Journal article
"Seeing as Sound Travels Everywhere": African American Boys Learning to "See" Transmission through the Analysis of Invented Representations
Journal of African American males in education, Vol.2(1), pp.81-97
01 Feb 2011
Abstract
This study examines the meta-representational competence (MRC) of a group of four middle school African American boys as they explore the scientific phenomenon of sound transmission. Through an approach that foregrounds the boys ' drawings and practices of critiquing their drawings, I highlight the intellectual and representational strengths that this group of boys brought to the task of representational design. By taking a resource-rich view of this group of middle school African American boys, I challenge the deficit thinking that is often associated with African American boys' practices and engagement. Specifically, this study focuses on the boys' emerging representational criteria as they critique drawings of sound transmission and how these criteria shape the boys' representational practices. Findings reveal that this particular group of boys developed and negotiated several representational criteria that were continually revisited through the production and critique of their invented drawings. The emerging representational criteria included an accurate representation of a) the appearance of sound waves, b) the directionality of sound waves, and c) the change in volume over distance, time, and/or through a medium. In addition to continually developing an understanding of scientific representations and how they are used, the boys also developed their understandings of sound transmission through an iterative process of designing representations.
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Details
- Title
- "Seeing as Sound Travels Everywhere": African American Boys Learning to "See" Transmission through the Analysis of Invented Representations
- Creators
- Christopher Wright
- Publication Details
- Journal of African American males in education, Vol.2(1), pp.81-97
- Publisher
- Journal of African American Males in Education
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum
- Identifiers
- 991021893598804721