The science teacher as the organic link

ORI GIN AL PA PER

The science teacher as the organic link

Konstantinos Alexakos

Received: 14 February 2007 / Accepted: 14 February 2007� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Abstract This study began as an exploration of the following questions: What do indi-

vidual science teachers bring into their teaching that frames and mediates their teaching

philosophy and of what, if any, value is it in science education? Drawing from a life history

case study of Anna, an in-service science teacher, I show that her moral beliefs, percep-

tions, experiences, and interests dialectically frame and mediate her views of science

teaching. Anna brings into her classroom her personal philosophy of teaching and learning.

This is in contrast to studies concluding that different aspects of teachers’ personal phi-

losophies, such as their understanding of the nature of science and their behavior and

pedagogical decisions are not connected and may be neatly segregated from one another.

In the ‘‘transmission’’ [Transmission is presented in quotes because in this manuscript it is

used dialectically, as opposed to a one-directional and ‘‘objective’’ process. The science

teacher is not just a ‘‘lens’’ for the transmission of cultural capital; the cultural capital

‘‘transmitted’’ though Anna is seen as existing in a state of creation/recreation.] of cultural

capital, Anna embodies dialectical relationships and processes, not just as a mediator of

culture, but also as an organic entity that contributes to how culture is created, recreated

and exchanged in a science classroom, and as such, is referred to here as an organic link.

Science teacher identity and science teaching philosophy are thus seen as much closer to

the human experience—merging the intellectual, the personal, the cultural, the political,

and the environmental with the relationships and the processes that connect each to the

others and to the whole. They are viewed as, at once, being mediated by as well as

mediating one another. I argue that the total of what science teaching is exceeds the sum of

its commonly ‘‘measurable’’ parts, like content and pedagogical knowledge. Although

the designing and framing of this study was initially a life history investigation, a

Citation for this contribution: Alexakos, K. (2007). The science teacher as the organic link. CulturalStudies of Science Education, 2.

K. Alexakos (&)School of Education, Brooklyn College, City University of New York,2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210-2889, USAe-mail: [email protected]

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Cult Scie EduDOI 10.1007/s11422-007-9058-9

dialectical approach and analysis were found to be necessary to develop the theoretical

conceptualization of the emerging interwoven themes, illustrating how the researcher’s

own philosophy and development are dialectically intertwined with, and at once affect and

are effects of the research process and outcomes.

Keywords Science teacher identity � Dialectics � Organic link � Education �Culture � Social transmission � Cultural capital � Teaching philosophy

The purpose of this study was to explore several questions in science education not often

investigated or even considered: What factors do individual science teachers bring into

their teaching that frame and mediate their teaching philosophy and what, if any, conse-

quences do these have in science education? Through investigating the unique personal

aspects that frame and mediate Anna’s teaching philosophy, the research questions evolved

to include: What does a science teacher bring into the learning process that links the

science to her students? Furthermore, constructs, such as self-identity, initially viewed as

static, began to be analyzed and developed as dialectical processes, in part because of the

author’s own growth and the philosophical and ideological struggles to make sense of what

the data may represent. As a result of this struggle, developed here is recognition of the

science teacher as the organic link and what it implies.

Though Anna and I had known each other prior this study, it was only in passing. When

I first asked her to participate, I knew very little of her background or thinking; she just

seemed to be an interesting person. Anna is an only child who grew up with her parents in

Brooklyn. Her mother is Southern Asian and her father is of West European descent. She

had started in college as a nursing major, but soon dropped out of it (‘‘I had a nervous

breakdown, essentially’’). Given how unpleasant she found her first college experience to

be, she then decided to go to a more student-friendly university and major in environmental

science. Though she was not in an education major, and did not have teaching in mind, as a

college senior she interviewed for a teaching position at a private school in an affluent New

York suburb and, out of curiosity, when the job was offered, she took it. There, she taught

science and math to young children, from pre-nursery through fourth grade.

A year later, she moved back to Brooklyn where she taught science at a small private

school that was affiliated with the middle school that she attended as a youth. At this lower

school, she was the science and math coordinator, in charge of kindergarten through

fourth-grade science and math, teaching first- through fourth-grade science, and third- and

fourth-grade math. Anna was motivated to move not only by her desire to be closer to her

family and friends, but also by her interest to return to college and study in a graduate

science education program, which she completed within the time she was also teaching in

Brooklyn (2 years). From Brooklyn, because of the tragedy of 9/11 in New York City, she

moved to a suburb of the New York metro area where, for 1 year, she taught Advanced

Placement Environmental Science at a high school. It was in the summer of 2003, at the

end of these first 4 years of her teaching, that the main interview for this study took place.

Anna was 25 years old then. As a science teacher, she was certified to teach K-6 general

science, 7–12 biology, and 7–12 earth science in New York State. Interested in continuing

to learn, she was now taking classes in a science education doctoral program as well as

teaching. Faced with conflicts between how she was expected to teach and her own

personal beliefs, she decided that she was moving the next fall semester to a fifth school,

also suburban, teaching sixth- and eighth-grade science. Socio-economically, this study

K. Alexakos

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focuses on the life of a middle-class, female science teacher of mixed racial/ethnic

background, whose self-identity is further framed and mediated by her experience of

teaching mostly middle- and upper-class students, in private and public schools, in New

York City as well as in its surrounding suburbs.

Dialectics, organic link, and identity

This study explores relationships in Anna’s narrative between her self-identity and that of

culture, science, and society. The intent behind such a study was to go beyond the

appearance of what Anna seemed to be as a teacher, and instead try to capture the meaning,

the essence, of how who she is affects her teaching philosophy.

While analyzing the data, I found that the interconnections and processes between

self-identity, culture, and teaching philosophy arose as central to the questions being

investigated. It was then that the approach to the study was revised, from an initial purely

life-history method to seeing and analyzing her life story as enacted dialectically. That is,

what became apparent was that Anna’s sense of self, her experience, moral beliefs, pas-

sions, and teaching philosophy are directly interconnected with one another and must be

analyzed as such, so that the results more closely reflect what really exists.

As discussed later in this study, Anna’s teaching philosophy at once is both framed by,

as well as mediates her experiences and her own sense of self. I use the construct of

framing and mediating to more accurately describe a process where Anna’s experiences

and her own sense of self frame her teaching philosophy, and yet, in turn, her philosophy

continually shapes and reshapes, informs, influences, modifies and transforms her sub-

sequent experiences and reshape and transform her sense of self.

Dialectics

Adapting the term from Hegel, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed the dialectical

method as the scientific method as applied to the investigation of the natural laws of

social formations, especially in the relationship of production (Engels, 1972). Even more,

Engels argued, concepts in the natural sciences are often artificially simplified and

detached from each other. This has created a skewed habit of exploring processes in

isolation as discrete. A dialectical understanding on the other hand is interested in the

inner relationships of the particular to others and to the whole. In Anna’s narrative,

‘‘cause’’ and ‘‘effect,’’ and ‘‘framing’’ and ‘‘mediation,’’ are constantly interchanging

roles. The social bonds between Anna and her world became her connection to the

learning of science and its practices, as framed and mediated by her environment, sense of

self and her experiences. As part of these dialectic interconnections, she too is also seen

as the means of socially bonding, linking science and the culture of science to her

students. The science teacher as the organic link in science education has developed as a

result of such an understanding.

Cultural meanings are far too complex to be readily deciphered without such social

bonds being built (Scheff, 1990), and the teacher as the organic link becomes such an

intermediary vector. Organic link implies not some rigid, causal, deterministic teaching

philosophy, but a dialectical construct, having both social as well as personal components.

In such a dialectic relationship, the teaching philosophy is framed by human agency, but

human actions are then mediated by, as well as in turn frame, this philosophy. Far more


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than just a mediator of culture, Anna as an organic link is seen as creating and recreating

culture through her self-identity and through social bonding and capital exchange with her

habitus. Framing and mediation are not isolated and distinct from one another, but rep-

resent a Hegelian dialectical unity of theory and practice, purpose and process.

Identity

Although the concept of identity is central to this research, it is not an easy concept to

define or even describe. Much like working with the concept of energy in thermodynamics,

we may be able to say that people do one thing or another because of who they are, and we

may be able to describe some of their characteristics, but at the end, a definition of

‘‘identity’’ is far from complete. Socioeconomic, generational, and historical-cultural as-

pects, such as race, class, gender, and age, dialectically interweave and create a context in

which the observer and the observed are each situated, and these aspects draw meaning

from one another. Salient to how ‘‘science’’ is ‘‘transmitted’’ is that no two individuals

can approach teaching or learning in the same way. Whether it is experiencing or

understanding a particular situation or process, individuals approach it from a different

perspective, based on and mediated by their previous lives—what Schutz (1970) referred to

as ‘‘stocks of knowledge.’’ In investigating Anna’s self-identity and its role in framing her

teaching philosophy, her identity reflects not only what she reports but also her self-

understanding of who she is (Holland et al., 1998).

Initially, this study was shaped by science teachers’ professional identities. With regard

to identity and agency, Bianchini et al. (2000) view professional and personal views as

important to the practice of science teaching. Their study explores how a person’s sense of

self and personally held values and beliefs have influenced, mediated, and framed that

individual’s career choices and success in science-related careers. They view identity as

something very individual: ‘‘... our notion of identity—a multiple sense of self that is

constantly negotiated, socially positioned, constrained by ethnicity, race, and gender, and

morally grounded’’ (p. 514). As a result, they argue that professional developers must

‘‘... encourage science teachers and scientists to carefully and critically examine their

personal identities in interaction with their professional experiences’’ (p. 538).

While my research shows similar findings about identity in general, it further attempts

to integrate the concept of identity within science as a discipline, and with culture and its

‘‘transmission,’’ where culture mediates knowledge while the individual science teacher

mediates the transmission of such culture. Though data of interactions between Anna and

her students were not collected here, Anna’s narrative provides many reports concerning

her own development in science and teaching philosophy, which present a picture of the

role a teacher plays, that of the organic link. In trying to understand the meaning of these

interconnections and processes, Wolff-Michael Roth’s work on identity as a dialectic

became salient and strongly influenced my treatment of identity in this study. Identity thus

became viewed not as a stable feature, but dialectically as ‘‘continuously produced and

reproduced outcomes of activity’’ (Roth et al., 2004, p. 62).

While this study looks at identity as a socio-cultural construct, it does not dwell on its

psychological foundations, other than to emphasize that identity and the experience of it, is

very subjective, and that it describes and influences how we see ourselves as well as how

others see us. For this reason also, activity theory is not investigated here, even though

activity theory bases itself as well upon dialectical methods (Leont’ev, 1978) as does the

organic link construct.

K. Alexakos

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Cultural Capital

Bourdieu (1977) argues that the educational system perpetuates existing class and social

inequalities by ‘‘neglecting’’ to make universally available the instruments necessary for

equal chance of advancement for all. Since culture becomes the agent for the transmission

of knowledge, learning in school is hindered or encouraged depending on the cultural

capital the students themselves bring with them. Such cultural capital is described by

Bourdieu as being the learned cultural practices and processes, acquired, accumulated and

assimilated by individuals through exposure to their environments, and especially mediated

by their socioeconomic means (Bourdieu, 1986). Bourdieu further defined cultural capital

as existing in three forms. Salient to this study is the form he describes as its ‘‘embodied

state,’’ that ‘‘of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body’’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 243).

The concept of the organic link

The term ‘‘organic link’’ has had many common uses in everyday language, but has not

been fully developed theoretically. As a phrase, it can be found in many sources. Its use is

mostly to indicate that the agency responsible for the continuity of a process is human. A

search through multiple resources yielded the following examples: (a) In discussing Ed-

widge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!, Davis (2001) applied it to describe ‘‘how storytelling, which

educates people in imaginative history and community values, provides an organic link

between the past and the lives of the people in the present’’; (b) Discussing Dr. Martin

Luther King, Thomas (1993) wrote in the Amsterdam News: ‘‘As Professor Cornel West

has written, Dr. King was a prophetic Christian from the African-American church tra-

dition who also typified the intellectual with an organic link to the community. Dr. King

did not just study and talk about us: he ate, slept and lived with us, and ultimately he died

for all of us’’; and (c) when discussing Ronald Reagan becoming president, the BostonGlobe wrote ‘‘One person, who worked closely with Nixon for years, says pointedly that

the Nixon relationships with so many people here remain too close and too complicated.

Many of the Reagan people, for example, spring from the Nixon southern California group

and shared similar views. As he says: ‘There is an organic link between this coronation and

that beheading, if that’s what you want to call it.’’’ (‘‘Washington Post... [Electronic

version]’’ 1980).

Perhaps given its dialectical connotations, organic link is also found in Marxist litera-

ture. A search of the online Marxist Internet Archives database (http://www.marxists.org/

index.htm) returned several hits of its use in Marxist literature, as well as the more familiar

use of organic by Gramsci, as in the ‘‘organic intellectuals’’ (Gramsci, 1971).

