active collaboration with researchers in Canada (Wolff-Michael Roth), Ireland (Colette Murphy and Jim Beggs), New Zealand (Joanna Higgins), and Taiwan (Chao-Ti Hsiung).