LEARNING

Michael Ford and Maria Varelas, Section Coeditors

Young African American Childrens Representations of Self, Science, and School: Making Sense of Difference
MARIA VARELAS Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607-7133, USA JUSTINE M. KANE Division of Teacher Education, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, USA CAITLIN DONAHUE WYLIE Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RH, UK

Received 2 July 2010; revised 3 January 2011; accepted 14 January 2011 DOI 10.1002/sce.20447 Published online 17 March 2011 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

ABSTRACT: We focused on young, low-income, African American children in rst- to third-grade classrooms where they experienced varied forms of interactive, participatory,
This article was published online on 17 March 2011. Subsequently, it was determined that the title of the Seiler 2011 reference was incorrect, and the article was corrected on 31 May 2011. A version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Philadelphia, PA, March 2124, 2010. Correspondence to: Maria Varelas; e-mail: mvarelas@uic.edu Contract grant sponsor: University of Illinois at Chicago Great Cities Institute (to Maria Varelas). Contract grant sponsor: Polk Bros. Foundation. The data presented, statements made, and views expressed in this article are solely the responsibilities of the authors and do not necessarily reect the views of UICs Great Cities Institute or the Polk Bros. Foundation.
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and dialogic pedagogy in the context of yearlong, integrated science-literacy instruction. Using conversations that started around childrens own science journals, which were an important part of teaching and learning science in their classrooms, we studied 25 childrens ideological becoming relative to the practices of science and schooling and the interplay between their selves and others. We found that doing school was a dominant narrative intertwined with doing science. Following behavioral codes and constructing smartness as a large amount of knowledge seemed to be an important part of their school world, antithetical in some ways to the active, inquisitive, questioning, exible view of science and science learning that their classroom instruction aimed for. Nevertheless, children had also constructed valuable scientic practices and sophisticated conceptions that involved science as capital (social, cultural, or affective) for scientists and/or for themselves as scientists. How children made sense of their experiences in and out of school and interpreted their teachers and peers words and actions, and how they saw themselves as competent, were echoed in C 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci the varied ideological becoming in their science worlds.
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INTRODUCTION Over approximately the past decade, there has been a limited but increasing number of studies that focus on science learning in urban classrooms where students of color, many of whom live in poverty, are educated. These studies challenge the rhetoric of decit views associated with students of color and foreground dimensions of teaching and learning that need to be attended to if students of color are to be empowered to grow in various spherescognitive, social, and affective. Such dimensions include identity construction, hybridity, power relationships, diversity of scientic sense making, contextualization, and access to Discourse, participation, and membership in a learning community (for a review of studies that address these dimensions, see Varelas, Kane, Tucker-Raymond, & Pappas, in press). With this article, we seek to contribute to this growing body of research by shedding light on young African American childrens ways of seeing themselves relative to science and school when they experience classroom science in the midst of their peers and with teachers who aimed at enacting interactive, participatory, and dialogic pedagogy. Using conversations that started around the childrens own science journals, which were an important part of teaching and learning science for that year in the three classrooms we focused on, we studied the variety of perspectives that children had constructed in these classrooms about themselves vis-` a-vis science and schooling, their sense of doing science, and how their conceptions had been inuenced by experiences with others. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Children of Color: Science Education and Schooling As Bryan and Atwater (2002) warn us, children of color are often portrayed in science education in ways that emphasize or echo decit views. In science, and other subjects too, students of color have been identied as lacking knowledge, preparation, and achievement. At the macro level, reports ag the low number of students of color (and especially African Americans) who achieve prociency in science throughout K-12 grades (Vanneman, Hamilton, Baldwin Anderson, & Rahman, 2009) and pursue science degrees in college and/or follow science-related careers (National Science Board, 2010). Moreover, reports associate African Americans underrepresentation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college degrees and science-related careers with low levels of persistence despite African American students similar or higher interest in science and science careers relative to that of White students (Anderson & Kim, 2006).
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However, at the micro level, science education researchers working in urban classrooms have found that when we expand the repertoire of tools and outcomes associated with learning, we can see more of the strengths and successes that students of color can experience in classrooms and pinpoint culprits responsible for the decit-oriented ndings at the macro level. For example, students of color can appropriate with ease epistemic dimensions of science but are challenged by discursive practices (Brown, 2006; Brown, Reveles, & Kelly, 2005). Thus, bridging between everyday and science Discourses can boost student engagement in, and learning of, science (Barton, Tan, & Rivet, 2008; Varelas, Becker, Luster, & Wenzel, 2002; Warren, Ballenger, Ogonowski, Rosebery, & Hudicourt-Barnes, 2001). Moreover, separating conceptual from linguistic components may enable students to develop strong scientic understandings (Brown & Ryoo, 2008). Beyond developing scientic knowledge, when relationships between students and teachers/schools are built on trust, respect, and caring, students, who used to position themselves as resisting science and schooling, participate in science in new ways (Roth et al., 2004; Seiler, 2001; Tobin, 2000). These, and other studies, that have mostly targeted older elementary and secondary students not only nuance and challenge a prevalent rhetoric about underachieving Black students in U.S. urban classrooms but also call for further research on how students of color make sense of cognitive, social, affective, and behavioral practices associated with schooling and science, and how they use them to construct representations of their selves relative to science. In this study, we focus on younger children who have been understudied despite an increasing emphasis on the need to engage children in science from a very young age if challenges in later grades are to be addressed (Carnegie Corporation of New York and Institute for Advanced Study, 2009). Furthermore, microlevel studies have shown that power dynamics within a learning community play an important role in classroom experiences and learning. Power takes various formsdiscursive, ideological, symbolic, and materialand needs to be redistributed and rebalanced if students of color are both to have opportunities to learn science and actually learn science (Patchen & Cox-Petersen, 2008). Only then access and participation in science becomes a reality for children. However, it is not enough for teachers to create spaces where students can exercise their agency; students also need to see themselves as members of a community, a science learning community, where they construct knowledge together (Kane, 2009; Olitsky, 2007). How students perceive their classrooms, experiences, learning, and science as a body of knowledge and as a practice shapes, and is shaped by, how they think about and experience science. However, we know very little about the particular ways in which young children understand and interpret the sociocultural practices of science and school vis-` a-vis who they see themselves being and becoming. Learning science in school implies being in the midst of at least two social worlds, that of science and that of school. In the school world, behavioral norms and regulations are often emphasized. These norms and regulations are integrally intertwined with issues of discipline and disciplinary sanctions for which research reveals racial disparities. Students of color in general, and African American students specically, are disproportionally punished (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010). Children of color are suspended and expelled disproportionately (Harvard University Civil Rights Project, 2000), and boys, and especially boys of color, are disciplined the most; boys are cited for disciplinary diversions 10 times more than girls (Gurian & Stevens, 2005). These disparities may be due to many complex factors, but it is clear that the discipline gap is closely related to the extensively discussed achievement gap between students of color and White students (Gregory et al., 2010). Moreover, according to Gregory and her colleagues, the discipline gap necessitates thinking and exploration beyond a dichotomous justication of such a gap based on either individual student characteristics or systemic factors.
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Teachers in urban schools face a high level of disciplinary problems. For those who support and for those who object to the zero tolerance policy (Ayers, Dohrn, & Ayers, 2001), the way to reduce the likelihood of having to enforce it is prevention of situations that would evoke it by focusing on good behavior and helping troubled students avoid potentially volatile situations (Reyes, 2006). Escalating behavioral problems can be so overwhelming for teachers (new and seasoned alike but to various degrees) that they are advised to address them right from the start. As Reyes reminds us,
there is no debate that schools need to be places that preserve, maintain, and create climates conducive to learning for all students, and disciplinary systems must facilitate progress towards these goals. The question that creates controversy is how to create disciplinary systems supportive of these ends. . . . [F]indings of the Children Left Behind project illustrat[e] that many school leaders believe that preventive disciplinary systems are best suited to achieve the goal of creating school climates conducive to learning. (p. 107)