While the theme of organic link may be expected to be found in anthropological

literature, the only mention of it (searching through electronic versions of journals in

anthropology) has been in a commentary by Levinson (1999) on educational discourse in

anthropology. He states ‘‘...it [educational discourse] would promote anthropology’s re-

newed engagement with some of the most pressing problems of democracy and public

policy, fostering organic links between our multiple roles as teachers, researchers, and

institutional actors.’’

My own background played an important role in the development of the ‘‘organic link’’

as a construct. Before teaching high-school science, I spent more than 10 years working in

the New York City subways as a subway car repairman. There, I found that while a lot of

learning happened (and was expected to happen) through doing, there were many useful


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http://www.marxists.org/index.htm

http://www.marxists.org/index.htm

and important ‘‘tricks’’ to be learned from fellow workers, not just about the work, but also

about the jog culture and etiquette. These individuals became invaluable ‘‘organic links’’

to my own learning and cognitive development (though I did not yet call it that), and I

sought them out as teachers.

More recently, while conducting the initial analysis of this study, I was also preparing a

separate manuscript on the Islamic Golden Age (Alexakos & Antoine, 2005). In it, I refer

to that special historical period as a crucial organic link connecting modern Western

science to that of the classic and ancient cultures. Soon I began to think of science teachers

in the same manner. I went back through the references I had used, but I could not find this

phrase anywhere, although I thought I had seen it in at least one of them. Some of these

authors wrote of that period as organically linking Western science with the past, espe-

cially Hellenistic culture and philosophy. What they meant by it is that Western philos-

ophers picked up valuable knowledge and skills directly from the Arab-Islamic scholars

themselves. This exchange of knowledge was personal and intimate, meaning that it was

passed from person to person through direct contact. J. Desmond Bernal in his monumental

four-volume work Science in History (1983) argues that, much more than the transmission

of Greek science, this direct ‘‘transmission’’ of the huge collection of stored knowledge of

Arabic-Islamic science, data, experiments, theories, and methods gave the sciences of

feudal Christendom a huge impetus to emerge from the Dark Ages. It was through this

process that my own thinking evolved into seeing science teachers as ‘‘organic links.’’

Culture, cognition, knowledge, and human interactions

As humans, we are born with the ability to think, to use tools, and to communicate through

images and signs, spoken, and written languages. Nevertheless, we have to acquire such

particular knowledge before we can make it our own. Such acquisition is only possible as

part of our interactions with our environment, including, especially, with each other. We

have differential meanings for concepts, and contextual meaning for words. Meaning and

cognition are also dependent upon spoken tone, body language, actions, and time (Alac &

Hutchins, 2004), contextual practices (Roth, 2004), as well as more subtle symbols such as

bodily experiences (Lindblom & Ziemke, in press). Cognition is deeply shaped by human

culture and has shaped our own evolution (Tomasello et al., 2005). Culture as applied to

this study, is not defined in the narrow sense of arts and literature alone, but by the entire

spectrum of human endeavors.

The cultural behaviors of even exceptional nonhuman animals are simple in comparison

to most social interaction and behaviors of humans (Alvard, 2003). According to Flinn

(1997), most theories of culture view it as the communication of information through a

social process. Major differences center on the extent of the influences on the selection of

cultural traits due to biological evolution of the human mind and vice versa, as well as in

the specifics of cultural transmission (Flinn, 1997). Jackson (1995) argues that the culture

of a particular people may owe its distinctiveness in the definition of the process itself, in

contestation with other cultures with which it is dynamically engaged. This study does not

ponder the many controversies and complexities surrounding culture and intelligence.

In line with the dialectical approach, culture is not seen as permanent or static. It is

viewed as arising out of specific social conditions and historical circumstances, with

culture and the social-historical environment continuing to exert pressures on one another

and evolving together, as they interact with each other. Dialectics is seen as the scientific

method applied to culture and society.

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Salient to this study is the issue of how stocks of knowledge and social bonds are

created through social interactions. Some possible paths of cultural ‘‘transmission’’

are from parents to their children, from many to one, or from one to many (Hewlett &

Cavalli-Sforza, 1986), as in the particular case of Anna, and, as argued from Anna’s

narrative, in a science classroom. Vygotsky (1978) in particular, argued that social inter-

actions are important in learning and the cognitive development of the learner.

Science in itself is a human activity (Bernal, 1983) that cannot be divorced from any

other human endeavor. Teaching and learning science are parts of human practice and

should also be defined as cultural practices (Calabrese Barton, 1998). Lemke (2001)

argues that a social-cultural perspective is needed in teaching and learning. Science

teachers are situated in society and its culture; they are born, raised, educated, and em-

ployed within it. In a review of studies on the culture of science and science as culture,

Franklin (1995) concludes with the observation that Western science would stand to gain

by reassessing science as a cultural practice. Kuhn, in his classic work, The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (1996), further argues that science and scientific research have to be

understood as human activities reflective of the era, culture, and scientific community in

which they were developed. Vygotskyan theory argues that children’s cultural develop-

ment is dependent on mastering the cultural means, and, once the children are biologically

ready, it is the environment that influences whether such acquisition is accomplished

(Vygotsky, 1994).

Teachers’ responses in the classroom draw from their personal beliefs and those beliefs

play a central role in shaping how they themselves learned (Bryan & Atwater, 2002). Tobin

and McRobbie (1997) found beliefs to be differentially enacted in the classroom, with

some having more of a role than others.

In a review of literature on beliefs, Pajares (1992) found many different aliases for the

word such as values and personal theories. Further complicating the definition of beliefs is

distinguishing between knowledge and beliefs. Pajares concludes that research findings

‘‘suggest a strong relationship between teachers’ educational beliefs and their planning,

instructional decisions, and classroom practices, although neither the nature of educational

belief acquisition nor the link to student outcomes has yet been explored carefully’’

(p. 326). He also argues that, ‘‘It is important to think in terms of connections among

beliefs instead of in terms of beliefs as independent subsystems...’’ (p. 327).

This present study explores how such beliefs may have been acquired and how they

influence Anna’s teaching philosophy and what she reports she does as a teacher. Fur-

thermore, it also explores her moral beliefs as reflected in her teaching philosophy. It does

leave unexplored the critical question of what inference may be made concerning her

reported beliefs and her actual teaching.

Further framing and mediating the research process

The life-history method (Goodson & Sikes, 2001) was used to collect the data for this study

because it offered a way of exploring the interconnections between culture, social struc-

ture, individual lives and beliefs, and science teaching. In addition, the philosophy of

narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) further helped frame the approach to this

research. While this is not a narrative inquiry study per se, in the sense that I did not follow

Anna through her day and share the ‘‘lived experience,’’ I, too, was a practicing high-

school teacher at the time. That helped greatly in this research—not only in terms of my

decisions but also in terms of ‘‘seeing’’ below the surface.


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Pilot surveys were initially conducted, adapted from Lortie’s work (1975) as well as the

work of others (Singapore-Teachers’ Training College Research Unit 1968). A survey was

then created to collect ideas and information from Anna. The responses were in writing.

When Anna and I met for an in-depth interview, she began by giving a general ‘‘non-

directed,’’1 open-ended overview of her life story, especially focusing on her science and

teaching experience and philosophy. How she told her story and to what detail was left

mostly up to her. I only interrupted her when I thought of a need to inquire further about a

particular event or theme she was describing. We then went over her written responses to

the survey for feedback on issues or themes that were not part of her initial ‘‘telling,’’ as

well as to cross-check and clarify any questions or issues. Following this initial meeting,

Anna and I had several shorter follow-up discussions. These included a second set of

written questions that dealt with some of the preliminary themes and findings, as well as

some new ones, such as the concept of the organic link.

Science teachers make decisions for reasons that may be invisible to the researcher and

perhaps to themselves as well. From its inception, this study’s focus was to explore

relationships between a science teacher’s teaching philosophy and her self-identity,

background, and development. I was more interested in science as seen within the context

of human culture, especially how Anna’s life story frames and mediates a specific cultural

activity, the teaching of science. The mind-images of Anna presented during this study are

seen as transitional and fluid. Discussed are those images and their impact on the theory of

‘‘transmission’’ of knowledge in science education, so that what we understand about

teaching may be closer to what actually takes place.

Theoretical coding was used to create the initial trees and general categories around

which I began to organize ideas emerging from the data, such as early childhood expe-

riences with science and math, personal morals, and teaching philosophy. I then selected

questions that further focused on the personal aspects of science teaching, and what

individuals bring into it. I was surprised by the degree of personal influence in the teaching

of science, and found it necessary to pursue a much deeper exploration into what an

individual teacher brings to her teaching, and what may be communicated and exchanged

in the classroom. Anna views her act of teaching as very intimate and having personal

purpose and meaning. Throughout her interview, there is a sense of personal interest and

enjoyment in what she does. The themes discussed here may also account for what

sometimes is seen as ‘‘the teacher making the difference,’’ especially when comparing

similarly ‘‘qualified’’ science teachers.

The data analysis led this research to directions not originally anticipated. It became

necessary to change the method of the analysis to a dialectical one in order to get a more

dynamic understanding of what the concept of ‘‘organic link’’ represents, and how,

the many seemingly distinct aspects of Anna’s life affected her perceived teaching phi-

losophy and sense of what teaching and learning is about.

In gathering, interpreting, synthesizing and presenting my ‘‘findings,’’ I found that

Margaret Eisenhart’s ‘‘On the Subject of Interpretive Reviews’’ (1998), had a strong

influence in my decisions. That is, I asked myself, what in Anna’s story might have been

missed due to biases (mine as well as hers)? What is it about why a person becomes a

science teacher that has not yet been considered? What might be some insights in cir-

cumstances and motives that not only would startle and interest the reader, but could also

further enhance and advance the debate around educational policy, teaching, and learning?

1 In quotes because she was already familiar with the purpose of the interview.

K. Alexakos

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This research has two major weaknesses: It is based on interviews of Anna alone, and

the interviews were not framed in a dialectical approach, because that understanding came

much later. Furthermore, because this is a life-history study of how Anna forms her science

teaching beliefs, it includes some of the social interactions in her life that have played a

role in the development of her teaching philosophy, but as she reports them, not as they

were otherwise experienced and ‘‘witnessed.’’ No claim is made about the accuracy of the

events, circumstances, or motives Anna describes. Her story exists without any other

record, such as classroom observations or interviews with her parents. As such, I treat her

narrative for what it is—a story told to me within the structure of an interview by an

individual about her own life—and, as such, made up of recollections, interpretations, and

personal perceptions of motives and events in her life—not ‘‘objective’’ truths. I keep in

mind that the interview artificially reduced years of her life to a few pages of typed

transcript. Unlike statistical analysis where something ‘‘pure’’ and ‘‘objective’’ is sought,

in life history it is expected that the stories collected are subjectively composed of con-

structed memories, self-perceptions, and self-representations (Middleton, 1993). To check

the trustworthiness of what was being conveyed to me, I asked different questions at

different times, often months apart, on the same themes, initially starting with a written

survey and an in-depth interview, followed up with oral and written questions. The only

times I noticed a change in the answers were when the questions concerned events in the

relative present, such as a recent issue, while a few months later, other events may have

transpired, greatly lessening the importance and memory of that earlier encounter.

Teaching practices

That teaching may be seen as subjective is not new, as many individual aspects have been

investigated and written about—e.g., Bryan and Abell (1999). While the teacher is seen as

an individual and the teaching is seen as subjective, who that person is, and what influences

her or his ‘‘being,’’ are commonly taken as non-variables. Studies concerning science

teachers often fall into this contradiction. A given study, as an example, may look into how

‘‘subject’’ science teachers see themselves after a summer apprenticeship engaged in

‘‘standard scientific processes.’’ Although their actions are ‘‘analyzed,’’ missed is that

these teachers are human and as such are very complex. Teacher qualities, who the teachers

are, the motives and circumstances that brought them into teaching, and how their back-

grounds, motivations, and interests mediate their teaching, are rarely discussed in debates

on science reform (van Driel et al., 2001). It is not just that these personal/subjective

aspects are not investigated, as a given study may have other foci, but more that the

salience of these personal/subjective aspects is not even acknowledged. Science teachers as

‘‘subjects’’ are thus treated no differently than inanimate data.

Teaching practice entails bringing knowledge and wisdom accumulated throughout a

teacher’s life into the classroom (Roth & Tobin, 2002). Anna’s story demonstrates this as

well. Though there has been some movement towards involving the teachers in designing

curricula, this is not the norm. In a New York Times article for example, Traub (2002)

describes how some of these reforms, like ‘‘Success for All’’ and ‘‘Core Knowledge,’’

work. Teachers are specifically told what to teach, how to teach it, and what topic to be on

during any given minute of their class time. That is, there is an attempt to teacher-proof the

curriculum and de-professionalize teaching.

