Investigating a Different Way: Critical Scientific Literacy
Helping multilingual students examine and talk about scientific informational texts is challenging. Proponents of content area literacy believe that students should use consistent literacy tools across content areas (Shanahan and Shanahan) In contrast, disciplinary literacy acknowledges that literacy strategies and disciplinary content are linked. Disciplinary literacy ties literacy instruction to the practices and habits of mind of those in the discipline (Fang and Coatoam) I argue that there is a third approach, in which teachers and students come together and use their status as "outsiders" to the science community to critically analyze scientific informational texts.To describe how students and teachers can use an assumed outsider status to critically reflect on science texts, I will first reflect on what is meant by science. James Paul Gee has examined what scientists "know" (28) He states: "The scientist's 'knowhow' is the ability to coordinate and be coordinated by constellations of expressions, actions, objects and people. In a sense, the scientist is both an actor (coordinating other people and various things, tools, technologies and symbol systems) and a patient (being coordinated by other people and various things, tools, technologies and symbol stems)" (28) Gee indicates that scientists are agent patients linked through elements such as language, objects, plans, and nonverbal practices. In response to this I wonder, "What about students or teachers who do not have input into the elements that link scientists together? What are their roles when reading scientific informational texts?" I suggest that teachers and students need to become observers and commentators who vocalize their experiences with science texts to report on relationships among scientists and how "science" is created. Under these conditions, teachers and students aren't focused on co creating meanings of science texts. They are instead commenting on how "science" itself is defined within texts. I call this form of literacy "critical scientific literacy." Within critical scientific literacy, individuals who do not have access to the expressions, actions, objects, or people within the field of science can assume the role of outsider. While scientists are agent patients (Gee) school age readers of scientific texts can be positioned as "outsiders."Using Critical Scientific Literacy to Analyze TextsTo encourage teachers and students to use this third approach (illustrated in Figure 1) I provide an example. A set of picture captions taken from a chapter called "Tropical Storms" in Weather is listed below (Cosgrove 45) Within the text, four adjacent pictures are presented at the top of the page. Each caption is presented under a separate picture (45):Day 1: Thunderstorms develop over the sea.Day 2: Storms group to form a swirl of cloud.Day 4: Winds grow; distinct center forms in cloud swirl.Day 7: Eye forms; typhoon is at its most dangerous.Day 11: Eye passes over land; typhoon starts to die.The teacher and the students analyze the text independently from each other before engaging in whole group discussion. During this stage of analysis students can work in small partner groups. Each group is instructed to think aloud about the text. Students can ask and answer a variety of questions during this time. These questions might include examples such as the following:1. What do you notice?2. What is a topic or idea mentioned in this piece? What sources are used to support this idea? Are different sources used to contradict this idea?3. Does the author's use of sources (or lack of sources) express an opinion of the topic/idea?4. Does the author talk about disagreement among scientists?5. How might scientists disagree about this topic or idea?6. What is your opinion?The value of asking students to do this lies not within the actual questions asked but within the role that students adopt through the process.