Such systems require ongoing attention to behavioral dimensions of social activity, encouraging students to be respectful, polite, well mannered, and courteous to teacher and peers in the classroom, and to comply with classroom and school behavioral norms. Furthermore, intertwined with disciplining and behavior management is the notion of authority that, as Pace and Hemmings (2007) claim,
is a fundamental, problematic, and poorly understood component of classroom life (p. 4). Their research, which reviewed social theories, educational ideologies, and empirical studies, shows us that classroom authority is, above all else, a social construction that is built, taken apart, and rebuilt by teachers and students (p. 21)

and that larger social and cultural forces have had an enormous effect on classroom relations (p. 22) for students of color. Thus, who the students see as the authority in the classroom and in what ways, what counts as authority and how it is gained, how authority is maintained or challenged, and how students construct spaces to be in the school world amidst peers and adults need to be considered when we attempt to understand the multifaceted sense of the science world that students construct while in the school world. Identity Construction: Experience, Ideological Becoming, and Capital Learning in and out of the classroom entails more than constructing knowledge of a subject matter. We adopt Lave and Wengers (1991) view that learning also involves the construction of identities and that one way to think of learning is as the historical production, transformation, and change of persons (pp. 5152). An individuals identity is co-constructed by the person herself or himself and by the other people with whom she or he interacts in the context of organized social activity, which, for students, is found both inside and outside classrooms/schools. Holland and her colleagues (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) help us see classrooms as gured worlds, systems of social activity governed by particular norms and patterns of interaction, participation, values, actions, beliefs, and assumptions. These worlds are populated by actors and their acts and by social forces that inuence how the actors act. As Wenger (1998) points out,
Because learning transforms who we are and what we can do, it is an experience of identity . . . We accumulate skills and information, not in the abstract as ends in themselves, but in the service of an identity. It is in that formation of an identity that learning can become a source of meaningfulness and of personal and social energy. (p. 215)

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Actors use their prior experiences to perceive situations in these worlds and make decisions to act that are related to meanings and expectations they have formed about these worlds. Sociologically speaking, people use framing (Goffman, 1974) to develop structures within which to hold meanings of what they have been experiencing (Trevino, 2003). As Gerhardt (2003) highlights about Goffman, the father of framing as a sociological construct,
Experience is socially constructed in a way different from phenomenological thought . . . He [Goffman] explained how experience of the world emulates forms that convey the realness of the world. Their reality . . . lies in their compatibility with conventions for narratively constructing real-life experiences. That these forms are cast as credible frameworks of presentation makes activities meaningful to both the actors as well as their audiences. (p. 154)

In this way, the self constantly interacts with the social domain. The self is not a static entity, but a dynamic social process, that shapes and is shaped by the social encounter, a transformative process of being. People come to see and position themselves as certain kinds of people interacting with others, with artifacts, and with subject matter in certain ways because of who they see themselves being at that momentwhat Sfard and Prusak (2005) call actual (asserted) identities. But their actual identities are also shaped by their designated (assigned) identities that capture their expectations of what they may become, what they perceive as binding between themselves and others within a particular sociocultural practice. As people coconstruct their positioning in the social practices in which they participate, they construct views about their and others competence in terms of this practices particular characteristics (Greeno, 2006; Gresal, Martin, Hand, & Greeno, 2008) and the framing of their own experiences. Thus, identity is lived experience based on collective history, produced through interactions where a person is heard and seen in particular ways and hears and sees others in particular ways. Identity lies in the intersection of the individual and social spheres. This perspective ts with a Bakhtinian view of learning and living that describes learning as a dialogical process where a whole self is formed and reformed, and points of view, ideologies in the Bakhtinian sense, are constructed and reconstructed. Bakhtins concept of ideological becoming is useful: The ideological becoming of a human being . . . is a process of selectively assimilating words of others (1981, p. 341). As people interact with others, materials, ideas, practices, and tools, they make sense of a particular activity in their own ways which carry features of the ways others have constructed this activity. In classrooms, as children talk, write, draw, act out, read, are read to, and do science, they develop or revise their points of view about science, themselves, and school. This ideological becoming does not happen in the soul, in the inner world . . . but in the world, in sound, in gesture, in the combination of masses, lines, colors, living bodies (Bakhtin/Medvedev, 1978, p. 8). Moreover, this ideological becoming is consistent with Bakhtins idea of refracting discoursea persons ideas, meanings, and words refract the intentions of others. Furthermore, capital, and its nature and source, is a critical construct to consider when examining peoples conceptions of social worlds. Capital is inherited from the past and continuously created in the context of social activity. Positions that people take and hold in a social world are dened by the distribution of capital that mediates the relationships among people, which, in turn, are shaped by various material and/or symbolic exchanges. Two forms of capital that Bourdieu (1986) specied are particularly relevant for classrooms and ways that students and teacher live togethercultural and social capital. Cultural capital can exist in three states: embodied (dispositions of body and mind, what
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people know and can do), objectied (material objects, cultural goods), and institutionalized (objectied capital that enjoys institutional recognition, a certicate of cultural competence (p. 248)). Social capital is related to the resources available to a network of people and to their place in that network. As Dika and Singh (2002) point out, social capital is conceptualized in two different ways, in terms of norms and in terms of access to institutional resources (p. 33). Any social world has its own game rules, some more explicit than others. Perceiving these rules and following them allows someone to become part of that world. Thus, social capital can be a tool for advancing a persons life chances, which is Colemans (1988) approach to social capital. In contrast, Bourdieu focused on how access to institutional resources is given to the dominant class, thus becoming a tool for social reproduction of some people but not others. Both cultural capital and social capital are related to symbolic capital, the type of capital that people have because of their status, prestige, and reputation in a social world. All forms of capital dene a persons power, place, and points of view within a particular social world and are regulated and distributed based on complex dynamics (forces) among members and nonmembers of that world. Thus, the construct of capital is very relevant when we study childrens ways of constructing the relationship between themselves and the science world as they experience it within the world of school. RESEARCH GOALS In this study, we sought to capture and understand how young African American students frame themselves relative to science and scientists and how others framing of them becomes part of their ideological becoming. We focused on how African American students make sense of the social world of science and the social world of school, the formal structure within which they experience science. Through participation in everyday practices of schooling, a student, as Levinson and Holland (1996) point out, produces cultural forms but is also culturally produced (p. 14, italics in original). We wanted to study this cultural production of African American students who attended urban schools in economically struggling neighborhoods, but who have also had opportunities to engage with practices of science that promote dialogical engagement with, examination of, and sharing of a variety of scientic ideas. Currently, more and more educators focus on providing opportunities to students, including (or more exclusively focusing on) students of color, so that students experience science in meaningful, engaging, and active ways that reect important dimensions of scientic practice (such as collecting and analyzing data, developing explanations, communicating understandings, questioning ideas, and so on and so forth) and, thus, develop the knowledge needed for a successful educational and life path. However, along with knowledge construction, we also need to be concerned with identity construction (Wenger, 1998) and understand the possibly diverse ways in which students make sense of themselves and science when they experience such opportunities. The need for such an approach is greater for African American students, since research has shown that their sense of self as African American students in relation to a particular discipline (i.e., science or mathematics) is linked to their achievement (Chavous et al., 2003). In addition, it is African American students who are framed in the United States as the most underperforming students among all racial and ethnic groups and this underperformance has often positioned them as inferior to Whites and other racial groups without problematizing institutional, cultural, and social hurdles that they face in school (Martin, 2007; Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003). Such positioning shapes how they come to think of schooling, learning, and succeeding in relation to the various subjects that they are taught while in school. Thus, with this study we aim to uncover ways in which African American students construct representations of
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themselves vis-` a-vis scientic practice and scientists early in their schooling experience, and to expose what becomes salient for these young students, when they experience for a year dimensions of science that are promoted by the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996).