To counter and even repress the ‘‘subjective’’ teacher qualities, there have been de-

mands to homogenize the teaching practice—especially through the use of assessment, by


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testing the teachers directly, as well as through testing their students. As a result, there

seems to be a rather patronizing undertone that curriculum developers and politicians (who

typically are divorced from day-to-day teaching, and possibly acquainted with very little

science themselves) know what is best. These also include scientists too consumed by their

purity of scientific knowledge, but with little if any pedagogical experience and under-

standing. In contrast, Schwab (1960) argues that teaching science as a static collection of

facts and truths is antithetical to what science is and how it should be taught. Who science

teachers are, what they think, or what they can offer is often either ignored or viewed

negatively, partially explicating the movement towards absolute homogeneity and testing.

Pajares (1992) argues that new teachers tend to hold on to their prior beliefs to which they

are strongly committed, and therefore investigating such beliefs should become an

important focus of educational research.

While all kinds of individuals may go into science teaching, I believe that many, if not all,

because of the connections they have to science, can make positive contributions in their

classrooms. Given that in science one size does not fit all (Schwab, 1960), why should the

teaching of it also not incorporate the variety of approaches and interests in science? Largely,

this study emerged in response to the forces that downplay the importance of what science

teachers bring into their teaching. My premise is that to understand science teaching, we need

to understand the teaching philosophies of the teachers in the context of their life stories.

This study is an investigation as to what frames and mediates Anna’s teaching philos-

ophy. Therefore, her personal interests, morals, and passions, and how these have affected

her beliefs and decisions, are important in this study. In a collection of that type of historical

information, Anna’s narrative becomes essential and necessary. Hers is a very rich story—

worth listening to, analyzing, and learning from, as I expect many science teachers’ lives

are. While it is possible that there is a dichotomy in what Anna says, thinks and practices, I

believe that her reasons for teaching and her teaching philosophy provide critical insights

into teaching habits and professional development issues for all science teachers.

Anna’s self-identity, experience, and teaching philosophy

Several interconnected themes arise out of her narrative that make up what I have come to call

the ‘‘personal/subjective aspects of science teaching’’ that frame and mediate Anna’s deci-

sion to teach as well as her teaching philosophy. These aspects include moral beliefs, motives,

outlooks, expectations, and prior experiences in teaching and learning science. While they are

discussed separately here, the separations are not natural ones, as each is dialectically

interconnected with the others and has full meaning only when viewed collectively with the

rest, and hence why they need to be analyzed and synthesized dialectically.

Teaching decisions

Anna reminisces about her background and, in particular, how she learned science (and

math) when she discusses her science-teaching philosophy. She reports that, for her, what

learning science means is framed by her childhood learning experiences with her many

pets, lab projects, and manipulatives. Her father’s attention, playful personality, and

personal interests had a deep effect on what Anna did then, and continue to mediate her

decisions today. While her father had not completed high school, she considers him quite

smart and capable, and someone who did not allow his limited academic experience to hold

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her back. He strongly encouraged her to pursue science and provided her with opportu-

nities as a child to explore, whether it was with little creatures, pets, chemistry, or the stars

in the night sky. They both had fun, and this continued even after she began primary

school. Being involved in science became not only a means to connect with her father, but

according to her, also an escape from what she considered the drudgery and boredom of her

daily school life.

My father likes to play a lot. I call him Peter Pan. He hasn’t quite grown up, and as a

result, everything that was fun to me was fun to him. He knew that I liked science

from a very early age, and I loved to read. When I was two I was reading and

talking...and writing, and so my father had me reading a bunch of stuff. As a result,

we ended up having pretty much a farm in our apartment in Brooklyn. I had ducks, I

had a squirrel at one point, I had sparrows that I found on the floor that were

damaged and what have you; he let me bring them home.

Anna recalls that the desire to share similar experiences with other children was a very

powerful motivator in her accepting her first teaching position. In her senior year in

college, while Anna was applying to Wall-Street-type firms, a small private elementary

school in an affluent New York suburb unexpectedly contacted her to teach science and

math to its younger students. As she saw it, it would have allowed her to teach children

math and science in a style similar to her own fondly remembered childhood experience.

She felt this would therefore be something she would greatly enjoy doing, unlike a job in

the business sector, where she felt she would be miserable:

The Hamptons, you know, have this mystique about it, elegance, and it’s so into

nature. The school itself, it was on a farm, so the way the school was situated was

that it was five different buildings; the first building was the farmhouse, and the rest

of them were add-ons, so it started out as a farm, and turned into a schoolhouse, then

turned into a school. And they still did, like, potato farming in the fall, like as a joke,

but everybody picked their potatoes and whatever else, and the beauty of the position

was that I was given free rein to develop my own science curriculum from pre-

nursery through fourth grade...

And it was great; the kids loved it. We did everything outside that we could because

we had so much to work with. We had fields. There were ponds nearby, you know.

There was the ocean five blocks away. We could do weather, planting—I mean, you

name it, we had a farm, we had sheep, and one of my jobs was to take care of the

sheep and the goats and chickens and all that kind of stuff. So I fed them; for me it

was like heaven.

An illustration of the various interconnections that influence what Anna does is that despite

how much she loved teaching at this school, Anna began to feel lonely and isolated being

away from her friends and family, so she moved back to New York City. Feeling that she

needed to improve her teaching, she also begun attending graduate school.

The middle school that Anna had attended was starting a lower school. She took a job there

as science and math coordinator in charge of kindergarten through fourth-grade science and

math, and teaching the first- through fourth-grade science program and third- and fourth-grade

math. As with choosing to teach in the Hamptons, Anna’s own interests, past experience, and

moral beliefs helped frame and mediate her decision and her teaching philosophy:

So when I had the opportunity to teach math, I loved it because I was able to—I like

to be really creative, I like to draw, and I like to think of stories and all that kind of


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stuff, so teaching to, like, fourth-graders or third-graders was such an awesome

experience, and I don’t mean ‘‘awesome’’ like ‘‘wow’’; I mean like really heavy,

weighted on me just because I realize that what I give them now, they’re going to

take with them for the rest of their lives. And if they don’t get a good, sound basis of

mathematics skills now, it’s going to hurt them—be detrimental to them later on in

the future. And so I try to make math fun, because math was fun for me. And so we

always did lots of word problems. I hardly used the textbook. I did like, you know,

drills, maybe five minutes a day, just to see like where they were with multiplication

skills or addition and subtraction, but in general, it was all about problem-solving.

Because, it just seemed to click with me and with the kids and it made it more fun. So

we went to, like, the supermarket a lot. Any excuse that I could get to get out of the

building, I used, because the building was really boring; it was a mansion, and the

class was really small. So if I could bring them to the park and, like, count things and

make word problems out of that, more power to you. You know, like, I was all over

it. So math has always been something that I enjoyed.

Gender, race/ethnicity, and moral beliefs

Anna describes herself as very approachable. ‘‘I’m very personal,’’ she says. ‘‘My family

is very diverse, which has always made me want to be approachable and involve others.’’

However, she does not report as always being so. Anna’s early childhood school experi-

ence provided her with encouragement, but also discouragement, at times leaving her

feeling intimidated. Due to her diverse cultural and racial background, there were no other

students who looked like her in her neighborhood or her school. Anna’s mother was

protective of her daughter, and did not allow Anna to wonder outside the house on her own.

For Anna, being isolated from children her age meant spending more time doing activities

with her father. Due to her strong dislike of the primary school, when Anna was about to

enter fifth grade, her parents enrolled her in another private school:

I wasn’t social, shall I say. And I didn’t really like the kids in my neighborhood; they

made fun of me because I looked different. You know, when I went to [private

elementary school] class, and what have you, they often told me I looked Chinese

and tried to speak to me in different languages that didn’t apply to me at all. And so,

at the time I actually spoke English, I had no clue as to what my mother spoke, and

so I kind of isolated myself from my neighborhood kids...

A valuable yet unanticipated finding of this study was that of the science teacher as a moral

agent whose purpose and agenda transcends the classroom and the content taught. As Anna

explores issues in science and society, she does so because and through her personal views

and moral beliefs of right and wrong. Her teaching philosophy is imbued and framed with

moral beliefs and passions, and these in turn mediate her reasoning and decisions. She is

passionate in preparing her students for success with skills that will last past their

immediate classroom experience, help them develop a sense of self-efficacy, and motivate

them to explore and develop their own values regarding social issues. Social issues and her

moral beliefs frame and mediate her teaching philosophy greatly:

My mom comes from [a country in southern Asia] and when I went [there], it is so

crowded. And the pollution is so high and there are so many people in poverty—

having witnessed it, not just read it—and having seen the effects of religion and the

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reason why so many people don’t use birth control, because, you know, they believe

in Roman Catholicism and, you know, it’s against the rules and whatever else, and

then watching those people who you know have premarital sex get pregnant and have

the children as opposed to choosing all their options, and watching people die or

starve of hunger, watching my uncles sell newspapers on the street and live in shanty

towns, visiting my grandmother who didn’t have running water... All of those things

just seem so important to me... all that kind of stuff is interesting, and how do I

handle it in class? I talk about it, like I don’t know, I’m one of those teachers where I

believe like as long as I tread through that very fine line of like gray where you’re not

too extreme in one way or the other, you can have conversations with students where

you’re not imposing your beliefs on them, you’re just merely asking them to question

theirs. Like to think about what they think.

The subject of what would be a proper relationship between her as a teacher and her

students is deeply influenced by her own negative experiences as a student in eighth and

eleventh grades, as well as rumors concerning one of the teachers she replaced. She is not

interested in listening to student gossip, like who is dating whom, but she is very interested

in learning which students may have a problem at home, who needs a little bit of extra

help, or whose game to attend to show her support:

I think it’s because of my age, I think because of gossip. I think, specifically, when I

worked in high school, because the position I walked into was one that the teacher

who had just been asked to leave had been known for having personal relations with

her students, or at least rumors of, really caused me to have to take a step back. And

my personality isn’t like that. If, you know, I’m far more motherly, and I think that

an eleventh- or twelfth-grader can mistake that for something else, so I couldn’t be

the person I am with them because it wouldn’t be appropriate. Working with younger

kids, you can show that kind of concern, you know, and if a kid gives you a high five

at the end of the day, it’s like, it’s okay. But if an eleventh- or twelfth-grader, or like

a hug, but an eleventh- or twelfth-grader gives you a hug at the end of the day, that’s

not okay. And so, you know, I think the way how you are as a teacher also depends

on which level you teach.

Anna’s comments above illustrate the problems that sometimes arise concerning what is a

proper relationship between the student and the teacher. Not only is it important for

teachers to avoid being seen as having inappropriate contact with their students, but also

the internal conflicts that teachers experience as to how close they can be with their

students. One such conflict is the experience she reports she had in the eighth grade, with

the science teacher who she felt was freaky, and about whom there were rumors of having

inappropriate contact with his female students. Anna tried to stay away from him, and it

further contributed to her declining school science performance. She did not do as well as

she felt she could have done in that class, especially because this teacher, notwithstanding

the rumors, seemed to teach the science material well. She also reports a second instance in

which the attitude of the teacher had a negative effect on her science self-efficacy and

course choices. This is when her physics teacher told her she should not be in his AP

physics class, although after Anna took regular physics with him, he admitted to her that

she could have successfully taken the AP class after all.

It is not surprising then that respect is a big part of what Anna believes is necessary for

good teaching. She feels that by gaining students’ respect, and by showing interest in who

they are, her students will in turn be more willing and inspired to learn:


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You know, a lot of teachers, you walk in, you see a list of class rules, even if they’re

written by the students, they’re like ten—like a constitution or something, or

whatever—ten laws to abide by. But mine is, one rule is respect, and I leave it up to

the students to decide what that means. And in the end, they realize that it means

everything. So when they ask—you know, I talk with students, they’re like, ‘‘Well,

what are your classroom rules?’’ I say, ‘‘One word: respect.’’ And they all look at

me and I say, ‘‘You decide what that means.’’ And they say, ‘‘Great, so we

understand it’s everything under the sun.’’ And from the beginning, I think when

you’re creating classroom management, you need to have your students realize that

you are—well, it depends on who you are, but for me, I’m flexible and I’m under-

standing, but I’m not to be taken advantage of, and I’m approachable, but not too

approachable, and I let my students know up front that’s the way I am.

Being a learner

Issues of boredom and interest in what she does are integral in her decisions to become and

remain a science teacher. Anna feels that she does have a choice in what she does for work.

She chooses science teaching because this is what she is interested in doing. Therefore,

preserving and further developing this interest is vital to her.

