Fostering Productive Disciplinary Engagement in an Evolutionary Biology Classroom

Instructional designers frequently claim that they want to introduce authentic disciplinary practices in classrooms. Nevertheless, we still need a clear set of guidelines for evaluating the impact of those activities on teachers’ instruction and on students’ understanding of the disciplines they are studying. The aim of this paper is to outline a framework for assessing teacher guidance and student engagement over time in a science classroom that was derived from a review of the science studies literature (Ford & Forman, in press). Our framework identified three key, interrelated components of scientific practice that validate its authority: science as social; science as material; and science as rhetorical. In this paper, I will illustrate our framework using examples from a 9-week high school course in evolutionary biology.