METHOD Participants and Settings The children in this study were in three classrooms that were part of a larger project aiming at integrating science and literacy in early elementary grades and working with teachers to enhance or develop curricular, instructional, and assessment practices that nurture such integration. The rst- and second-grade classrooms (20 and 27 children, respectively) were at the same westside school of a large urban school district and the third-grade classroom (22 students) was at a different school on the south side of the district. Both schools were in economically struggling neighborhoods and both with almost all African American students (except a total of ve students). The rst-grade teacher was a Latina with 6 years of teaching experience and all in that westside school. Her colleague, the second-grade teacher, was a White female with all 6 years of teaching experience in that school. Finally, the third-grade teacher was an African American female with 16 years of teaching experience and 5 years at the southside school. All three teachers were working on applying for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certication during the year of the study. The secondgrade teacher stopped in late spring of that school year because of family issues. The other two teachers completed their applications and were subsequently granted National Board certication. The teachers and the rst two coauthors started working in the summer prior to the study to develop instruction for the following school year that would offer students opportunities to study science in engaging and enabling ways. The westside school where the rst- and second-grade classrooms were had adopted the curriculum recommended by the school district, which contains four units per year per grade, three from the FOSS (Full Option Science System) curriculum and one from STC (Science and Technology Concepts). The southside school where the third-grade classroom was had been using the textbook series Discovery Works that contains ve units in third grade. All three teachers were teaching science approximately twice a week. As part of the integrated science-literacy efforts, the teachers engaged their young students in various activities, such as listening to and discussing read-alouds of childrens literature information books related to the science topics explored in a particular unit, doing hands-on explorations that included observations, experiments, and building structures, writing and drawing in their journals, contributing to making a class concept map, acting out science ideas and phenomena, and sharing the results of a home project. Details on some of these instructional and assessment approaches have been presented in other publications (Pappas, Varelas, Gill, Ortiz, & Keblawe-Shamah, 2009; Varelas, et al., 2007, 2008, 2010; Varelas & Pappas, 2006; Varelas, Pappas, & Rife, 2006; Varelas, Pappas, Kokkino, & Ortiz, 2008). Based on the consents that we were able to collect and the time available for conversations with the children, the data of this study came from the following children (all names are pseudonyms): First-grade classroom: Marcella, Adeline, Clayton, Antoine, Karam (girls: 2, boys: 3, total: 5)
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Second-grade classroom: Roshauna, Savanna, Pricilla, Jaleesa, Annette, Ramell, Jasper, Marlon (girls: 5, boys: 3, total: 8) Third-grade classroom: Althea, Tanya, Reanna, Maleah, Chanise, Destinee, Toshelle, Kyree, Raymond, Ellis, Keyon, Aron (girls: 7, boys: 5, total: 12)

Data Sources and Analysis For this study, we focused on conversations that the second author (Kane) had with these 25 children around pages in their science journals. Journaling was an ongoing activity for the childrens classrooms during that school year, and children were encouraged to both write and draw in their journals that were composed of pages that had two distinct parts: a blank top half to draw and a lined bottom half so children could write. The conversations were conducted individually during the last month of school and lasted on the average approximately 20 minutes. Kane started the conversations by asking students to select a few pages from their journals and as they talk about them to share how they see themselves as scientists and science students. We intentionally constructed an open-ended conversation because we wanted to nd out what children would say about themselves and science without being forced to consider particular dimensions of scientic practice. Although the purpose of our research was to reveal and understand the ways in which these young African American children constructed their selves relative to science and scientists, during the conversations, we did not constantly force the connection between themselves and science/scientists. At times, children just talked about science and scientists and Kane did not interrupt them to ask whether this was the way in which they thought about themselves as scientists. At other times, children talked about themselves and being in their classrooms and Kane did not interrupt them to ask how the ideas they were sharing were related to science and scientists. We believe that conceptions of identity are not compartmentalized and, thus, if we had constantly directed children toward the relationship of themselves with science/scientists, we may have missed important insights the children may have wanted to share with us about themselves. Moreover, directing young children to consider a specic idea may lead to silence, or dont know answers, as their young age may not enable them to consider a specic idea within a broader realm of considerations. Of course, this does not mean that we had not designed and used during the interview, when appropriate, questions that would focus these young children toward sharing their conceptions of the relationship between themselves and science/scientists. Such questions that were used during the interviews, when they t the ow of the conversation, included

What do you like in science class? Why? Who do you like to work with in science class and why? What do you like about science? Why? What kind of science student do you think you are? What makes you think of that? What kind of student are you in other subjects? How does this journal page show that you are a scientist? Are you like a scientist? How would you describe yourself as a scientist?

By offering children an opportunity to talk about themselves and science in the context of a product (their science journal) that had been an ongoing element of their school science experience, we aimed to understand childrens representations of self, science, and
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school in relation to each other without constantly imposing on them this relationship. In this way, we strengthened the construct validity of our study as argued above. To analyze the data, we used an approach consistent with constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) that seeks to capture the voices and meanings of the research participants, the 25 children in our case, but also recognizes that meaning is co-constructed between researcher and participants in the data collection stage. First, we listened to and summarized each conversation and examined the writing and the drawing of that students journal. Each journal and conversation summary was then revisited and answers to the following set of questions were composed for every child:

How do children see themselves vis-` a-vis the scientic practice and knowledge? What do children see as their strengths? As their weaknesses? As challenges in general? What is school for children? How do they see themselves as students? How are others a part of them? How do they think about otherness? How does the authority of school intermingle with the authority of science and the authority of self in the childrens minds? What is the childrens sense of belonging in school, in the classroom, in science? How much do they internalize voices of others? How is difference and sameness part of childrens representations of self, science, and school?

These questions had signicant overlap; however, each of them helped us slice the data in different ways so that we could develop richer interpretations. Furthermore, to better understand the childrens conceptions about themselves and science, we examined eld notes from classroom observations of science lessons throughout the year and from conversations with the teachers, in order to situate these conceptions within the particular classrooms in which the children studied science during that year. Both of these analytical steps strengthened the interpretive validity of our study. FINDINGS The young African American children in our study, who had experienced just one or a few years of schooling in their neighborhoods that struggle with poverty and challenges that usually come with it, had developed complex and multifaceted relationships with science, intermingling various conceptions of self, of school, and of science. What the children told us about scientists, and about themselves being scientists, shows how they were meaning, in other words, how they were making sense of the experiences they had had. Their meanings were marked by multiple voices, their own and others, and multiple contexts. These meanings were the means for, and ends of, their appropriation of various worldsthe world of their schools/classrooms, the world outside their schools, and the world of science. This appropriation was marked by difference at two levelsdifference among children and difference among worlds. Doing School Fused With Doing Science As we communicate, we do not simply express the selves we already have, but we also form selves to express (Harris, 1987). During the conversations we had with the children, they were expressing and forming images of scientists, and themselves as scientists. These images, on the one hand, included essential elements and dimensions of scientic practice,
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but on the other hand, were fused with managerial and behavioral norms of schooling practices, which the children had experienced sometime in school (not necessarily in their classroom in that year), or had constructed by listening to others; what the children shared with us were historically situated utterances (Volosinov, 1986). About half of the 25 children (13) brought up ideas about science and scientists that echoed ways promoted in schools to increase good behavior and to strengthen student compliance to teacher agendas and directions. These children included one rst grader (Marcella), ve second graders (Jasper, Ramell, Pricilla, Jaleesa, Annette), and seven third graders (Althea, Tanya, Reanna, Kyree, Chanise, Destinee, Toshelle). The rest of the children (12) did not share any such ideas as they were talking about science and scientists. Of the 12 students, two (second graders Roshauna and Marlon) did not say much during the conversations; thus 10 students focused only on norms of doing sciencefour rst graders (Adeline, Clayton, Antoine, Karam), one second grader (Savanna, if we put aside Roshauna and Marlon), and ve third graders (Maleah, Raymond, Ellis, Keyon, Aron). The children (mostly girls), who brought up good school behaviors when asked to imagine scientists, science, and themselves as scientists, referenced a variety of school norms. Marcella saw herself as a good scientist because You gotta listen to the teacher. You gotta listen and you mind the teacher. Ramell was a scientist because he was well behaved and did good things and helped others. His classmates Pricilla and Jaleesa also referenced behavior. Pricilla saw herself as a scientist by being nice, and
When I work, I try to keep my mind on science instead of keeping my mind on playing, talking, talking about stuff that it aint schoolwork or homework. And also nice because sometimes kids misbehave, talking back to the teacher and call her names.

Chanise was like a scientist when she was respectful and nice to teachers, and Reanna when she paid attention. For Jaleesa who saw herself as kinda good in science, youre supposed to always study on stuff . . . and you always supposed to get good grades . . . and be good to the teacher and then say nice things about her (see the Appendix for a key of symbols used in excerpts of student talk). In the third-grade classroom, Althea believed she was a good scientist but knew she had to talk less in class. Kyree was very quiet in the classroom and I go in here and I dont get in trouble and I work all the time. Toshelle listened and did not get in trouble by doing her work and raising her hand. Tanya echoed similar ideas: scientists can teach kids a valuable lesson like not to hit people and not to push nobody, not to talk when the teacher is talking. For these children, representations of themselves vis-` a-vis science included references to behaving well, a core element of how they had experienced and conceptualized doing school. Along with these behavioral aspects of doing school, several of the children also communicated important features of doing science. They did not seem to have constructed, though, the difference between doing science and doing school. Rather, they seemed to intertwine doing science with doing school, both dimensions present in their lives in and out of the classroom. In addition to suggesting that scientists need to be nice, pay attention, and listen to the teacher, the children also highlighted important disciplinary practices of doing science. Jasper shared that scientists build machines and nd out about dinosaurs. For Ramell, scientists make cool inventions, and Pricilla highlighted that
you do good experiments on science . . . like scientists // they can go out and explore everything, and can explore the wild. They can go into the forest and try and nd animals and everything. They can discover animals that sometimes people dont even know about.