Anna is a strong believer in her own formal education, which may explain the passion

about learning that she brings to her teaching. Continuing to learn is a major part of who

she is and who she wants to be. Learning is valued on a personal level as well as in her

students, and it seems to be strongly imbedded in, and inseparable from who she is and

what she considers important. She feels that she thrives in educational environments,

where there is structured time for learning, and cannot imagine herself no longer taking

courses, even after she finishes her doctoral degree. She continues to see herself as an

active learner, continually growing intellectually along with her students. Expressing the

teaching philosophy, moral values, and beliefs that she brings into her teaching, she says:

But as a science teacher, who I am, I would have to say the one thing that has remained

constant and flowed from the very beginning to today and probably will continue on is

that I’m a learner... I have always liked to learn and I constantly like to learn new

things. And I think that what I bring to science teaching is that I don’t just give up

where the textbook ends or where the chapter or questions start you know, at the back

of the book. For me, it’s where is this coming from, and why is [it] coming, and where

is it going? And I think that in thinking of myself as a learner I like to impose that—

not in like a strong way, but make my kids think about themselves as learners. As

opposed to being passive learners, I want them to be active learners. And I identify

myself with doing things, not just letting them come. And so if I’m going to identify

myself as an active learner and a doer, then I need to have my kids be the same way,

and that’s what I bring when I walk into the classroom, is the drive to get my kids to

want to actively find out something for themselves and not just be something that

they’re expecting to get from me because I’m standing at the front of the room.

Eight months after that statement, Anna re-emphasized that her goal in promoting active

learning has not changed. This includes preparing her students to deal with science issues

inside the classroom as well as outside. When asked to respond in writing to the question:

‘‘What does it mean to be a science teacher?’’ Anna wrote:

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That’s a hard question. I see myself as a person who is there to help my students

learn about science. I am a learner along with my students, looking for answers to our

questions using as many materials readily available. However, not only am I there to

learn with my students, but I am there to learn for myself. To help be a guide to their

learning, and promote their abilities to be active in the classroom so that they will

have the skills to find answers to their questions not just in my classroom, but in

other subjects and outside of the formal academic environment as well. In addition,

as a science teacher, it is my responsibility to work with teachers from other subjects,

keep connected to my students’ learning outside of my own classroom.

Clash between personal and professional

Anna’s approach to teaching is the result of many interconnected factors and causes, not all

positive. Anna had an assured, self-confident approach to science and mathematics before

primary school. However, by the twelfth grade, she had changed how she felt about school

science. Her negative experiences in science during her middle-school years, and then

again during eleventh-grade physics, weakened her self-confidence in her own abilities in

science, which she feels affected her decision later on not to concentrate in pure science,

like physics.

In her first college choice as a nursing major, her chemistry class (used as a weed-out

class) played the role of destroying her self-efficacy to the point that she dropped out and

returned home in tears. She recalls that these experiences taught her how science should

not be taught. When Anna moved back to the suburbs following the 9/11 disaster in New

York City, she worked as a teacher of three sections of AP environmental science. The

class size was too large for the type of classes they were, and she found herself having to

‘‘weed out’’ students. She feels that the experience of having to do that was similar to the

negative experiences she had had as a student, and so she looked for another job:

... I took it seriously and I managed to scare eighteen students to drop the classes

within the first two weeks, which I’m not really proud of because I don’t think the

students should be scared out of leaving but they just didn’t want to do the work, and

so they left... And so there was really no happy medium, I was bouncing all over the

place, trying to find ways to get all of these students excited about it without boring

some and without going too far ahead of others, which I suppose is what happens in

normal classrooms, but I had an AP to prepare them for at the end of the year and I

felt the pressures of administration, they wanted to see higher class scores, blah, blah,

blah. And I found that a little stressing. And the school just wasn’t for me, I didn’t

like the school culture, you know, their belief was to scare every kid out of your

class, drop it down so there are fifteen kids in your course. Then with that happening

to me when I was in physics, I didn’t feel comfortable doing that, I didn’t feel proud

doing that... You know, it just wasn’t for me, essentially. And I missed the hows, the

whys, the whats, the how comes, all that kind of stuff that I used to get from teaching

little kids... and just reminiscing about all the things that I really enjoyed about it. I

just wondered to myself, why am I doing this?... So I applied for a new position.

Since she enjoys and prefers teaching younger students, Anna decided to leave the high

school where she taught the AP class. For the following school year, she was now planning

to teach middle-school science. Her decision was also influenced by her belief that as a


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teacher she could have a greater impact on the thinking of students at a younger age. Here

again we see how her beliefs and interests frame and mediate her teaching philosophy:

I, the reason why I took this sixth- through eighth-grade position for next year is

because I still get to teach environmental science and I’ll be teaching electricity and

technology and physics... I just, I don’t feel like science should be isolated as its own

subject; I think science should be combined with other things, and I think one of the

beauties of science is that you can combine it with math, you can combine it with

English, you can combine it with history. And I think that job of the teacher is to

make it relevant to the student, not just make it something that they’re learning one

period a day. I think that it’s supposed to connect to other things that they’re learning

about...

Though becoming a teacher was unplanned for her, Anna does not regret her decision, and

is glad that she is teaching science. Several months past the initial in-depth interview, she

reports being especially pleased about the social aspect of educating her students and

continuing as a learner herself. Again, we see the personal aspect of her teaching

philosophy:

As of now, I want to continue teaching science. I enjoy it, I like the topic, and every

year, I welcome the challenge of finding new ways to teach a topic and work with the

chemistry that exists within my classroom. I truly enjoy establishing a culture of

learning and comfort in my class and just being an active learner with them.

Personal constructs and the organic link

The initial objective of this study was to explore the personal themes of Anna’s teaching

philosophy, and the consequences such themes may have to science education. Anna’s

story demonstrates that teaching science is a very personal and distinct construct. Her

interest and passion for science (including math) were activated and sustained by her

experiences and social interactions, especially her family, from early on in her life. She

was drawn to teaching because of the similarities of her first teaching position to that early

experience, and because she saw teaching as potentially creating similar experiences for

her students. As a science teacher, Anna reminisces of such life experiences and reports

that they continue to influence how she teaches. She says for example, that because of her

love for animals and nature, ‘‘Environmental science always finds its way into the

classroom.’’

Anna’s teaching philosophy is imbued and guided with moral beliefs and purpose for

what she cares about. She feels that she needs to deal with social issues like pollution and

poverty in her classroom and is driven by a deep desire to improve the science education of

children. As a teacher, she reports sharing such interests and passion with her students.

Experiences of conflicts and friction, such as those she experienced as a child of mixed

race, as a female student, or just as a science student, have contributed to her expectations

of what proper behavior and respect is in a school environment. She reports respect for

others as being first on the list of what she expects in her classroom, and feels very strongly

that as a teacher she needs to create environments that encourage all of her students to learn

and succeed. When Anna finds that the conflict is too strong between who she sees her self

being and what she is asked to do as a teacher, as in the case of AP Environmental Science

class, it causes her to re-evaluate what she does and if she wants to it.

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Anna has developed an intimate understanding of what science is to her, through her

own and very individual circumstances, interests, and exploration of nature and human

culture (and its educational structures) and these frame and mediate her decisions as a

learner, as a science teacher and as a member of society. She reports for example, that she

works hard to convince her students that school and learning are worth them investing their

time and effort, and she takes their success in learning personally.

Being the organic link

Why, how, what, and where she teaches continue to be framed and mediated by who she is

and who she sees herself as being, while at the same time who she is continually framed

and mediated by these experiences. Her self-identity, therefore, is not static but part of a

very complex process, dialectically interwoven with and transformed by her life’s path. It

is described as dialectic because the personal themes and processes discussed above are

interconnected with and dependent on each other and to the whole. They are viewed as, at

once, framed by as well as framing, mediated by as well as mediating one another. For

example, how she says she likes to teach has been influenced by her self-identity and

interests, her experiences as a woman of mixed race, by her family, by her childhood and

college experiences, and her experience as a teacher. However, each one of these has also

been influenced and is connected to the others. Her exposure to and her emotions towards

science early on for example, were influenced and framed by her isolation, her own

personal interests, her father’s interests, and her experience with schooling.

Through dialectics, the transformations and developments of this individual are viewed

as a part of the dialectical concept of self—not senseless or as if they exist in isolation. In

the socio-cultural context of her life story, Anna is seen as dialectically developing, rec-

reating, and passing on moral beliefs, values, and knowledge—as well as the processes and

complexities of creating and recreating such knowledge. As such, Anna is not simply a

cultural mediator, but an organic participant in the creation and recreation of what is

understood as science culture. Through the construct of the organic link, I seek to define

identity as much closer to the human experience—merging the personal, the cultural, the

political, and the environmental relationships and processes. The organic link is framed

and mediated by and through a dialectical process; thus it, too, continues to evolve.

Cultural capital redefined

Like Bourdieu’s ‘‘cultural capital in the embodied state’’ (p. 243), the organic link is

situated with this individual who acquires her capital through participating in her envi-

ronment, especially her family and schooling, and who as a science teacher is in turn

positioned to ‘‘transmit’’ her personally accumulated cultural capital through her inter-

actions with her students. Transmission came to be presented in quotes because as the

study progressed, Anna was seen as being more than just a ‘‘lens’’ or ‘‘mediator’’ for the

‘‘transmission’’ of cultural capital. Instead, the cultural capital she ‘‘passes on’’ is viewed

as existing in a state of creation/recreation (and thus framed) by her self-identity inter-

connected with her experiences. Thus, the organic link as it pertains to Anna is a dialectical

expression of this ‘‘embodied state.’’ That is, Anna’s cultural capital is framed and med-

iated by her interactions with her habitus and by her sense of self. Anna is an active organic

participant in the complexities of its creation and recreation, and how it is ‘‘passed on.’’


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Redefining the research process

Reading through the literature on science education, one could easily miss how complex are

the lives and decisions of science teachers participating in a given study and how interre-

lated and interconnected these prior lives and self-identities may be to what is being ob-

served. Early on in this research, it became apparent that the personal aspects of Anna’s

teaching philosophy and the interrelationships and connections they have with her life

experiences and views of what science is could not be explored as distinct and isolated from

one another or from who Anna was/is. Dialectical thinking was found to be necessary as part

of understanding the process and the interconnections of the ‘‘different’’ individual vari-

ables that are part of the whole in order to gain a more dynamic interpretation and under-

standing of who science teachers are and what they bring to teaching. The ontology of this

study had to change from one where individual aspects were seen as a collection of disparate

and isolated events and processes to one where these are interwoven and complex—not

simply cause and effect. Anna’s teaching philosophy, interests, and passions are not seen as

senseless and unimportant, but as parts of an important transitional and developing process.

In order to achieve an analysis and synthesis of the many variables involved in the

teaching of science, the author had to develop a philosophy drawing from his own life

experience of how learning is done, what is ‘‘transmitted,’’ and what such ‘‘transmis-

sions’’ may imply. This illustrates how the researcher’s own philosophy and development

are dialectically intertwined with, and at once affect and are effects of the research process

and outcomes.

What, if any, value is this study to science education?

Anna is the organic entity through which her students are linked to science and the culture

of science as defined and portrayed by her. She brings her prior ‘‘life’’ and experiences into

her teaching. It is through such social interactions that Anna herself became acquainted

with and passionate about science, and it is ‘‘through’’ her—including her lived experience

as framed and mediated by her own identity—that her students now also socially bond to,

link to, science. She becomes the continuity for her own vision of scientific knowledge,

based on her learning and experience of science, her impressions of how knowledge is

created, her morals, and her passions. This study shows that identity is not an entity that

can stand alone, with independent characteristics, but a dialectic construct that needs to be

explored across multiple fields and systems of activities and processes if it is to be better

understood.

This emerging construct of the science teacher as the organic link of science knowledge

and science culture, places the science teacher as a live, connecting ‘‘link’’ to the cultural

development of the student, especially pertaining to the inner dynamics of science. Organic

link implies that the teaching practice and experience is grounded in the life and values of

the instructor, who in turn creates and recreates, frames and mediates such expertise for her

students. As a concept, it finds a fuller expression in apprenticeships, especially in the blue-

collar trades, where new workers are introduced, coached, and mentored into becoming

master craftspeople (and which student-teaching tries to emulate). This is much in

agreement with Roth and Middleton’s (2006) argument that there is a whole range of

utilized resources deployed within person-to-person transactions and that, therefore, these

resources need to be taken into account so as better to understand what constitutes

knowledge and learning.

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Anna’s teaching philosophy and actions are framed by her experiences and under-

standings, and personal beliefs and values, all in a dialectical interplay. In her study of how

science teachers thought of subject matter, Helms (1998) as well found that teachers felt a

sense of personal identification with science: ‘‘In my view, the self comes not just from

what a person does, or his or her affiliations, but also from what a person believes, what a

person values, and what a person wants to become’’ (p. 812). My study contributes further

to her argument by exploring the life history of a science teacher and connecting it to her

present philosophy. Throughout her narrative, Anna often elucidates and details this inti-

mate relationship between her past experiences, the influence of her teachers, and the

development of her science-teaching philosophy. This is in contrast to studies concluding

that different aspects of teachers’ personal philosophies, such as their understanding of the

nature of science and their behavior and pedagogical decisions are not interconnected and

may be neatly segregated from one another. Norman Lederman and his colleagues, for

example, argue that ‘‘teachers’ knowledge of the nature of science does not necessarily

influence their behavior and pedagogical decisions’’ (Lederman et al. 1998, p. 507). We

see that Anna’s decisions of where to teach, to how and what to teach are very intimately

interconnected. It is through her story that we begin to see just how the moral beliefs and

interests of this individual frame and mediate her feelings and actions concerning science

learning and teaching, and the role they play in the development of her teaching

philosophy.

