Deep Knowledge: Learning to Teach Science for Understanding and Equity

Drawing the map, landmarks, and looking on the internal in learning to teach science in diverse classrooms.

Written for the original edition of the book but cut for space, this chapter is new to this 10th anniversary edition of Deep Knowledge. I present myself here in a fictional roundtable dialogue with the four fictional individuals, each representing and giving voice to a particular viewpoint regarding the practice and theory of science teacher education as we discuss the six cases in the book. Much appreciation to my colleagues Dr. Bryan A. Brown, Dr. tara Nkrumah, Dr. Enrique Suarez, and Dr. Greses Perez for joining me over Zoom for an evening to record this episode. The transcript for this chpater (with references) may be found here: https://www.montclair.edu/profilepages/media/3129/user/chapter8dialogicinterlude.pdf

My sophomore year of high school, I walked into my first chemistry class and everything simply clicked—the years of bathroom-laboratory experimentation, speculation about what the world was made of, and a general aptitude for science finally made sense. This is what I was meant to do, chemistry was my calling. — Roberta

"After a while I just get claustrophobic inside. That's the hardest part about being in a classroom every day" — Kathy

I’ve had to relearn and unthink some old ideas. In the physics realm I took some classes that were new, but I found my grasp of some of things that I supposedly knew wasn’t all that good. —Jethro