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Similarly for Jaleesa, scientists make stuff and cool things and nd out something new, or like Kyree shared, a scientist // they have to nd out things that they dont even know about and they dont even know what happens. Moreover, Reanna pointed out that scientists share the information they have. Thus, building equipment, experimenting, possessing specialized knowledge, making things, and discovering knowledge are dimensions of scientic practice that, for half of the children, were intertwined with behaving well, which consisted of a variety of behaviors expected in school. Some of these dimensions of scientic activity (along with different ones) were also raised by children (mostly boys) who only brought up dimensions of doing science, as they talked about science, scientists, and themselves as scientists, without intertwining them with behavioral aspects of doing school. For Clayton and his classmate Antoine, building was a salient feature of scientists. Clayton was a scientist when we build with blocks and have to tell about it. Antoine was a scientist when he built things but also when he observe[s], write[s], grow[s], like growing plants. But for Antoine scientists test [things] out, which was something he wanted to do, but had not yet done. Roshauna thought that scientists make books. For Savanna, scientists know a lot and a scientist is a person who makes stuff. Similarly for Keyon, as a scientist he would make things other people cant but also scientists study all the time. His classmate, Raymond, had a large set of elements of the scientic practice to share:
I think a scientist draw stuff so they can represent their work, like you do, like you drawing, like building stuff. Like a scientist nd dinosaur bones, they x it like that, put dinosaur bones together . . . A scientist is a person who does stuff // who do stuff to get the information about a fossil, anything, to get the information about the dinosaur, what color was it. They like to nd friction and motion and connect things, like snakes and other animals . . . They are smart, clever, modest, and good at technology . . . Scientists // they gure out // like crack codes. Not like locker codes, but dinosaur codes, animal codes.

In the same class, Ellis articulated that scientists get information from books and share it with others, but Aron saw himself as a scientist by doing experiments in class and knowing a lot about science, some of which he had learned from watching TV, such as the Discovery Channel. These data do not support any strong differences in terms of what doing science meant for the two groupsthe children who fused it with doing school and the children who did not. This is welcomed news, we believe. However, what these data also indicate is that several children make sense of the regulatory practices used to manage behavior in classrooms and schools as part of the practices of the subjects they study in their classrooms. Some may argue that attending to such regulatory behavioral practices may be especially benecial to children of color as they navigate school systems that may have a strong emphasis on behavioral regulation along with, or instead of, disciplinary learning. However, as science educators, we need to be troubled with the potential impact of infusion of conceptions of doing school into conceptions of doing science. Emphasis on and attention to regulatory behavioral norms communicate to children that what matters is being good as judged by others, being good in terms of how they behave, not being good in terms of how they think, solve problems, ask questions, make sense of ideas, and come up with new ones. A pedagogy of control may lead to compliance that is so contrary to the stance of science as inquiry, as exploration, as thinking out of the box that educators may celebrate and strive for. Such pedagogy controls and limits ideas discussed, questions raised, the criticalness of the discussions that occur, and who gets to participate in classroom discourse. It echoes a pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire, 1970/1990) that is antithetical
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to the efforts of the classroom teachers in this study and their attempts to foster thinking, questioning, exploration, and meaning making. Moreover, emphasis on good behavior in classrooms of students of color and especially African American students is often targeted toward boys who are believed to be more aggressive and rambunctious. Teachers think disruptive behavior is a sign of unproductive behaviors to come and they attempt to stop it before it goes further. However, our data show that girls, more than boys, had internalized such emphasis on behaving. Mostly girls brought in doing school norms when talking about doing science, whereas mostly boys kept doing school norms separate from doing science. This nding should also be alarming to science educators in light of the extensive research on women/girls and their access to, engagement with, and representation and future in scientic practice. We also need to understand the varying percentages of students who fused doing science and doing school norms in the different classrooms. The third graders had already experienced three different classrooms, whereas the rst graders had only experienced that particular classroom and possibly a kindergarten classroom (which is usually quite different from the rest of the elementary school classes in terms of the strictness or insistence on following school norms). All three teachers during the year of the study were attempting to enact dialogically oriented instruction and help children see themselves as scientists using tools, practices, and habits of mind that are important in scientic practice. Maybe this is one of the reasons why relatively more rst graders (although small numbers) put forward a view of scientists and themselves as scientists that did not include managerial and controlling schooling practices. However, the three classrooms in our study were also quite different. The rst-grade classroom was a place of negotiation between student needs for talking, interacting, moving around, and doing things in their own ways on the one hand, and more conventional and canonical ways of behaving at school, on the other. In contrast, the second-grade classroom had a strong emphasis on appropriate school behavior consistent with norms of no talking without being called on, limited movement, and compliance to teachers directions. Finally, the third-grade classroom seemed to fall in between the two other classroom cultures, somewhere between less negotiation and more teacher tendency toward control than in the rst-grade classroom, but less imposed and strictly followed control than in the second-grade classroom. Thus, in their ideological becoming, the children refracted dominant voices in their classrooms, voices that encouraged or discouraged their intertwining between doing school and doing science. Examining further the talk of the children who, while sharing their conceptions of doing science, did not bring up clear-cut norms of behavior management associated with doing school, we found that some of these children referenced ideas that are very much encouraged in schools but are also epistemological, sociological, and ethical ideas associated with many aspects of human life, including scientic practice. As rst grader Karam was talking about scientists, he pointed out that
you can be important by focusing on things you need to make then you get it right, but sometimes you dont get it right . . . scientists keep on going and going until they get it right . . . [what helps them get it right] is that sometimes they try and sometimes they dont try.

For Karam, if scientists focus, by which he meant that they listen and get clear what they think, they can get it right. One of his favorite activities, which he had captured in his journal, was submerging in water a cup that had a napkin stuffed at the bottom because the water in the cup makes it seem like youre being bad, but youre not, youre just trying to see the cup in there and see how its gonna get wet. Throughout the conversation
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with Karam, the need for being right (a marker of both school and science genres) was consistently expressed, but it surfaced along with the notion of trying and being persistent, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes not (elements of the science genre that Karams teacher was enacting in her classroom). Karam also communicated that he was aware of an assumption that adults make about childrenevery time adults/teachers see children doing something that they are not supposed to do in school (e.g., that involves water) then they think that children just want to be bad because they engage in inappropriate activities like playing with water. But he claried that his (and his classs) goal was guring things out and was not fooling around. Karam liked the cleverness involved in this; he was able to do something he liked as a child (play with water) in a setting where he was not allowed to do so (school), but the task was not really what it looked like (child play), it was science that made it a legitimate activity. Moreover, Karam emphasized staying focused; when they focus, scientists get it right. In his classroom, Karam was given a plethora of opportunities to think, do, and share science, but at the same time he was repeatedly told to focus since most of the time, he was wandering around, and while sitting on the rug, wiggling, looking around the classroom, and stretching his body. He seemed to know why he needed to focus and he projected this onto scientists. When we are focused, we listen, probably to the teachers or somebodys directions (somebody who knows more than we do), and become clearer in our thinking. Karam was piecing together what he was told and expected to do in school and an inquiryoriented science stance of repeated trying, expected failure, and exploration. Ideological becoming is shaped by the fusion of different voices in a childs environment. It reects the needs, aspirations, and ways of making sense of oneself and the communities and practices in which one has been participating. Similarly to Karam, second grader Savanna brought up being right and linked it with her own and others perseverance in thinking about ideas. Talking about herself as a scientist, Savanna shared: Sometimes I cant gure it out and sometimes I think about it and then I get the right answer. Sometimes I dont know it and sometimes people get the answers and sometimes I think about it. And third grader Raymond brought up how he thought about being right or wrong as he was doing science. He shared:
it might be wrong and you might have to do it over. If you get it wrong and you // you need to get the thing in your head and keep it there, you need to really think about it before you get to write anything down.

