Education Commons^™

Negotiating Identities In Middle School Science: Impacts On Students’ Perceived Expertise And Small Group Participation, Taylor Dexter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis investigates how students in a linguistically diverse 7^th grade science lab group interact and position each other’s capabilities within a STEM context. These capabilities are discussed in terms of how the identities local to a particular 7^th grade science lab group of “good student” and “scientist” are assigned, challenged, and strengthened. These interactions are instances of identities and patterns (pathways) of identities being negotiated. This thesis’ analysis focuses particularly on how the identities of being Latinx and multilingual affect these negotiations in the terms of the local identities (“good student” and “scientist”). This analysis sheds light …