Many would argue that the state of urban science education has been static for the past several decades and that there is little to learn from it. Rather than accepting this deficit perspective, Improving Urban Science Education strives to recognize and understand the successes that exist there by systematically documenting seven years of research into issues salient to teaching and learning in urban high school science classes. Grounded in the post structuralism of William Sewell_and brought to life through the experiences of different students, teachers, and school settings in Philadelphia_this book shows how teachers and students can work together to enact meaningful science education when social and cultural differences as well as inappropriate curricula often make the challenges seem insurmountable. Chapters contain rich images of urban youth and each strives to offer insights into problems and suggestions for resolving them. Most significant, in spite of the challenges, the research offers hope and shows that fresh approaches to teaching and learning can lead students_some who have already been pronounced academic, even societal, failures_to becoming avid and deep learners of science.

This book is a result of my childhood questions about myself as I wondered how did I appear to be myself suddenly with hardly any past recollection and I wondered about my understanding of my own experiences in my life and things of that nature. I wanted to look beyond the 'Creator's wish' part, a prevalent mode of resignation of the thought process, to find a logical and scientific explanation by myself through reading. Eventually I developed the wisdom that the answer lies in the understanding of the brain. When I realized that it is my brain that is somehow generating all my experiences for me, it led to a pretty engrossing experience trying to understand it since. Since this is a book about the brain, I thought it was necessary to discuss the fundamental aspect of its structure. However, I only laid a gross picture with broad strokes only after briefly discussing the highlights of the history of evolution of the brain. Then I tried to address some of the big questions like the consciousness and the generation of the mind and self from a neurological point of view. I went ahead and discussed the mechanism of some of the attributes of self as well. Some of the functional aspects are elucidated as how we fall in love or how we navigate directions and so forth. Computation is the basis by which the brain derives its conclusions. The plasticity of the brain enables us to learn new skills. The genetic aspect cannot be overemphasized. I have included some fascinating data that has recently been found out in these regards. Psychiatric illnesses always fascinated me. I have discussed the genetic basis and pathophysiology of a few of them, like Depression, Alzheimer's disease, etc. The whole book is written on the basis of the latest findings by dedicated professionals. Here I am like a collector who has put all this in a concise deliberation to share my own understandings regarding what it takes for each of us to be the way we are.

Christopher Emdin is an assistant professor of science education and director of secondary school initiatives at the Urban Science Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in urban education with a concentration in mathematics, science and technology; a master's degree in natural sciences; and a bachelor's degree in physical anthropology, biology, and chemistry. His book, Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation is rooted in his experiences as student, teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban schools and the deep relationship between hip-hop culture and science that he discovered at every stage of his academic and professional journey. The book utilizes autobiography, outcomes of research studies, theoretical explorations, and accounts of students' experiences in schools to shed light on the causes for the lack of educational achievement of urban youth from the hip-hop generation.

Christopher Emdin is an assistant professor of science education and director of secondary school initiatives at the Urban Science Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in urban education with a concentration in mathematics, science and technology; a master’s degree in natural sciences; and a bachelor’s degree in physical anthropology, biology, and chemistry.

The chapters included in this book address two major questions: what are some of the methodological and theoretical issues in sociocultural research in urban education and science education and what sort of questions do technological and virtual contexts raise for these types of research perspectives. The chapters build off Ken Tobin's personal history of sociocultural research in science education and as they do each chapter asks philosophical, sociological and/or methodological questions that inform our understanding of the challenges associated with conducting research in experiential and virtual contexts.

Contributing to the social justice agenda of redefining what science is and what it means in the lives of real people, this book takes up the challenge of building an approach to science education from the standpoint of the learner. With this orientation to science and scientific literacy, science educators can begin to make inroads into the currently widespread irrelevance of science in the everyday lives of people.

Transformations in Urban Education: Urban Teachers and Students Working Collaboratively addresses pressing problems in urban education, contextualized in research in New York City and nearby school districts on the Northeast Coast of the United States. The schools and institutions involved in empirical studies range from elementary through college and include public and private schools, alternative schools for dropouts, and museums. Difference is regarded as a resource for learning and equity issues are examined in terms of race, ethnicity, language proficiency, designation as special education, and gender. The contexts for research on teaching and learning involve science, mathematics, uses of technology, literacy, and writing comic books. A dual focus addresses research on teaching and learning, and learning to teach in urban schools. Collaborative activities addressed explicitly are teachers and students enacting roles of researchers in their own classrooms, cogenerative dialogues as activities to allow teachers and students to learn about one another’s cultures and express their perspectives on their experienced realities and negotiate shared recommendations for changes to enacted curricula. Coteaching is also examined as a means of learning to teach, teaching and learning, and undertaking research. The scholarship presented in the constituent chapters is diverse, reflecting multi-logicality within sociocultural frameworks that include cultural sociology, cultural historical activity theory, prosody, sense of place, and hermeneutic phenomenology. Methodologies employed in the research include narratology, interpretive, reflexive, and authentic inquiry, and multi-level inquiries of video resources combined with interpretive analyses of social artifacts selected from learning environments. This edited volume provides insights into research of places in which social life is enacted as if there were no research being undertaken. The research was intended to improve practice. Teachers and learners, as research participants, were primarily concerned with teaching and learning and, as a consequence, as we learned from research participants were made aware of what we learned—the purpose being to improve learning environments. Accordingly, research designs are contingent on what happens and emergent in that what we learned changed what happened and expanded possibilities to research and learn about transformation through heightening participants’ awareness about possibilities for change and developing interventions to improve learning.