Raymond also brought up that scientists are modest, a quality that teachers emphasize in classrooms as they try to give spaces to all their students to grow, develop, and feel good about themselves, and a quality that scientists may or may not have. Raymond himself exhibited this quality consistently in the classroom. During our conversation, he knew he was talented and great and that his teacher thought that way about him, but he also liked working with other kids because . . . you [may] need help and somebodys there for you. Moreover, he understood the discomfort that some of his classmates felt when they did not succeed (It doesnt feel good to other people that doesnt get good grades in science) and that is why he liked helping them do well in science using his particular talent: I write a picture to give them an understanding what to do. I give them an understanding so they wont fail. In the classroom, Raymond was a helping hand to others, never boisterous of his knowledge and competency. Similarly to Raymonds idea that scientists are modest, rst grader Adeline shared that a scientist is somebody who be honest. Honesty and modesty are qualities encouraged in schools that are not unique markers of the practice of science and of scientists.
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Our data revealed that smartness was part of childrens ideological becoming relative to science and scientists. One third of the children across the three classrooms (Antoine, Clayton, Savanna, Pricilla, Jaleesa, Jasper, Althea, Raymond, Toshelle) specically mentioned being smart as they were talking about science, scientists, and themselves. Although the standard dictionary denition of smart is quick or prompt in action; clever, witty, or readily effective, as a speaker; having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability, these children had constructed smartness as a large amount of knowledge. In fact, third grader Raymond articulated the difference he had conceptualized between clever and smart. Raymond shared, Different things about clever and smart is that clever means that you gotta think of a way. And smart is different from clever because you gotta know stuff. All of the children who brought up smartness as an attribute of scientists saw themselves as smart and some of them thought their teachers considered them smart. Only Jasper did not see himself as smart
Im not that smart, cuz I // I dont know. Anything I get wrong I go like this [hits himself on head] cuz Im stupid . . . cuz Im not a smart boy, cuz I dont know how to spell some words, I know how to color but I dont know how to draw that good, and Im not a good scientist!

But then he added that he could have a brainstorm and get smarter. What Jasper perceived as lack of knowledge shaped his conception of being stupid and not a good scientist. However, two of the students who brought up smartness in relation to seeing themselves as scientists offered more nuanced understandings of smartness beyond just a straight association with only a large amount of knowledge. While rst grader Antoine was sharing that he wanted to be an engineer when he would grow up, he noted that to be an engineer you need to be smart [and being smart means] to be active, to be funny, to learn, to learn engineer stuff in school, in engineer school. Although Antoine associated smartness with stuff [he would learn] in engineer school, he also linked smartness with being active and funny, words that may imply working things out and being witty which are meanings more closely associated with cleverness. Furthermore, third grader Althea, talking about smartness, brought up not only the amount of knowledge required but also that scientists probably think of everything, what they do, anytime, any place. She rushed though to elaborate that, some scientists do that, other scientists dont really think about what they do. Thinking (or not) things out was interwoven with smartness in Altheas way of constructing herself in relation to science and scientists. Thinking goes beyond just having knowledge; it implies reecting upon this knowledge and the actions associated with it. Altheas nuanced understanding of smartness seems related to her classroom experiences. Altheas teacher had been repeatedly encouraging her students to think especially before or after they do something or they share something (associated both with behaviors in the classroom and with science ideas and practices), and at several times she had reprimanded some students (including Althea) for not thinking things through. Althea had blended the sense she had constructed of these experiences with her views of scientists and herself relative to scientists. Althea knew that she and some of her classmates did think things through sometimes but not always. To position herself as smart and in proximity to scientists, she needed to qualify her original statement about thinking and smartness of scientists. Despite these nuances, all the children in the three classrooms who brought up smartness had associated science with a high level of knowledgean undisputable feature of scientic
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practice but also of any other practice. Linking smartness with a large amount of knowledge may be another form of fusion between doing science and doing school. Frequently teachers in schools, and especially in urban schools where students face life conditions that may encourage them to make choices that may not be strongly correlated with academic success, tell their students that they should be smart and make smart choices so they can avoid going down the wrong path. At the same time, in many urban schools that educate students of color living in economically depressed, low-income conditions, information and knowledge seem to be overemphasized over thinking, problem solving, relating, questioning, and doing this with ease and exibility (Anyon, 1980; Freire, 1970/1990). As the two emphases, on smartness and on knowledge, coexist in classrooms, children may fuse them together to the extent we found in this study. Moreover, several other children (Adeline, Reanna, Ellis, Aron), who did not bring up smartness associated with science and scientists, did bring up the high degree of knowledge that scientists possess. Thus, for about half of the children, a lot of information was a salient part of their representations of science and scientists and themselves in relation to science. Moreover, effort is often related with developing a large amount of knowledge. Although less than the students whose views of themselves relative to science incorporated smartness, a few students (Adeline, Savanna, Kyree, Raymond, Chanise, and Ellis) brought up effort as they were constructing themselves relative to science and scientists. All of them but one (Raymond) expressed that working hard and putting in a strong effort was part of doing science. Their focus on the high level of required effort for doing science underscored the high intellectual demand that doing science necessitated in the childrens minds. Moreover, the children associated science with hard work as they spoke about themselves as scientists, not scientists in general. It was they who had to work hard to be scientists. Maybe it is not coincidental that they did not bring up how hard science was, and how much effort it required, when they were talking about other scientists. Maybe, as they were enculturated in their classrooms where their teachers kept emphasizing putting their best effort forward, working hard on what they had to do, and being persistent, they were constructing themselves as this kind of people. Only Kyree linked hard work with both himself as scientist and with scientists in general. Children portrayed ideas about themselves as scientists that incorporated salient messages that their teachers were offering them. Building and Making as Part of Science Selves Childrens ideological becoming relative to science included building and making too. For about one third of the children, building and making were salient ideas independent of whether they built or made things in their science class that year. In the rst-grade classroom, children had made towers in the Solids and Liquids unit, but in the other two classrooms, there were no building activities. First grader Clayton shared that he was like a scientist when we build with blocks and have to tell about it. But, his classmate Antoine differentiated between an engineer and a scientist; he was kinda like a scientist . . . most scientists help each other, the engineers build stuff, then the scientists test it out. He was kinda like a scientist because he had not tested out anything himself. Although both boys had experienced the same science curriculum that year, each had constructed differently this dimension of scientic activity. Furthermore, children in the other two classrooms considered building and making as important in a different way; they focused on building tools that scientists use. Second grader Jasper shared that if he were a scientist he would build time machines to go back in time to see how the dinosaurs died. And third grader Keyon talking about himself as a scientist shared,
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I would make things other people cant . . . probably, I would want to make a microscope [because] when somethings small and I cant see it, I can look up on the microscope down there and I could look what kind of virus or something in it.

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Although Jasper talked about an unreal, imaginary tool, whereas Keyon talked about a real and existing tool, they both seemed to indicate that their idea of science and scientists included putting together the tools needed to gure something out. In some ways, for them, scientists not only have to use tools to do things, but they also make/build these tools.