It is, therefore, not enough for a teacher to be knowledgeable in pedagogy, subject

content, and methods. As Anna’s story demonstrates, science teaching is not just about

communicating science knowledge or the transfer of just culture capital; also important is

to promote and stimulate a desire in the learners beyond the content at hand. This latter

point should be understood as being the ‘‘passion’’ that comes with the individual science

teacher, a passion that can be seen or felt when that individual teacher presents a particular

science subject or topic. Zembylas (2004) argues that teacher emotions in a science

classroom help shape learning. Also salient is the argument by Collins (2004) in reference

to interaction ritual theory that through natural emotional entrainment participants

become naturally charged up—pumped up by the act of sharing the excitement together,

such as at a live concert or a sporting event. In a science classroom, science teachers have

many opportunities for spreading excitement about discovery, knowledge, and nature.

Olitsky (2007) suggests that successful interaction rituals, in a science classroom where the

mutual focus is on science-related activities, can foster student engagement in the topics as

well as contribute student support of their peers. Anna’s relation to the practice of science

is imbedded in her personal experience. Science culture and science content must be

experienced to be comprehended, conveyed, and related to. Whether or not such experi-

ence is communicated to the students through their teacher becomes critical.

These insights comprise elements that are missing from psychological theories such as

that of pedagogical content knowledge, introduced as a framework for teacher preparation

by Shulman (1986). The challenge he saw was how college students, as teachers, could

transform their expertise in a subject matter into a form that high-school students could

comprehend and learn from. In discussing teachers’ expertise at the level of the individual,

he also saw the importance of ‘‘what’’ an individual brings to teaching due to her own

unique prior experience. In doing so, he implied the existence of an organic link. But in

codifying pedagogical content knowledge without the dialectical interconnections to self-

identity and its development as a life-long organic process within human culture and all

that it entails, individual concepts are presented artificially simplified and detached from

each other and the forces framing and mediating their practice.


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According to the constructivist argument, scientific knowledge should be viewed as

‘‘socially constructed,’’ and ‘‘learning involves being introduced to a symbolic world,’’

where symbolic is defined as the ‘‘cultural tools of science’’ (Driver et al., 1994, p. 7).

Knowledge is seldom transferred intact from the teacher to the student; it is viewed as

being contextual, continually created, reconstructed, and tested by the learner. The results

of this study indicate that Anna’s scientific knowledge is to a great extent intrinsic, that it is

personal despite incorporating ‘‘scientifically’’ held views about nature; it has been con-

structed through intimate contact with science, and it has been mediated by human culture,

and by and through the persons around her.

This study also addresses some of the critique faced by constructivism—that ‘‘personal

and radical constructivist theories seem to either neglect or ignore the ways in which social

interactions influence the process by which knowledge is constructed’’ (Bodner et al., 2001,

p. 12). Furthermore, ‘‘by concentrating on the process by which the individual learns, con-

structivism ignores the role of those who influence learning’’ (Bodner et al., 2001, p. 7). The

results of this study argue that the beliefs and experiences of teachers also frame and mediate,

as well as being framed by and mediated by, their teaching philosophies.

When ‘‘qualified’’ science teachers are attracted away from the in-city schools repro-

duction bias and inequities result (Roth & Calabrese Barton, 2004) between the more

affluent suburbs and the poorer inner-city schools. Chandler (2004) also concluded that

salary and satisfaction in working conditions are important in teacher movement from the

urban schools to the suburbs. Similar to Bourdieu’s argument on the class bias of cultural

reproduction (1977), Anna’s narrative illustrates how more affluent schools offer greater

attraction to science teachers of middle-class backgrounds, not necessarily because indi-

viduals are attracted by the money as much as by the familiarity of the environment,

making them unequal competitors to the less affluent or poorer schools.

That Anna views herself not simply as a science teacher, but also as a moral agent, is not

new to teacher research. Lortie’s research (1975) with teachers in general had parallel

findings; many teachers, in making a job decision, come to teaching because they want to

contribute to the community and to society. The present study shows that this holds true in

science teaching as well. However, it further demonstrates another dimension not discussed

in Lortie’s work, that a science teacher’s personal moral beliefs frame and mediate her

teaching philosophy. Anna’s morals frame her views of science education, and mediate what

she chooses to teach, where and how, as well as the expectations she has of her students.

Further implications of the organic link

The construct of organic link represents the transmission and acquisition of cultural capital

and the creation of social bonds in a very dialectical sense. Due to its diffused nature,

especially necessary would be to further investigate actual classroom observations of

participating science teachers, their emotions, gestures, tone of voice, and images, and to

link and compare these data with their life stories. Also of interest would be their students’

learning processes as a result of such interactions—in particular, how these students

negotiate science beyond the classroom, and how they approach, teach, and explain sci-

entific concepts themselves. That is, how do they build their own stocks of knowledge and

social bonds because of their interaction with science and their science teachers, and what

do these have to do with the identity and beliefs of their teachers?

In light of the results of this study, the current push for the use of test-driven curricula to

create homogeneity in a science classroom raises particular concerns. Some questions that

K. Alexakos

123

do emerge from this research point to important implications of forced uniformity: What

detriment(s) will it cause? Who will choose to teach in such a personally restricting

environment? Other relevant questions concern the importance for learners to have

teachers who have intimate experience with the science field they teach—an organic

connection to and a passion for what is being taught. Should learning science be viewed,

then, as an apprenticeship? It may thus be argued that teachers of a science subject should

have an organic connection to that science field and its culture, not just to a particular

science content.

John Dewey, referring to the teaching of students, argues that, ‘‘Unless we know what

there is to be laid hold of and used, we work in the dark and waste time and energy. We

shall probably do something even worse, striving to impose some unnatural habit from

without instead of directing native tendencies toward their own best fruition’’ (1933,

p. 35). The results here indicate that the same may be true with the education of teachers.

This study brings attention to the fundamental and crucial implications that the organic link

as a dialectical concept has to the practice and the experience of science learning and

teaching. The science-teacher paradigm needs to be revisited and further investigated.

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Konstantinos Alexakos is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Brooklyn College(CUNY). He is a former New York City high school science teacher and a former transit worker. Hisresearch interests include science teacher identity; science teacher recruitment, support, preparation, andretention; gender and race issues; and strategies for enhancing science learning in the classroom. He iscurrently teaching a college physics course to a special class of high school students.


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FORUM: The science teacher as the organic link

This forum consists of two commentaries—authored by Catherine Milne and by Amy S.

Johnson and Deborah Tippins, respectively—on the feature article by Konstantinos

Alexakos who, in turn, responds in a rejoinder. Information on how to reference the

commentaries and the rejoinder is provided in footnotes.

On being a science teacher: identities, emotions, morals, and the dialectics of organiclink1

Catherine Milne

New York University

Abstract In responding to, The Science Teacher as Organic Link, I argue that there are

two aspects of the author’s argument that could be further developed for the connections

between agency, identity, organic link, ethics, and dialectic thinking to be elucidated. First,

the connection between dialectic thought and the action of organic link could be more

thoroughly explicated. As a metaphor for teacher action, organic link can help us to

acknowledge teachers’ roles in connecting systems of dialectic thought such as science and

science education and, in my response I propose a strategy for thinking in that way. I also

argue that in order to explain teacher action associated with organic link there is a need to

acknowledge that identity depends as much on self-evaluation as it does on self-image and

experience with others. Self-evaluation involves both emotion and ethics as teachers make

judgments about their roles and this has implications for their actions just as their actions

have implications for their identity.

Keywords Science teaching � Agency � Identity � Emotions � Dialectical thinking

In seeking to support his argument for the science teacher as organic link the author,

Konstantinos Alexakos, introduces concepts such as culture, dialectics, identity, and

agency to define organic link as human agents responsible for the continuity of a process

that brings together the cultures of science and science students in order to assist students

to develop embodied cultural capital in science. The narratives of experience and pro-

fessional identity of Anna, the teacher who is the focus of the study, are presented as

vignettes that provide the basis for the study. Unlike the study by Roth and Middleton

(2006) where there was a shared expectation between the interview participants that each

had some knowledge of the graph, the phenomena that was the focus of their interview,

Anna presents stories based on her memories of her experience growing up and being a

teacher. But what she tells is framed by her expectations of the author’s research interests

based on the questions that he asked in a series of focused interactions.

As sources of talk, focused interactions have specific structures that involve a shared

focus on the task and agreement about what utterances are considered relevant or irrelevant

for the achievement of this task (Goffman, 1963). However, it is important to acknowledge

the contextual nature of Anna’s responses suggesting that her responses might be different

if she was remembering and telling stories in a different type of conversation. The vign-

ettes presented in the paper have been selected by the author to construct a specific

1 Citation for this contribution: Milne, C. (2007). On being a science teacher: Identities, emotions, morals,and the dialectics of organic link. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2.

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Forum

argument about the concept of teacher as organic link. So Anna’s voice is the only one

presented in the vignettes. Thus, the reader cannot know the involvement of the researcher

in the interviews from which the vignettes were taken, which could be considered a

limitation of the study. However, I agree with Alexakos that it is not important to know

what ‘‘really’’ happened in Anna’s neighborhood or schools but her memories of events

are important because the stronger those memories are the more powerful the emotions

associated with them must have been (Turner, 2002). Whether these memories are enough

to convince readers of the explanatory power of the metaphor of teacher as organic link

indicates the value of examining other concepts presented in the paper.

Teacher Identities

Do we need the concept of organic link to analyze Anna’s actions and, by generalization,

those of other teachers or do concepts of self, identity, and agency provide a theoretical frame

that is complete enough to explain why teachers do the things they do? Anna’s narratives

provide the reader with some insight into how much Anna values components of teachers’

professional identities that constitute teacherly roles. These roles include aspects of cultural

capital described by Beijaard, Verloop, and Vermunt (2000) such as facility with subject

matter knowledge, ability to transform this knowledge into teachable and learnable practices,

ability to enact the ethical and moral aspects of teaching, and ability to use a wide range of

teaching methods. In her narratives Anna refers to these aspects when she describes herself

using knowledge beyond the textbook but in a way that is of interest to students, being

consistent by providing opportunities for student learning that value the practices she per-

sonally finds helpful, and welcoming the challenge of finding new ways to teach a topic.

Alexakos claims that his study was an attempt to acknowledge the importance of science

teachers to the education process. Such a goal suggests the need to understand the motivations

that drive teachers to be teachers and the strategy adopted by Alexakos was to examine

teachers’ teaching philosophies. However, what I found missing from his analysis was an

explanatory/theoretical framework that provided a way of thinking about personal philoso-

phy through identity. The construction of a teacher’s professional identities is based on the

interaction between her self-evaluation of her self-image and experiences she has with others.

Together these three components, self-image, experiences with others, and self-evaluation

constitute a system of identity and help us to understand a sense of self as personal philosophy.

Identity is a complex structure because it involves multiple roles that serve to constitute a

sense of self (Turner, 2002). What a person presents as her ‘‘self’’ is constantly negotiated

through interactions; socially positioned; constrained and liberated by ethnicity, race, and

gender; and morally grounded (Bianchini et al., 2000). As Anna acknowledges in her nar-

ratives, her sense of self was constrained and supported by prior experiences, such as having

opportunities to care for a wide range of animals, and by categorizations, such as those

associated with ethnicity, race, and gender. For example, Anna tells us other students made

assumptions about Anna’s racial and ethnic background that were not accurate and that she

found disconcerting. She makes this clear when she tells us that she did not like the children

in her neighborhood who made fun of her and communicated expectations about her identity

that were at odds with her concept of self. These expectations led her to remove herself from

interactions with her local peers. In this case, Anna’s identity was formed from the inter-

actions between Anna and her peers but her peers’ expectations did not form Anna’s identity

like putty. Instead, their expectations provided a context for Anna to decide whether to resist

or conform to those expectations. Collectively, the processes of self-image, expectations of

others, and her responses to those expectations, constituted a process of finding herself.

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Forum: The science teacher as the organic link

Identities and emotions

But just as identities are not singular, they also are not fixed. Turner (2002) argues that self

is constituted of multiple identities that exist in an ordered hierarchy in terms of salience

and prominence depending on context. I assume that when Alexakos sat down to talk with

Anna the context in which the conversation took place, wanting to know about her

teaching philosophy and practices, influenced the personal stories she told and how she

told them. Self is always emotional and cognitive because, ‘‘cognitions cannot be retained

as memories unless they are tagged with emotion’’ (Turner, 2002, p. 101). When psy-

chological theories identify the emotional dimension of self in terms of a global variable,

self-esteem, we lose an appreciation for the complexity of people’s self-evaluation

strategies and how these strategies are formulated in interactions that are dialogic (Taylor,

1995).

