Special Report
Equity & Diversity

Finding Kernels of Scientific Sense

By Sean Cavanagh — March 21, 2008 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

What science teacher hasn’t known the frustration?

Suzanne M. Pothier was leading her elementary school students through a lesson on plant growth and reproduction, using pumpkins as an example. As she and her students discussed a pumpkin’s growth, from a tiny seed to a gourd fit for a Halloween lantern, and later, to a rotting shell, a boy piped up with a seemingly incongruous comparison:

“It’s like a spider,” the student told the class.

A pumpkin? A spider? Some clear misconceptions here, a teacher might think. Yet Pothier saw an opening.

Feature Stories
States Heeding Calls to Strengthen STEM
A School Where STEM Is King
Learning to Teach With Technology
Cultivating a Diversity of Talent

‘Kinetic City’ Web Site Finds Fun in Science

Finding Kernels of Scientific Sense

Preschool Play Imparts Math’s ‘Building Blocks’

Competing for Competence
State Data Analysis
Executive Summary
Table of Contents

The student was comparing a rotting pumpkin’s seeds to a spider’s eggs—and giving an example based on the science familiar to him, drawn from the movie “Charlotte’s Web.” So Pothier seized on his example.

How is the pumpkin’s growth like that of a spider? How, she asked the class, is it different? How is the pumpkin’s seed like a spider’s egg? Gradually, the teacher turned one pupil’s notion into a discussion of life cycles, a key concept in science.

The strategy used by Pothier, who teaches at the Martin Luther King Open School in Cambridge, Mass., was based on principles she learned through her participation in the Cheche Konnen Center. The center does research on improving science learning in urban communities, particularly among ethnically and linguistically diverse students.

A key principle of Cheche Konnen’s research is that all students, including those from disadvantaged groups, bring scientific knowledge to school. Many students, though, convey it in nonacademic and confusing language. As a result, educators often fail to recognize, and build on, students’ existing scientific understanding.

The center seeks to help teachers do that. “It’s using the intellectual strengths of all kids,” says Pothier, who has taught for 23 years.

Leveraging Knowledge

Cheche Konnen takes its name from the Creole phrase “search for knowledge,” a nod to the Haitian communities that the center has worked with since its 1987 founding.

Today, the center, in Cambridge, does research and stages workshops across the country, and gets funding from the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Education. Cheche Konnen’s work was highlighted last year in a study by the congressionally chartered National Research Council on how students in grades K-8 learn science. The program shows that “urban, language-minority students can engage in high-level scientific reasoning and problem-solving,” the study said, “if they are taught in ways that respect their interests and sense-making.”

The Massachusetts program makes videotapes and transcriptions of classes overseen by teachers who participate in the program. It shares its research through such resources as a book published this year by the 55,000-member National Science Teachers Association, in Arlington, Va.

Students whose parents have more formal education are likely to be more familiar with the academic language understood by science teachers than students with more limited English skills and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Cheche Konnen officials say. Still, they stress, all students’ everyday science knowledge can be a powerful resource.

“A lot of the time when kids say things that don’t make sense, the teacher dismisses it, or is confused by it,” says Ann S. Rosebery, the co-director of Cheche Konnen. “Their impulse is to say, ‘Well, thanks a lot,’ and turn to another child. We’re trying to get teachers to work against that impulse.”

Related Tags:

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
The Future of the Science of Reading
Join us for a discussion on the future of the Science of Reading and how to support every student’s path to literacy.
Content provided by HMH
Mathematics K-12 Essentials Forum Helping Students Succeed in Math
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Equity & Diversity Opinion How to Keep Supporting Students in a Hostile Political Environment
Protecting kids outside of school may be beyond educators' means, but here are ways we can help them.
10 min read
Conceptual illustration of classroom conversations and fragmented education elements coming together to form a cohesive picture of a book of classroom knowledge.
Sonia Pulido for Education Week
Equity & Diversity Opinion It’s Been 5 Years Since the George Floyd Protests. Where Are We Now?
Promises of equality and justice languished and then under Trump, were declared void.
Tyrone C. Howard
5 min read
Demonstrators kneel in a moment of silence outside the Long Beach Police Department on May 31, 2020, in Long Beach, Cali., during a protest over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer earlier that month.
Demonstrators kneel in a moment of silence outside the Long Beach Police Department on May 31, 2020, in Long Beach, Cali., during a protest over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer earlier that month.
Ashley Landis/AP
Equity & Diversity Opinion Let DEI Practices Die. Replace Them With Something Better
Individual student agency enabled by strong families and schools can lead students to success, writes a researcher.
Robert Maranto
5 min read
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon meets with students during a visit to Vertex Partnership Academies in New York on March 7, 2025.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon meets with students during a visit to Vertex Partnership Academies in New York City on March 7, 2025.
Courtesy of U.S. Department of Education
Equity & Diversity Opinion Boys Are Struggling in School. What Can Be Done?
Girls outpace boys at nearly every level of academic achievement. Author Richard Reeves shares his thoughts.
6 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week