Literacy Dimensions and Science-Self Representations Children constructed differently the literacy dimensions in which they were engaged while in science class that year. Although about half of the children (almost three times as many girls than boys) voiced literacy dimensions as features of science, they revealed a range of ideas about why these dimensions had primacy for them as scientists and/or for scientists in general. For several children (Adeline, Annette, Reanna, Raymond, Chanise, Ellis) literacy dimensions were considered areas in which they thought their teacher would say that they excelled. Their teachers assessment of their competency in writing, drawing, and/or reading, made these literacy dimensions salient features of doing science for the children. For example, second grader Annette noted that she [her teacher] like how I draw in my journal, and third grader Chanise shared that she was a scientist because I write information in the science book . . . [and the teacher] said good job cuz I . . . writing stuff down. Others, like Roshauna, Marlon, and Toshelle (but also Annette and Raymond who expressed multiple ideas), found writing, drawing in journals and books, and/or reading interesting and shared that these activities brought them pleasure. The children liked engaging in such practices and saw themselves as scientists when they engaged in them. For example, second grader Roshauna noted that she like[s] the journals and the reading, and her classmate Marlon shared that he like[s] science because I like to write and draw. I like to write about people and I like to draw people. And I like to write songs, cuz theyre interesting. Moreover, two other children brought up unique ways of constructing literacy dimensions as part of doing science. Second grader Pricilla chose a journal page where she had made a giant drawing of bugs. Responding to the question of why this is a good example of her being a scientist, she shared, its scientist because sometimes kids wanna be scientists but they can never do anything that scientists can do and this is artwork. Its art outside of me but on the inside its really a pattern to being a scientist. For Pricilla, children need to grow up to be scientistswhen you grow up and you be a scientist, she said at another occasion. Thus, drawing was a representation of what a grown-up scientist may do, namely observe or experiment with bugs. At the same time, such representation was a proxy of Pricillas membership in the scientic practice. For third grader Tanya, though, drawings were seen as a teaching tool that scientists use. She shared that scientists make drawings . . . cartoons so the kids can watch them. It help them with learning. We will return to the idea of teaching as part of doing science in the following section. These data show that childrens ideological becoming was shaped by ways in which they saw themselves as successful in school, in the classroom. Their representations seemed to intertwine their asserted, actual competencies, preferences, and ways of making sense of their experiences, and their assigned, designated, encouraged ones by other people in their lives, such as teachers, family members, and peers. Children had mostly appropriated what
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was assigned a higher value either by themselves or by others, and thus was a source of pride, acceptability, recognition, or satisfaction for them. Science as an Enterprise Marked by Caring Several of the children had constructed and were constructing during our conversation with them, science as an enterprise that was marked by caring. For them, caring took various forms. For about one third of the children (Clayton, Antoine, Pricilla, Tanya, Reanna, Chanise, Keyon), science, scientists, and themselves as scientists were about helping other people, animals, and the earth. For a few children (Jaleesa, Savanna, Pricilla, Tanya) teaching others was a salient aspect of being a scientist. For Pricilla and Tanya, science and scientists were associated with both forms of caring. Experiences that children had outside the classroom that involved caring contributed to their representations of themselves as scientists. For rst grader Clayton, scientists were smart (a synonym of knowledgeable as discussed earlier) and helpful to us. Clayton himself was helpful to others. Clayton shared that, in science, he would choose to work with one of his classmates in particular because every time we do stuff, people dont help him or nothing and I be working with somebody else and then I be like working with Jorell and nobody helping him. Claytons caring about Jorell constituted part of his conceptualization of scientists as caring beings and of himself as a scientist. Claytons classmates, Antoines, love of engineering and association with engineers incorporated helping the wider worldA scientist is like an engineer because scientists build stuff and can help the earth. Although he did not elaborate on how they help the earth, the theme of caring is evident. It is worth noting that Antoine wanted to be an engineer when he grew up and that his uncle is an engineer and he builds trains. Moreover, other students considered building artifacts and inventing designs as an important way in which scientists care for others in the world. Third grader Reanna communicated the altruistic feelings she associated with scientists when she said she liked science because
its cool to learn a lot of stuff . . . to invent something. The rst thing that they [scientists] had invent was a radio to transmit // to transform to other people because they had no phone or nothing (***), so to talk to their mothers they had to get on the radio to talk to their mothers, or they couldnt get help.

Reanna was also a scientist when she herself engaged in practices that helped people. Im like a scientist because I like to learn important things, the information, and what scientists has said is like information, I want to share it too . . . I like to share about germs, so people dont get sick and die. Helping people stay healthy was also pronounced in the ideas that her classmate, Keyon, shared. Keyon saw himself as a scientist because if he could make any project, he would make a microscope as noted earlier, in order to make a difference in peoples lives:
want to make a microscope [because] when somethings small and I cant see it, I can look up on the microscope down there and I could look what kind of virus or something in it so people dont get sick or go to the hospital.

After being prompted, Keyon noted that he knew of someone who had gotten sick from a virus and died. Third grader Tanya also saw caring for the wider world as part of being a scientist. For her, a scientist was an expert of animals and take care of the animals instead of killing
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them. Tanyas classmates, Chanises, altruism was expressed when she spoke about being a scientist out in the world:
we write stuff down for them, if we see birds die // Miss M. // we write stuff down and give it to them. We do this at home. Miss M. our gym teacher . . . It help her telling people how to do it, how to help a bird, to care for birds.

Chanises reference to a project in which her gym teacher was involved, which included informing others every time a dead bird was found, points to the inuence various voices (teachers, family members, and peers) have on childrens representations of scientists and themselves as scientists. Experiences and interactions with others were salient to children. For many, the science class was only one of the places that shaped their ways of seeing science, scientists, and themselves as scientists. Although they were having conversations with uspeople positioned as closely related to their school science and what they were doing during that year in their teachers classroomthey shared representations of self vis-` a-vis science that foregrounded interactions with others, and knowledge gained, in places other than their classrooms. The childrens ideological becoming was being shaped by various voices including voices of others beyond the boundaries of their science class during the year of the study. Finally, some children constructed a different form of caring associated with science, namely caring for others by teaching them. For four girls, three second graders (Jaleesa, Savanna, and Pricilla) and a third grader (Tanya), scientists teach others including children. For Jaleesa scientists are very smart and I think theyre teaching other kids how to be scientists. Savanna could see herself as a scientist if she taught a person how to make stuff come out and about the science questions. Ill teach the science kid a lot of stuff so she or he be smart, she shared. Pricilla thought that when you grow up and you be a scientist sometimes its really fun to be a scientist because you can teach people how to do stuff . . . you can teach people to be scientist, and you learn, and they gonna learn. For Tanya scientists make drawings . . . cartoons so the kids can watch them. These girls were constructing scientists as people who care not only about doing things themselves and being smart, but also about helping others (including kids like themselves) learn and become smart. Moreover, two of these girls, Jaleesa and Pricilla, referred not only to school experiences but also to experiences they had outside of school with relatives. Jaleesa built robots with her brother at home, and Pricilla was going to her Aunties house on the weekends where she was experimenting with mixing substances in a bag and putting them in the freezer, which she linked with the movie Brats. Science as Capital in Constructions of Self For the young African American children in this study, science had power in a variety of ways. Along with identifying the caring marker of scientists (as helping other people learn and become scientists), second grader Pricilla also saw them as heroes. She shared:
When you be a scientist its like something real good. Its like youre a hero trying to help other people grow up to be something good. To be someone. To be something. To be someone who somebody knows, who somebody wants to look up to . . . When you do good experiments on science and when you sometimes put your mind to it and you know that you can do it . . . like scientists they can go out and explore everything, and can explore the wild. They can go into the forest and try and nd animals and everything. They can discover animals that sometimes people dont even know about.

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For Pricilla, scientists create knowledge that others do not, which gives them a privileged place in society and makes them role models. Scientists gain this knowledge through determination, commitment, and explorations and experiments they conduct, but not just any experimentsgood experiments that scientists do when they concentrate and have faith in themselves. This type of capital that Pricilla attached to science is a form of social, symbolic capital derived from cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986). It is a resource connected to group membership that places emphasis on status and power of an individual in relation to others (a central idea in Bourdieus social capital) and exists when recognized by others (an important feature of Bourdieus symbolic capital). It comes, though, from knowledge, practices, and structures in the eld of science (which constitute forms of existence of Bourdieus embodied cultural capital). As noted earlier, about half of the children in the study associated possession of signicant knowledge with being scientists. Although rst grader Adeline did not explicitly position herself as having a relatively higher status than others as Pricilla did, she saw knowledge as an asset. Adeline shared that its great to know a lot about something, if somebody dont know it, you can tell them. For Adeline, possession of knowledge (a form of cultural capital) positions people as the ones who can offer that knowledge to others. Although we do not know how Adeline conceives the dialectic between the giver and the recipient of knowledge, she eluded to the interplay between cultural and social capital that science could provide her and others. A similar, but more nuanced, way of looking at the interplay of social and cultural capital was offered by third grader Ellis. He shared: A scientist might be like if you can make something, you can make it good, then maybe you can make friends who tell you things and then you have more scientists to help you and work with their machines. As the only child who voiced a communal sense of the practice of science, Ellis saw products and knowledge that a member of a group contributes as the beginning of a productive relationship. Ellis was likely implying that different scientists would probably have different machines or tools developed, and the opportunity for an individual to have access to more than his own devices and products could open up more possibilities. Thus, it seems that for Ellis scientic activity includes the dialectic of cultural and social capital in a way that cultural capital enables social capital, which in turn further strengthens an individuals cultural capital. Similarly to Adelines focus on knowledge, second grader Jaleesa believed that scientists are smart, theyre good, and theyre kind of smarter than people that dont know much. But she also shared that scientists are really cool . . . [and cool means] you have like cool clothes and you be cool and you be calm and never yell at anybody. For Jaleesa, scientists stand out among others both because of their knowledge and of their appearance. Although it is not clear from our data what type of clothes Jaleesa had in mind for scientists, both forms of cultural capitalembodied (knowledge) and objectied (clothes)were associated with Jaleesas views of science. Moreover, social capital was revealed, but not linked to the cultural capital. Calmness and absence of yelling were qualities that Jaleesa was likely associating with functional communities, and, in her mind, scientists had these special qualities. Jaleesas idea refracts her teachers efforts, norms, and ways of being in her classroom; her teacher was cultivating a more subdued environment than settings which some of her students have experienced. Jaleesas teacher knew that there were violence, excessive activity, and craziness in some of her students lives and she was working throughout the year to calm some of her students down. Although Jaleesa was not one of them, she had catered her conceptions of science and scientists to what her teacher, and perhaps others, tended to show her and her peers as valuable practices. Children had also constructed relationships with science that allowed them to see themselves as capable in the midst of interacting with peers and their teacher in their classrooms.
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Science was for third grader Toshelle a way of seeing herself (not scientists in general) as smart, know[ing] things other people dont know, making sense of ideas, and being seen by her peers and her teacher as the one contributing to such meaning making. Toshelle chose one of her journal pages to talk about where