Turner argues that presentations of self depend on three levels. Core self is the

innermost level, the level at which a person has the most intense emotions about herself is

as a person and how she should be treated by others. There are two other levels at which

roles are not held so strongly: sub-identities, cognitions and feelings about self in classes

of situations associated with institutional settings such as work, family, and education and

role identities, cognitions and feelings about self in specific roles. Role identities that

have least emotion associated with them, and so are the easiest to change or relinquish,

are less likely to be defended because they are not felt by the person to be central to their

sense of self. Thus as people engage in interactions how they present themselves, and

how others understand them, depends very much on the role identities they value as

salient to their ‘‘self’’ but other roles that are less salient are less likely to be defended.

An example of this variable adoption of role identities comes from a study of face-to-face

interactions in a research team (Milne, in press). A doctoral student, Yoo Kyung, had

been identified by the leader of our research team as an expert with Flash programming

but at a research meeting it became clear from the conversation that, although Yoo

Kyung could use Flash, being an expert was not central to her self so she resisted the

attribution of Flash expert. Such resistance took some agency, acknowledging to her

professors that ‘‘Flash expert’’ was not a role important to her and one that she was not

comfortable trying to adopt, leading other members of the research group to a collabo-

rative repair of the conversation.

With role identities, a person presents herself to others and it is the responses of others,

in terms of expectations, that influence, but do not determine, a person’s self-verification in

the form of role taking. How a person constructs and confirms her self depends very much

on the contexts in which she lives, the interactions in which she engages, and how she

resists or conforms to the attitudes of others. My definition of identity is fundamentally

different from that of Alexakos who describes identity as ‘‘it describes and influences how

we see ourselves as well as how others see us’’ because our identity does not stop with how

others see us but with our self-evaluation of those expectations. With my definition of

identity there is a place for agency and context in the development of identities.

From Anna’s vignettes it is difficult to judge how central to her sense of self were

Anna’s teacherly roles but her movement to different schools suggests to me that while

teaching is important Anna, after all she has remained a teacher, she is still searching for an

environment that allows her to fulfill roles associated both with the institution of teaching

and with family and community. However, perhaps institutions exert a greater influence on

people’s sense of self than they realize.

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Forum

Corporate and categoric units in identities

Turner identifies the embeddedness of individuals in corporate and categoric units as

important for self-confirmation during encounters. Corporate units are goal-based and

institutional and are framed by limits to structure and culture that serve to constrain the

range of accepted roles one can adopt. For example, teaching is a corporate unit and

therefore members of that unit are expected to adopt specific roles that are consistent with

accepted goals of teaching, such as helping students to learn or building school community.

In her comments, Anna identified a number of roles that signified her membership of this

unit including teacher, assessor, ethical being, knowledgeable about Environmental Sci-

ence, science and mathematics. It is possible that membership of corporate units associated

with teaching influences Anna’s personal philosophy of teaching because she shares goals

with other teachers that assist her self-confirmation in the roles she accepts as important to

being an ethical and capable teacher.

Categoric units are subpopulations of individuals who are identified as possessing

specific characteristics and are therefore treated distinctively by others (Turner 2002).

Included in these units are categories of gender, ethnicity, race, and socio-economic group.

Usually people attempt to present role identities that are consistent with categories of

which they are identified as members. Anna tells us that because she ‘‘looked different,’’

as the daughter of a South Asian mother and Western European father, other children in the

neighborhood made fun of her. She was not able to feel that she belonged to the category of

neighborhood children and she withdrew from interactions with these children as she

decided, consciously or unconsciously, to resist their expectations. If the category of

neighborhood child had been more important to Anna than some of the other roles she

valued, perhaps her interactions with neighborhood children would have been different

than they actually were. However, the fact that Anna remembers so clearly these incidents

indicates that these memories are tagged with powerful emotions that continue to influence

her actions as a teacher.

Anna’s comment that, ‘‘I believe that so long as I tread through that very fine line of,

like grey, where you are not too extreme in one way or the other, you can have conver-

sations with students where you’re not imposing your beliefs on them, you’re just asking

them to question theirs,’’ suggests that Anna is careful not to align herself too strongly with

specific categories, either racial or gender-based. This leads me to wonder whether such

action also prevents her from bringing a critical focus to the way in which some of these

categories are represented in schools and in resources, such as text books, used in schools

to support specific constructions of subject disciplines including science. Additionally,

Anna’s experience in high school with her physics teacher provides a powerful memory

tied up with emotion about the excesses of power that can be exercised by teachers over

students, perhaps encouraging Anna to carefully set limits on her actions with students to

ensure that she does not influence their actions too much but continues to tread that fine

line. Anna’s narratives suggest a strong association with corporate units especially those

associated with moral and didactic aspects of being a teacher that might also help us to

understand Anna’s conflict when she was asked to teach Advanced Placement (AP)

Environmental Science. She was excited by the opportunity to teach a subject she thought

was important for students to know but, at the same time, was not happy fulfilling a role

expected of the school that involved her ‘‘culling’’ the numbers of students in the course so

that overall student achievement on the AP exam bolstered the image of the school. Her

role as an environmental science teacher was important to her but she was conflicted by

123


school expectations and not being able to see how she could resolve this conundrum. She

exercised her agency and left the school in order to retain her sense of self as an ethical

teacher of environmental science. Her narratives suggest that Anna feels more comfortable

when she can exert control over her roles as a teacher, when she participates in interactions

with colleagues and students indicating the complexity of the relationship between agency,

identity, and the philosophies to which people in corporate units ascribe. Although this

might all happen unconsciously, identities place demands on the ways we act since our

actions are located in interactions that are also resources for others as they communicate

their expectations about our roles. I argue that actions are far more important than personal

philosophies for personal and collective interpretations of our sense of self. The question

remains of the relationship between identity and organic link and the explanatory value of

the term.

Organic link and interactions

Much of this paper is informed by the use of dialectic ways of thinking and being.

Alexakos acknowledges his debt to Hegel and Marx and Engles for his understanding of

dialectical thinking. However, such thinking has long historic and cultural roots that

emerged well before Hegel. Dialectical thinking understands reality and the nature of

knowledge in specific ways. From a dialectical perspective, important to our understanding

of reality is the organizing role of processes of change rather than stasis to the operation of

structures. Also, the forms of organization that emerge cannot be explained by breaking the

organization into parts because relationships are integral to the nature of that organization

(Basseches 1984). Epistemologically, collective and individual knowledge are active

processes of organizing and reorganizing understandings of phenomena. Thus dialectic

thinking understands the value of examining the relations as well as the objects to gain

knowledge. These knowledges generate coherent conceptual systems that cannot be

understood by focusing exclusively on specific concepts or facts within the system but

require also looking at the whole system. Such systems exist in relationship with other

systems and with the lives of knowers and how we think of these relationships has

implications for how we understand the idea of organic link. Dialectic analysis provides a

method for understanding developmental transformations that take place through inter-

actions understood to be mutually constitutive (Markova, 1987).

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn (1996) provided a dialectic analysis of

the growth of scientific knowledge. Paradigms shape scientific research because they

authorize the types of questions that can be asked, the methods appropriate for investi-

gating these questions, and the answers that are acceptable. However, research that is

nested within a paradigm also generates anomalies that cannot be explained by the current

knowledge of the paradigm. As the number of anomalies grows, scientists propose a new

paradigm that is more comprehensive and brings with it its own limits related to appro-

priate questions, methods, and answers. Not surprisingly, other philosophers of science

(e.g., Popper, 1972) were critical of Kuhn’s argument. I have always found Kuhn’s

analysis, with its focus on revolution, an overly masculine reading of the development of

science. However, it provides a model of dialectic thinking in science. The explanatory

value of Kuhn’s analysis is that it emphasizes the two-way nature of interactions in which

both paradigm and research are changed. Although this is not an interpretation Kuhn might

have made (see Fuller, 2003), his study also indicated that even when the scientific world

seems stable it is changing constantly. Paradigm and research operate in a dynamic balance

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until anomalies become substantial and, with an attempt to resolve these anomalies, a new

paradigm emerges that is accepted as having greater aesthetic and explanatory power.

Identity can also be understood dialectically as a tension between social and personal,

between habitus (actions) and agency so that through interactions identities are continually

being renewed as the self and others come together and as a person self-evaluates their

roles in relation to those interactions. Alexakos argues that a focus on teaching beyond

communicating science knowledge to communicating also a ‘‘passion’’ for learning sci-

ence, which comes from a teacher’s intimate experience of science, is an aspect of how he

understands the teacher as organic link. He is critical of models of pedagogical content

knowledge (Shulman, 1986) that ignore aspects of a teacher’s self which include the moral

and emotional aspects of teaching. As I have discussed previously, our sense of self is

confirmed and challenged in contexts involving social and institutional interactions

involving participants such as students, neighborhood children, and work colleagues.

Emotions are powerful because they help us to construct memories and if teachers want

students to also construct memories of their cognition then positive emotions tied up with

actions in contexts, such as the classroom, constitute an essential aspect of teaching and

learning. How a teacher is able to provide opportunities for students to experience positive

emotions with cognitive acts in the classroom has implications for how they will remember

themselves as learners in that context. Dialectically, this has ongoing implications for how

students construct themselves as learners in other contexts and ultimately as life long

learners. Thus, the decision by a teacher to be emotionally involved as she presents her self

as a teacher becomes an ethical and moral act.

The nature of pedagogical knowledge can also be understood more holistically using

dialectical analysis. Sockett (1987) identified the lack of consideration of context as a

limitation of Shulman’s theory of pedagogical content knowledge. If one thinks dialecti-

cally of teacher actions and context, one recognizes that neither are static but exist in a

dynamic relationship in which the appearance of stability exists until teacher reflections on

their actions in relation to context leads to a change in actions and changes to context.

Together, teacher actions and context constitute a dynamic system of ‘‘practical judg-

ment’’ (Sockett, 1987, p. 210) that is both moral and emotional. The concept of organic

link can be a powerful one if it is understood to connect two systems, the system of

practical judgment, which involves students with whom Anna interacts, and the system of

scientific knowledge. From this perspective, as an organic link Anna and other teachers,

provide the human glue that brings these systems together. At the same time Anna, the

students with whom she works, and the scientific knowledge that is used, will be changed

by the series of interactions in which they engage. Scientific knowledge and the students do

not remain unchanged as Alexakos seems to argue. I have argued that there could be a

place for the concept of organic link beyond the ideas of agency and identity if one is

willing to think of the role of humans in the linking of systems of interactions. However, if

dialectical analysis is to be the main analytical strategy then it is helpful to think dialec-

tically of the concept of organic link and acknowledge the dynamism of the process

because human agents as organic links must also transform, not just reproduce, the cultural

capital that they accumulate in one system to use in another. For example, notwithstanding

that students have access to cultural capital from other contexts, using the resources she has

from her experiences with science Anna decides, in the context of schooling, the form of

the knowledge that should be represented to students and the level of access to other

science resources that students will have. In the process, human agents like Anna are

expected to exercise practical judgment about how they present this knowledge in the

context of the classroom. Thus an organic link is always dynamic as the person involved

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constantly makes didactic, epistemological, and moral decisions in interactions that ulti-

mately through self-evaluation lead to the constitution of her identities.

References

Basseches, M. A. (1984). Dialectical thinking as a metasystematic form of cognitive organization. In M. L.Commons, F. A. Richards, & C. Armon (Eds.), Beyond formal operations: Late adolescent and adultcognitive development (pp. 216–238). New York: Praeger.

Bianchini, J. A., Cavazos, L. M., & Helms, J. V. (2000). From professional lives to inclusive practice:Science teachers and scientists’ views of gender and ethnicity in science education. Journal ofResearch in Science Teaching, 37, 511–547.

Beijaard, D., Verloop, N., & Vermunt, J. D. (2000). Teachers’ perceptions of professional identity: anexploratory study from a personal knowledge perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 749–764.

Fuller, S. (2003). Kuhn vs. Popper: The struggle for the soul of science. Cambridge: Icon Books.

Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York:Free Press of Glencoe.

Kuhn, T. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Markova, I. (1987). On the interaction of opposites in psychological processes. Journal for the Theory ofSocial Behaviour, 17, 279–299.

Milne, C. (in press). Power, status and the whole shebang: A personal perspective of collaborative research.In S. Ritchie (Ed.), Research collaborations: Relationships and praxis. The Netherlands: Sense Pub-lishers.

Popper, K. R. (1972). Objective knowledge; an evolutionary approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Roth, W.-M., & Middleton, D. (2006). Knowing what you tell, telling what you know: Uncertainty andasymmetries of meaning in interpreting graphical data. Cultural Studies of Science education, 1,11–81.

Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher,15(2), 4–14.

Sockett, H. T. (1987). Has Shulman got the strategy right? Harvard Educational Review, 57, 208–219.

Taylor, C. (1995). The dialogical self. In R. F. Goodman & W. R. Fisher (Eds.), Rethinking knowledge:Reflections across the disciplines (pp. 57–66). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Turner, J. (2002). Face to face: Toward a sociological theory of interpersonal behavior. Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press.

