Page 261 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

18 A Case Study of David, a Native Hawaiian Science Teacher 235

created persistent cliques in which institutional, discourse, and affinity identities were
crafted. She had two groups of friends with different educational backgrounds, but did
not feel she belonged with either group. Living in multiple worlds and performing
different identities in different social settings emerges as a strategy enabling the most
underrepresented individuals – female, Polynesian scientists – to navigate between and
within professional and community activity systems (Chinn 1998).
Seeing the power of teachers to construct identities for children (low achievers,
G/T, SPED) who then internalize them as their own identities motivated my transition
from classroom teaching to teacher education. Teachers needed knowledge and strate-
gies to move away from practices that reinforced ethnic and academic stereotypes that
advantaged some and disadvantaged others.

Introducing David

I met David through our participation in an environmental education cohort in the
1980s. In the 1990s I began to hear about David as an agent of change as a high-
school science teacher receiving students from his middle school. I had heard students
and teachers say that students from his school’s science program were better prepared
for high-school science than students from other middle schools. Since 1993, students
from his middle school had taken 3 years of science and his department’s science fair
activities, fund-raising, and annual 7th and 8th grade neighbor island science trips
were well-known among science teachers at other schools. My student Melissa
decided to explore student views and grades (Chinn 1997). Her study of Honors
Biology classes showed students from David’s school rated their science learning
significantly higher than peers from a school with similar demographics even though
their grades were statistically identical.
After I moved to the University and David entered the M.Ed. program, he decided
to take up Melissa’s study and extend it by evaluating his school’s science programs,
his practices, and student outcomes after they entered high school. His principal,
state science specialists, university faculty, and colleagues already recognized David
as an effective teacher. David was in the cadre of public school science teachers
tasked with developing K-12 science performance standards and had been to
American Samoa to share his culture, place, and standards-based middle-school cur-
ricula. He co-taught a place- and culture-based curriculum development course with
me. A few years after receiving his master degree in secondary science education,
David completed a master’s degree in administration and became a principal. He
currently is a personnel officer.

Methodology

Cultural historical activity theory implies the use of qualitative methods that enable
participants to explore and reflect on experiences they identify as contributing to
agency and decision-making. Research methods in this co-constructed case study