Ms. T. had some honey and she // she // spoon // she had a spoon and she pulled the honey out and then it was on the spoon and then it dropped and she asked could we see gravity? and everybody said Yes and then No and Ms. T. was confused and then I said Yes and she asked me why. I said because um because the honey was going down in the jar.

Science was also a space where Toshelle could help others who were not listening and paying attention like her. She described herself as a good student [who] listens and dont get in trouble. They [good students] doing their work. . . They dont blurt out. In science, Toshelle thought of herself as an active and focused student; active because scientists act smart. Toshelle liked

when we do science and yall [referring to two teacher educators / researchers] come and make it better because when we do it with all the bad students its not that good cause they interrupt and we have to repeat and // or Ms. T. has to repeat cause then we have to do it over. . . Cause when yall come its more better and then when they write they talk, [like] Damien.

Toshelle separated herself from the bad students who interrupt and probably were not focused and were not listening, unlike Toshelle who was a good student. Toshelle saw these students as compromising and slowing down her own learning. She realized her teachers efforts to reach everybody and in some ways she acknowledged indirectly that students (the other bad students, and possibly herself) needed to talk more and go over ideas as they were writing and drawing in their journals. This was more feasible when three of us were in the classroom than when only one adult, the teacher, was. Toshelle loved interacting with the adults in the room, and she loved talking about her own science ideas and her attempts to express them through words and pictures in her journal. Several of her journal entries had pictures that included people, herself, her teacher, peers, and the visitors in her classroom. Thus, for Toshelle, science was associated with both social and cultural capital. Science helped position herself away from the bad students and with the good ones, closer to the teacher and the classroom visitors who helped her with science, and it helped her make sense of ideas. Her ways of looking at science were tangled up with how she was constructing herself in her science class. For other children, though, science offered different forms of cultural capital. For rst grader Karam, a reason why he liked science was that if you focus on your things, you do some right, but if you do science you get bigger and bigger and go to a bigger classroom and pass 10th grade and go to college [and he wanted to go to college]. Karam portrayed science as an enabling (and by extension a gatekeeper, if the opposite conditions exist) subject, a subject that offers students an opportunity to advance to higher grades and attend college, accruing capital. For Karam, science had power because of the possibilities it offered inside school and in terms of moving along the educational system (institutionalized cultural capital). Similarly, third grader Kyree noted sciences cultural power. He liked science because he
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learn[s] about stuff, and youll get better at it. You have to take the science test and if youre not paying attention youll probably have to go ahead and go to summer school. If you wanna be a scientist, you gotta go ahead and try your best and keep your mind to it and thats it.

For Kyree, institutional structures, such as tests and summer school, are integral to peoples success and participation in science. In contrast, the cultural capital that second grader Ramell associated with science came in an objectied form. Ramell shared:
I want to be a game designer, you gotta get a degree to do that, a game degree, you can make your own games and have a commercial of that game. . . [Scientists make games and get money] for making cool inventions. They can get a thousand dollars.

Ramell did not associate capital with scientists in general but with himself as a potential scientist. For Ramell, being a scientist would allow him to develop materials that would also offer him an economic advantage. Yet for a few children, science had a type of affective capital; science made them have fun and feel good. Science made rst grader Adeline happy. Third grader Althea, describing herself as a scientist, positioned herself as a person with a name and shared that what they [scientists] do makes them feel good. Science was not an impersonal practice for Althea, nor was done by an indistinguishable group of people. Members of that group were specic individuals who had a name and specic birthday, but moreover, they were people who experienced satisfaction from what they were doing. For Pricilla,
Its fun to discover things, to nd out things and to think of things [like] discover animals. We discover the ways you know how to balance cuz I didnt really know how to balance, I just tried stuff, keep on trying and think about science.

Similarly, for her classmate Destinee,

Its fun because when youre trying to blow stuff and see how much inches it is. . . its fun because I just like cars and I love to let it go and then measure it, let it go and see how much farther it go.