Catherine Milne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New YorkUniversity. She is a former high school science teacher with experience as a classroom teacher andadministrator. She received her Ph.D. from Curtin University of Technology in Australia. Currently, she isworking on a number of federally funded research projects investigating the use of multimedia represen-tations to foster the learning of chemistry and ethnographic studies of chemistry education in urban contexts.She teaches courses in the history and philosophy of science, chemistry education, curriculum, and methodsof teaching science.

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Troubling science teacher identities: a dialogue on dialectics,life history method, and the organic link1

Amy S. Johnson � Deborah Tippins

The University of Georgia

Abstract Konstantinos Alexakos’ article responds to the problem that research on sci-

ence teachers’ identities has rarely taken into account the dialectic interplay between

teachers’ multiple identities, moral beliefs, and biographical experiences and their phi-

losophies of science teaching and learning. He investigates this issue through the life

history of Anna, a novice science teacher. Through narratives that Anna conveyed during

the research process, Alexakos illustrates how Anna draws on past experience and her

moral beliefs to become an organic link or ‘‘organic participant in the creation and

(re)creation of what is understood as science culture’’ (p. 35). We see this article as adding

to literature that seeks to understand teachers’ identities from a sociological versus a

psychological lens. In this way, Alexakos’ study has challenged work that sees a teacher’s

identity as reducible to the psychology of an individual mind. Yet, as we read this article

we were confronted with questions and tensions about how such a dialectical under-

standing accounts for how teachers’ identities are always negotiated and in process. In

particular, reading this article has raised the following questions for us about science

teacher identity development and how it might best be investigated and theorized:

1. How might Bakhtinian dialogism supplement dialectical understandings of teachers’

identities?

2. How can we think about the ‘‘transmission of culture’’ from a dialogic perspective?

3. How might other researchers employ the life history methods presented in this research

to study teacher identity development?

Keywords Dialogic � Life history � Teacher identity � Bakhtin � Organic link

In this response article, we engage with these questions and explore the tensions that

we encountered as readers. Tensions are often seen in negative terms, as something to be

avoided or resolved. We use the term to designate productive sites for generating dialogue

that could be essential to effective research in science teacher education. From our per-

spective, seeking resolution to tensions is not necessarily the goal; instead, what is most

important is recognizing the complexities within the tensions and seeking to understand

how we can best work within the constraints of those tensions.

Question #1: How might Bakhtinian dialogism supplement dialectical understandings of

teachers’ identities?

To understand Anna as a science teacher, we must also understand the interplay be-

tween her biography and social context, and her developing beliefs about science teaching

and learning. At the crux of Alexakos’ inquiry into Anna’s identities is the dialectical

relationship between Anna’s ‘‘sense of self, her experience, moral beliefs, passions, and

teaching philosophy.’’ When we think of a dialectical relationship, we think of the gen-

eration of new perspectives through juxtaposing binary oppositions (e.g., thesis and

antithesis; individual and collective; agency and structure; self and other). However, what

we see Alexakos grappling with is not so much the dialectic aspects of Anna’s identity

1 Citation for this forum contribution: Johnson, A. S., & Tippins, D. (2007). Troubling science teacheridentities: A dialogue on dialectics, life history method, and the organic link. Cultural Studies of ScienceEducation, 2.

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Troubling science teacher identities

construction, but the dialogic aspects of Anna’s identity development as a science teacher.

For instance, Alexakos writes ‘‘socioeconomic, generational, historical-cultural aspects, such

as race, class, gender, and age, dialectically interweave and create a context in which the

observer and the observed are each situated, and these aspects draw meaning from one an-

other.’’ Such a description of the processes by which to understand teachers’ identity devel-

opment reminds us of Bakhtinian dialogism (Holquist, 1990), an interpretive principle that

frames communication (from that in everyday dialogue to a literary novel or scientific treatise)

as ‘‘a process of negotiation among contested positions, ideologies, and languages; therefore,

meaning is only achieved in the context of struggle’’ (Juzwik, 2004, p. 539). Bakhtin under-

stood utterances in conversational or written texts as always responding ‘‘to previous

utterances at the same time that they anticipate future responses’’ (Nystrand, 1997, p. 8). As

individuals assume social roles and positions that populate their utterances with certain

ideological positions and worldviews, then, utterances are organized through the interrela-

tionships of the interlocutors (cf. Bakhtin & Medvedev, 1985, p. 153):

The crux of the matter is not the subjective consciousness of the speakers [...] or what

they think, experience, or want, but in what the objective social logic of their

interrelationships demand of them. In the final account, this logic defines the very

experiences of people (their ‘‘inner speech’’). These experiences are only another,

less essential, ideological refraction of the same objective logic of organized social

interrelationships (Bakhtin & Medvedev, 1985, p. 153).

A dialogic understanding of communication understands utterances as ‘‘continually

structured by tension, even conflict, between the conversants, between self and other,’’

(Nystrand, 1997, p. 8) as one voice ‘refracts’ another social position or worldview. We see a

dialogic perspective as useful for understanding Anna’s identity development, because from

a dialogic angle the relationship between self and other is not necessarily an oppositional

one, but a co-terminous and mutually reinforcing one. In other words, the self is constituted

by and through interaction with others and vice versa. In the case of Anna, dialogism

enables us to see her identity development as ‘‘an outcome of [her] living in, though, and

around the cultural forms [she has] practiced in [her] social life’’ (Holland et al., 1998, p. 8).

Due to the opportunities that dialogism offers researchers for understanding identities as

constantly in flux and in process, Holland et al. (1998) have turned to Bakhtinian dialogism

as such a theoretical tool for understanding individual identity development. As we see it,

Anna’s identity development can be read as an instance of Holland et al.’s (1998) concept

of ‘‘history-in-persons.’’ That is, Anna’s identity development as a science teacher is

intensely dialogic as she improvises upon the sediment from her past experiences as learner

of science, using the cultural resources available to her within her social contexts, all while

responding to the subject positions afforded to her within her present experiences as a

science teacher (Holland et al., 1998, p. 18) in rural, urban, and suburban contexts.

Question #2: How can we think about the ‘‘transmission of culture’’ from a dialogic

perspective?

As we think about the affordances of a dialogic perspective for understanding Anna’s

identity as a science teacher, we have also come to see new options for understanding the

processes by and through which individuals acquire and ‘‘transmit’’ cultural capital. From

a dialogic perspective, cultural capital can never be solely understood as transmitted from

one individual to another, nor can it be understood as acquired or ‘‘absorbed’’ from an

individual’s environment and her commensurate experiences. As we see it, participating in

a particular environment—family or school—is not sufficient in and of itself for generating

cultural capital. Rather, dialogism enables us to see how cultural capital develops as a

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result of a continual struggle and negotiation between an individual’s past, present, and

anticipated selves and contexts, and her engagement with other individuals, social posi-

tions, and ideologies.

In the context of teacher and student relationships, cultural capital can never be under-

stood simply, Alexakos highlights, as a process of transmission. Alexakos reminds us of the

inherently problematic nature of the word ‘‘transmission’’ for conceptualizing this process

by setting the word between quotation marks or ‘‘scare quotes.’’ Although Alexakos posits

transmission as a dialectical process, referring to Anna’s transmission of cultural capital ‘‘as

existing in a state of creation/(re)creation,’’ we recognize the need for new vocabulary for

describing how cultural capital is accrued, shared, negotiated, and contested within science

classrooms. For, a dialectical understanding of transmission does not enable us to fully

grasp how cultural capital is situated within the mutually reinforcing and reciprocal rela-

tionships that exist between teachers and students. As Nystrand describes it, ‘‘the roles of

teacher and learner (and parent and child, writer, and reader, cop and speeder, lover and

loved, etc.) each respectively and mutually entail those of the other, the one in effect

defining the parameters of meaning and communication of the other’’ (p. 10). In the

classroom, then, a reciprocity of social roles suggests that knowledge evolves ‘‘in the

unique interaction between [teacher and student], the play of two consciousnesses’’

(Bakhtin & Medvedev, 1985, p. 128 as cited in Nystrand 1997, p. 11). In this way, dialogism

would suggest that cultural capital and cultural knowledge are not transmitted from teachers

to students, but evolve and are co-constructed in and through the interactions that take place

between teachers and students, a process that is continually marked by tension and struggle.

It is this aspect of ideological struggle, involving a continuous and ongoing process of

negotiation between teachers and students that makes a dialectical understanding of

transmission problematic for us as readers. Thus, begins the quest for new vocabulary and

ways of framing the intensely dialogic relationships that exist between teachers and students

as they explore and engage with the knowledge and culture of science.

Question #3: How might other researchers employ the life history methods presented in

this research to study teacher identity development?

Alexakos discusses briefly how educational researchers have used life history methods

for studying teachers and teaching. In life history he has found a method that is well suited

for his research aims and purposes, for few other methods offer such an intensive focus on

the interplay between the particularities of teachers’ lives, their philosophies on teaching,

and the material, political, social, and economic contexts in which they have matured

(Johnson, in press). In her work with preservice literacy teachers, Johnson argues that the

knowledge generated through life history research can better position teacher educators in

understanding how teachers’ early experiences have supported and/or constrained them in

developing their philosophies toward teaching. Given our interest in life history methods

for inquiry into teachers’ lives and experiences, we were equally interested in Alexakos’

engagement with life history methods. Notably, we were curious about the specific

questions Alexakos asked Anna and other teachers about their teaching and learning of

science. Were these questions pointed toward science or were they framed to understand

the more general aspects of participants’ lives and experiences? As Milne points out in her

response, having some understanding of the interactional framework through which data is

generated is helpful in understanding how the researcher and participants co-constructed

knowledge about the culture of science and science teaching through their interactions and

the interactional frame space (Goffman, 1974) of the research interview setting.

Furthermore, such information on the interview context is particularly salient given that a

defining characteristic of life history methods is the ‘‘intensely idiosyncratic personal

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dynamics’’ (Sikes et al., 1996, p. 43 as cited in Goodson & Sikes, 2001, p. 19) between the

researcher and the participants. As Johnson (2005) illustrated, life history narratives cannot

be interpreted outside of the frame of the researcher–participant relationships. The re-

searcher’s questions carry embedded meanings and codes about what the interviewer values

or how he/she sees the world. The participant, thus, responds to these meanings and often

takes them up in her responses. Understanding how the participant’s self unfolds within this

dynamic is another layer of the dialogic process of self-fashioning that researchers must take

into account when conducting life history research and interpreting life history narratives.

Another important facet to understanding the self as dialogically constructed, however,

involves making concerted efforts to understand the social and historical contexts in which

that self is situated. Early life history studies, such as those conducted by researchers at the

University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s (e.g., Anderson, 1923; Shaw, 1930) used life

history to supplement ethnographic depictions of life in Chicago. Without such ethno-

graphic oomph, it is difficult to understand the dialectic or dialogic interplay between the

individual’s life and the broader milieu. For this reason, we seek to understand more about

the contexts in which Anna grew up, but also the various contexts in which she taught. We

ask: What is the relationship between the rural, suburban, and urban contexts in which

Anna has taught science and her developing identity as a science teacher? How does such

an interplay between teaching contexts and her identity enable Anna to operate as an

organic link within her classroom?

Likewise, we wonder: how can we ever fully grasp the teacher as an organic link without

understanding the students’ roles in the construction of cultural capital or the cultural

knowledge of science? Alexakos acknowledges that this manuscript is focused predomi-

nantly on Anna’s identity as a science teacher and how it enables her to function as an

organic link. However, when we think of a link, the image that is most predominant in our

minds is that of a chain. Similar to how pieces of a chain are connected, Anna, Alexakos

argues, is the link between two entities—students and science. Alexakos’ inquiry only sheds

light on the role of the link (i.e., teacher), but does not provide us with sufficient insight into

the entities (i.e., science and students) that it connects to make a chain. While we certainly

understand that one study can only accomplish so much, in order to make sense of how

teachers and students mutually participate in constructing cultural knowledge about science,

we need to see the whole chain (i.e., students, teacher, and science). Likewise, near the

conclusion of his article, Alexakos claims that as a result of Anna’s passion for science her

students ‘‘socially bond to, link to, science.’’ For us to more fully grasp how Anna is an

active agent in helping students create bonds to science culture and content, we yearn for

more evidence of Anna teaching science in the classroom and interacting with her students

around science content. Classroom discourse or ethnographic methods, in fact, might

usefully supplement the life history methods used in this study. For instance, Nystrand’s

(1997) classroom discourse study in an English literature classroom provides a nice example

of how teachers and students engage dialogically to construct knowledge about academic

content. Through the discourse analytic methods that Nystrand employs, Alexakos might

provide better evidence of how teachers and students co-engage in constructing cultural

capital and knowledge about science, and thus are mutually linked in an organic manner.