DISCUSSION In this study, we explored ways in which African American children, in three classrooms in economically stressed neighborhoods where they may have faced a plethora of social and economic hardships, related themselves to science/scientists after experiencing, for at least 1 year, science instruction that offered them varied opportunities to engage with scientic practices and ideas. Our goal was not to derive patterns and generalizations about African American children and their ways of seeing themselves vis-` a-vis science and scientists in urban classrooms, but to study difference in the ways they do so in particular classrooms and with particular teachers. We focused on teachers who were intentionally working toward both becoming themselves more comfortable with science and helping their students engage with science in meaningful, varied, and dialogical ways. In this study, we did not systematically analyze how the teachers were helping their children participate in science and learn science, but our analysis was informed by classroom practice since the rst two authors were visiting these classrooms throughout the school year. Our focus
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was on uncovering, and understanding, through various theoretical constructs, the array of representations and of individual, distinct voices that young African American children may come to develop as they engage in reform-oriented science instruction in urban schools. Thus, we do not essentialize Black children; we document the nuanced variety of their expressed, negotiated viewpoints about self, science, and school in the ecological contexts of their classrooms. As Schwab (1970) wrote the specic not only adds to the generic: it also modulates it (p. 35). Our data reveal all the subtleties that are played out among children in the same classroom, as they interact with each other and their teacher, and across different classrooms. They reveal how children appropriated in similar and unique ways their science schooling experience and produced knowledge of, and about, science and themselves in relation to science. Our ndings also encourage us, as teachers, to revisit and rethink ways in which we engage in science children of color in urban schools surrounded with poverty. The children in our study had constructed representations of science, school, and self that had many different shades. Some seemed to keep conceptions of doing school out of their conceptions of doing science, and others did not. Some echoed in their ways of seeing scientists attributes that are not necessarily unique features of scientists, but rather qualities of good people in functional societies that teachers promote in schools, and others did not. Some saw science as a body of knowledge, large amounts of information, and others did not. Some associated science and scientists with making and building, or with various literacy elements, and others did not. Some saw caring for animals, people, the earth, and the world as important in science, and others did not. Some brought up the capital they associated with scientists, others referred to their own capital as engaged in science, and others did not do either. The childrens ways of seeing science and themselves vis-` a-vis science were shaped by the ways in which they saw themselves as competent in the classroom and/or they heard their teachers telling them about areas in which they need to improve. How they were socialized in the classroom, and how they perceived their teacher and peers seeing them, was echoed in their science ideological becoming. As Davies and Harr e (2001) noted, among the products of discursive practices are the very persons who engage in them (p. 262). Ladson-Billings (1995) articulated that teachers ways of seeing and promoting academic excellence are inuenced by their conceptions of self and others, their conceptions of social relations that are formed and reformed in their classrooms, and their conceptions of the knowledge to be built. Similarly, the childrens ways of seeing science and their place in it were inuenced by who they saw themselves and others being, how they saw themselves in interactions with their peers and teacher, and what they thought science as a intellectual domain was about. These different types of conceptions were intertwined, to different degrees, in the childrens developing science ideologies. Some of the young African American childrens ideas and positionings were related to what doing school involved. Students should not be talking much. They should raise their hands. They should be focused. They should work hard. They should help others. They should respect the teacher. They should do what they are told. They should stay in their seats. They should spell correctly. They should not misbehave. They should learn a lot of information. They should do well in tests. They should work hard to be promoted to higher grades. Some of the young African American childrens ideas and positionings were related to what their teachers were trying to help them construct about doing science. As scientists, they build, design, share, test out, observe, write, draw, try to get it right, gure things out, experiment, explore, discover, think about what they do and why, take care of living and nonliving things, nd clues, measure, get ideas from books, and have fun.
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What we also found was that several of the children had constructed sophisticated conceptions that involved science as capital for scientists and/or for themselves as scientists. For some of the children, science carried social, cultural, or affective capital. They had conceptualized science as an enabling enterprise that would give them status among their peers, or access to further education, or knowledge that others did not have, or that would even make them feel good inside. Throughout the conversations with the children, only a few of them referred to people or events outside their schoolsAntoine who wanted to be an engineer because his uncle is a train engineer, Savanna who was going to a science class on Saturdays, Marcella who was mixing and making stuff at her grandmas basement, Aron who was learning science ideas from the Discovery Channel, Jaleesa who was building robots with her brother at home, and Pricilla who was experimenting at her Aunties house. Of course, this may be an artifact of the way in which, and the place where, we conducted the conversations with the children. Nevertheless, these conversations revealed that what the children did in class and how they interacted with their teacher, materials, and each other constituted main sites of their socialization into science, and of their construction of norms, values, and ideologies related to science. The children were constructing science identities as well as academic identities as African American students in their classrooms (Spencer, 2009; Varelas et al., in press). This is why we need to be particularly attentive to the ways in which teaching and learning of science in classrooms shape childrens construction of ideas about science and themselves relative to science. School practices and norms need to be examined and analyzed in terms of not only their impact on the degree of learning but also on the nature of learning that children achieve. When teachers worry and focus on making sure their students avoid trouble, they focus on students good behaviorfollowing rules, listening to those who know more, and avoiding causing trouble. These behavioral regulations then become intertwined with what it means to students to be engaged in a particular community of practice, such as science. That children brought up behavioral norms as dimensions of doing science may mean that they had constructed the view that unless they behaved well they would not have access to science, and would be invisible, outsiders, and left out. Invisibility, marginalization, and exclusion are experiences that students of color (mostly older ones) bring up as part of their racialized experiences with science (Malone & Barabino, 2009). Moreover, if we want children, and especially children of color in underserved urban areas, to realize that science is about questioning, testing, measuring, wondering, explaining, and so on, then we need to examine how practices that emphasize obedience to the teacher and encourage seeing the teacher as the only authority in the classroom are consistent or not with such science ideology. If such behavioral codes are in some ways antithetical to the active, inquisitive, questioning, exible view of science and science learning that teachers try to enact in these classrooms, then how can students make sense of the competing messages they receive? Furthermore, if we want children of color to develop what Gordon (2007) calls intellective competence that would allow African American students to develop an adaptive human intellect using their knowledge and skills to solve problems, explore ideas, perceive events critically, then we need to help students see science beyond a large amount of information that denes them as smart people. Although students have to try their best and work hard when they do science, as when they do any other subject matter, seeing science, and especially themselves doing science, as hard work may level their expectations. According to Aschbacher and her colleagues (2010), such a way of looking at science may compromise and diminish students aspirations, motivation, and expectations to engage with science and do well in it, and, therefore, to be in a position to imagine a place for themselves relative to science.
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With our study, we add to the knowledge base of how children, youth, and students, in general, frame science as a domain and their selves relative to science in the context of classroom reform-oriented efforts toward doing science. Carlone (2004), extending a line of scholarship that called for more nuanced understandings of students roles in reformed science classrooms, was deeply concerned with how high school girls saw themselves and formed relationships with science in their Active Physics classroom.
We attempt to transform school science by coming up with empowering alternatives to the prototypical school science curriculum. Yet, where is one left when the girls reject empowering science in favor of prototypical science that makes their role as good students and their quest for their end of the exchange (i.e., good grades and college admission) easier? (p. 410)

In a related, but different, manner, we are troubled by the ways in which many of the young children in our studys classrooms, and especially girls, focused on discipline and good behavior fusing these with doing science. We are also concerned with the nding that children saw themselves as smart because they possessed a large amount of scientic information. In contrast, though, to the high school girls, the young children of color in our study did see science as holding for them various types of capital, and as enabling them beyond just offering them opportunities to survive and succeed in the school world. Our ndings complement, we believe, a recent study (Archer et al., 2010) of views and beliefs about science in relation to themselves held by forty-two 1011-year-olds in four schools in the London area, with a variety of socioeconomic status and ethnic afliations, along with the reasons behind these beliefs. Archer and her colleagues found that the brainy-ness of science was congured in a complex relationship with effort and ability (p. 13). Their 1011-year-olds did not think that they needed to be clever to be good in science which is welcome news since one way that cleverness may be interpreted is as a natural, inherent characteristic and intelligence. However, many students referred to a natural interest that leads to pay attention, remember facts, and do well in science class (p. 14) which concerned the researchers, since it could be linked (currently or later) to the notion that there is a science person (p. 15) type, which some people are and others are not. Moreover, Archer and her colleagues were troubled by what they called the disjuncture between doing and being. While anyone can do science, only a few will really be scientists and. . . the identities of these children are popularly known from an early age (p. 15). Their data revealed that, taking up a science identity may be undesirable for many groups of young people (p. 19). Our data do not reveal such disjuncture since the children in our study talked interchangeably about themselves and scientists and, as our analysis revealed, they appropriated practices, that they had been engaged and participated in, in their developing identities, actual and designated, of themselves vis-` a-vis scientists. One from the possibly many reasons for this difference in the ndings between the Archer et al. study and ours may be the different ways in which the conversations with the students were constructed. Archer and her colleagues presented the discussion groups with several general questions that included questions about students views on science, scientists, and their science classes (p. 4). In contrast, we situated our conversations with children around their own science journals where they had written and drawn about science ideas and classroom experiences that were aimed at developing these ideas. Thus, the methodological difference may have contributed to the difference in the constructs that became salient in each study. This highlights the necessity for continuing to pursue a variety of research designs to develop a nuanced knowledge base of such complex constructs such as identity.
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The ndings of the present study reveal ways in which doing school becomes a dominant narrative that bleeds into doing science. Critical to identity construction are both positioning and recognition, and norms associated with doing school seemed to be important for being positioned and recognized in the classroom. This is particularly important for Black students. Focusing on African American males and the ways in which schools disserve and underserve them, Noguera (2003) cautions:
Learning how to inuence the attitudes and behaviors of African American males must begin with an understanding of the ways in which structural and cultural forces shape their experiences in school and inuence the construction of their identities. In this regard, it is especially important that future research be directed toward a greater understanding of youth culture and the processes related to cultural production. (p. 452)

Similarly, we see the ndings of this research as a call for further investigation and understanding of ways in which structural and cultural forces that govern students schooling experiences shape students academic and science identities, and their science ideological becoming. Children make sense of, and coordinate, norms of schooling and science and construct (or not) a place for themselves in a science classroom where enabling pedagogy is attempted, forming complex relationships among their selves, school, and science. If we are to help underserved children, whom we have been leaving behind, learn and succeed in science, we need a larger research base identifying how these children position themselves relative to science, what they nd as important, and how they make sense of the multiple and sometimes conicting messages that they are hearing. As Martin (2000) points out, many actors and forces shape African American students ways of conceptualizing mathematics and their place in it, but it appears that students make their own choices, thus foregrounding difference rather than sameness. African American students are both reactive and proactiveresisting, conforming, making decisions, forming beliefs and dispositions, and constructing mathematical knowledge and identities (p. 33). They act and react to various forces and interact with each other based on their past experiences and their conceptions and expectations for success. Furthermore, these conceptions and expectations are shaped by others (people inside and outside their schools) conceptions about them and about their education. Thus, we need to continue building a research base that captures and sheds light on the complexities of ideological becoming in all subject areas including science. APPENDIX: KEY FOR SYMBOLS USED IN EXCERPTS OF STUDENT TALK
// (***) Underscore [] ... Repetitions or false starts or abandoned language replaced by new language structures One word that is inaudible or impossible to transcribe Emphasis Identies what is being referred to or gestured and other nonverbal contextual information Part of student talk has been omitted

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