Conclusion

For science to have meaning for Anna and her students, we believe it must be understood

dialogically, as a way of understanding one’s relationship to self, others, and the natural

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world. Our concern is that the organic link, as a construct for thinking about how indi-

viduals participate in the creation and (re)creation of what is understood as science culture,

may actually constrain our understanding of how identity—both Anna’s and her

students’—is produced through participation in a practicing community of science. Like

most metaphors, the organic ‘‘link’’ eventually breaks down, particularly in terms of

enabling us to see students and teachers together as producers of knowledge who draw on

their life experiences to define, enact, and use science in various contexts. Perhaps, the

organic link is just the starting point for giving us new language for talking about the

complexities of teaching and learning science.

References

Anderson, N. (1923). The Hobo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bakhtin, M. M., & Medvedev, P. N. (1978). The formal method in literary scholarship: A critical intro-duction to sociological poetics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Boston: NortheasternUniversity Press.

Goodson, I., & Sikes, P. (2001). Life history research in educational settings: Learning from lives.Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.

Holland, D., Lachichotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identities and agency in cultural worlds.Boston: Harvard University Press.

Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world. New York: Routledge.

Johnson, A. S. (2005). Towards a dialogic approach to teachers’ narratives. Unpublished doctoral dis-sertation. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Johnson, A. S. (in press). An ‘‘ethics of access’’: Tracing preservice teachers’ emergent ethics on teachingfor equity. Journal of Teacher Education.

Juzwik, M. M. (2004). Towards an ethics of answerability: Reconsidering dialogism in sociocultural literacyresearch. College Composition and Communication, 55, 536–567.

Nystrand, M. (1997). Opening dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and learning in theEnglish classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Shaw, C. (1930). The Jack-Roller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Amy S. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Georgiaspecializing in literacy education. She received her Ph.D. in literacy education from the University ofWisconsin-Madison, with a minor area of study in composition and rhetoric. Amy has extensive experienceworking with youth of color in Baltimore and Milwaukee Public Schools. She is currently involved in acollaborative project in a rural PreK-12 year-round school involving the teaching and learning of literacy inthe science content area.

Deborah Tippins is a Professor of Science Education in the Department of Mathematics and ScienceEducation at the University of Georgia. As a recent Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines, she developed alongitudinal, collaborative research program on community-centered science education. Her researchinterests involve anthropological approaches to science education with a focus on culturally relevant scienceteaching and learning. Additionally, her research interests include science teacher learning through case-based pedagogy, and she has co-authored three casebooks for elementary and secondary science teachers.

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Dialectics and the organic link as a tool of analysis1

Konstantinos Alexakos

Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Abstract In this forum discussion on my article on The Science Teacher as Organic Link,

my co-participants raise many positive and insightful points. In this rejoinder, I seek to

address some of the questions and issues they raise, especially pertaining to the connec-

tions between dialectics, the concept of the organic link and teacher identity and practice. I

argue that the organic link, far from a metaphor, can be a powerful analytical tool in the

study of both, science teacher identity as well as science teaching practices.

Keywords Science teacher identity � Dialectics � Organic link

In response to my article on The Science Teacher as Organic Link, my three co-

participants, Catherine Milne, Amy Johnson and Deborah Tippins, make many positive

and insightful points that warrant additional thought and conversations. Their contributions

enrich the discussion and supplement (to use Johnson and Tippins’ word) the article, as one

would expect given the spirit of this forum. The organic link and the responses taken

together, provide an opportunity to consider, to contribute, and even to discover, views and

theories beyond those we are familiar with. Some issues raised in the forum, like dialogic

versus dialectic I necessarily have to set aside for future treatment. Other questions, such as

those on the relationships between dialectics, organic link and teacher identity and practice,

I will try to answer below.

The case study of Anna illustrates the dialectic role of the teacher as an organic link in the

science teaching process. Her life story, as prompted by the research questions and by her own

recollections, shows a dynamic process of continuity and interconnectedness between who

she has become as a person, who she aspires to be in her approach to her teaching practice and

the choices she continues to make as a teacher. Traditional structuralist philosophy has been

criticized as being too rigid and deterministic (Sewell, 1992). Agent as a ‘‘tool’’ is static and

implies a one directional, master and servant, mechanical relationship. Instead, as Anna’s

narrative illustrates, a more powerful tool in explaining teachers would be to call them

‘‘human agents,’’ that is ‘‘agents of action,’’ contextualized by the educational system, the

operational here being human, not mere mechanical devices, which brings us back to the

embodiment of this dialectical and process which I refer to as the organic link.

Dialectics argues for the existence, interconnections and influences among the many,

and themselves complex, variables. The construct of framing and being framed seems to

pose a conceptual issue for the forum participants who criticize the concept of the organic

link as not being dynamic enough. However, dialects by definition imply that the inter-

connected processes and relationships are dynamic. Instead of agency, I use frame and

mediate and being framed and mediated to develop organic link dialectically while at the

same time pointing to the continuous and mutual codependence, interrelationships, and

influences between what is being done and who does it. The organic link article seen as a

whole illustrates these very dynamic and complex processes.

In its inception, my research utilized methodological assumptions about empirical data,

collection of such data, and the usefulness of data in arriving at the formation of concepts.

However, in focusing on the subjective voice of the teacher’s life story, it moved beyond

1 Citation for this contribution: Alexakos, K. (2007). Dialectics and the organic link as a tool of analysis.Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2.

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statistical and measurable data to the experiential area of self-identity, belief systems and

morals as useful objects of study. It was in this process of investigation that the dialectic

relationship between Anna’s identity, interests and beliefs to her teaching philosophy

became apparent, resulting in the construction of the concept of the organic link. Once

constructed, organic link was then utilized as a tool to analyze teacher identity further.

Whereas concepts such as identity and moral beliefs help us explain the actions and

choices of a teacher, they are static in the sense that they describe a subject. The concept of

organic link by contrast is dialectic in that it exposes dynamic, active and interconnected

processes of ‘‘communicating’’ knowledge through the ‘‘agency’’ of the teacher.

The forum

Facts of nature exist independently of our interpretation of them. However, we can only

understand and interpret through the ever-changing lenses of epistemology and theory. Our

methodology helps to shape our understanding of phenomena and processes. As our

understanding deepens, phenomena and processes reveal themselves in ways that help us

reshape our methodology, our tools for seeing and understanding. The clearer the picture of

what actually takes place in the classroom, of the issues and the dynamics involved, the

greater our ability becomes in shaping these environments in ways that support both, the

teachers’ efforts and the learning of our students. The organic link article represents a first

attempt, a starting point, to develop a conceptual analytical tool that can be applied to the

study of the science teacher identity, as well as teaching and learning in a science class-

room. Milne rightfully sees its relationship to identity as in need of further investigation,

while Johnson and Tippins justifiably point to the lack of contextuality of the organic link

within the actual practice of science teaching.

In her forum response, Milne shows the powerful role epistemology plays in our con-

struction of learning, of creating theoretical and analytical categories and the usefulness of

such constructs in our ability to understand and communicate, in this instance, to the nature

of the role of the teacher. Through her epistemological discussion of identity, agency, and

dialectics, she agrees that the concept of organic link can be a useful tool in thinking ‘‘... of

the role of humans in the linking of systems of interactions.’’ This is a very essential

interpretation of what organic link implies.

Context is a part of identity as much as identity is part of context, one dialectically

framing and being framed, mediating and being mediated by the other. In the organic link

study, identity as a concept is not viewed as complete but as a process in production, what

one might say is contextual or ‘‘positioned’’ (Hall, 1994). While an effort was made to

give definitions of identity throughout the manuscript, different aspects were stressed at

different points. We see it emerging as a child, as a science teacher, as a moral agent, as a

disciplinarian, as a woman, as a human being, as a daughter of a south Asian mother and a

white father. While these refer to Anna she is at once the same person and not. Such

aspects of identity are dynamically created and dialectically connected and dependent to

one another and to the whole. One is contained in the other while it contains the others into

itself, or to use Georg Hegel’s phrase, a ‘‘circle of circles’’ (Hegel, 1989, p. 842). After all,

we bring who we are into what we do. So do science teachers.

Though important, I did not examine the narrative of Anna’s life story within the context

of the interview, especially the interplay between researcher and participant. The first

question of the interview was for her to describe who she is, in the context of her path to and

in being a science teacher, including her childhood and teaching experiences. Her response to

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Dialectics and the organic link as a tool of analysis

this alone lasted over an hour, representing 14 single spaced pages of transcription. The only

interruptions were follow up questions to what she was saying, such as ‘‘Why?’’ and ‘‘How

old were you?’’ This was followed by more specific interview questions (Alexakos, 2005).

Anna was one of five participants. All of their stories were interesting and all five came to be

seen as ‘‘organic links’’ for the same reasons as developed here, though all five have had

different lives. As such, any of these five could have been chosen to be the focus of the

analysis in developing the concept of the organic link.

Organic link in context

The issue of the organic link in the context of community/society that Amy Johnson and

Deborah Tippins bring forth is important, and I too agree that further classroom research on

this is necessary. How teachers frame and mediate students’ learning is only investigated

through Anna’s experience as a teacher and as a student. Even from the limited data

though, we begin to see the role that social conditions and actions such as conflict and

struggle can have along with individual interests and passions on shaping the teacher as the

organic link.

The contexts of the physical and social environment shape the nature of the organic link.

At the same time, the science teacher not only represents a living continuation in the

creation and exchange of human culture, but, like Anna, also frames as well as mediates

how that is done. As such, organic link becomes a potent construct in describing as well as

analyzing identity and teaching in a social-cultural context. More than a metaphor, organic

link is embodied by the individual thus laying bare not only the contributions but also the

limits of that individual. Johnson and Tippins point out potential conflicts and tensions in

classroom discourse between the teacher and her students. Taken a step further, organic

link anticipates not only differential approaches and contributions by individuals, but also

how they are treated by and affected by the school environment, where some teacher traits

may be more welcomed than others. For example, if the system does not allow the teacher

to be an ‘‘agent’’ of action and change, it must necessarily attempt to limit one’s passion to

teach and/or how they teach, as was illustrated in Anna’s story. Future research on the

organic link will need to investigate its connections to such complex and interwoven issues

as teacher and teaching beliefs and practices, student learning, and teacher recruitment,

induction, and marginalization.

The organic link as a tool of analysis

The concept of the organic link was constructed through my analysis of Anna’s narrative,

and points to how cultural capital is embodied by her. Anna’s story is not only about what

she describes, but also, and especially more so, what she represents. She could have been

born as a white, middle-class boy and while her story would have been different, the

development of the organic link as a construct would still be appropriate. As Roth (in

press) argues: ‘‘Confronted with differences, individuals continuously engage in cultural

bricolage, taking from here and there to make do, producing not only new, heterogeneous,

creolized forms of knowledgeability and practice but also producing hybrid identities in a

process of continuous metissage.’’ In that cultural capital is organic, it transforms itself

from a vector for its own ‘‘pure’’ transmission to a process of creation and recreation. As

such, it is embodied by the individual who, in the process of socialization, becomes the

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organic link. In describing the zone of proximal development Lev Vygotsky says that:

‘‘Learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate

only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with

his peers’’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 90). The individuals in such a child’s environment,

including hers or his peers, are the organic links.

The study of the organic link necessitated a dialectical methodology. Thus, the organic

link in itself embodies dialectical relationships. Anna becomes a science teacher in the

process of teaching. Organic link is itself in the process of becoming itself. Once it is

recognized as a concept of its own, organic link becomes abstract. That is, while it is based

on identity it also becomes independent of identity. Used appropriately, the organic link

can be a powerful analytical tool in the study of science teachers’ identity, as well as a

powerful analytical tool in the study of the practice of teaching as a process. Science

teachers, as organic links, are part of the socialization in the classroom and in that process

they embody as well as affect change. Though abstract, in the context of socialization, the

organic link becomes relevant to the social lives and culture of communities, while subject

to the social historical context of time and place.

References

Alexakos, K. (2005). The science teacher as the organic link in science learning: Identity, motives, andcapital transfer. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, United States, New York. Retrieved January28, 2007, from ProQuest Digital Dissertations database. (Publication No. AAT 3174739).

Hall, S. (1994). Cultural identity and diaspora. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse andpost-colonial theory: A reader (pp. 392–403). New York: Columbia University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1989). Hegel’s science of logic (A. V. Miller, Trans.). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: HumanitiesPress International.

Roth, W.-M. (in press). Bricolage, metissage, hybridity, heterogeneity, diaspora: Concepts for thinkingscience education in the 21st Century. Cultural Studies of Science Education.

Sewell, W. H., Jr. (1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American Journal ofSociology, 98, 1–29.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge:Harvard University Press.

Konstantinos Alexakos is an Assistant professor in the School of Education at Brooklyn College(CUNY). He is a former New York City high school science teacher and a former transit worker. Hisresearch interests include science teacher identity; science teacher recruitment, support, preparation, andretention; gender and race issues; and strategies for enhancing science learning in the classroom. He iscurrently teaching a college physics course to a special class of high school students.

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Dialectics and the organic link as a tool of analysis

The science teacher as the organic link

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