This commentary to Ha and Kim's article suggests three ways to expand the interpretive functions of framing to explore and support marginalized students' participation in collaboration and learning, based on our comprehensive review of Ha and Kim's and other relevant studies. We argue that framing can be a useful tool for (1) understanding both…

In this commentary, I interpret Xinying Yin and Gayle Ann Buck's collaborative action research from a social-cultural perspective. Classroom implementation of formative assessment is viewed as interaction between this assessment method and the local learning culture. I first identify Yin and Buck's definition of the formative assessment, and then…

In this forum paper, I respond to issues raised by Kristina Andersson and Annica Gullberg in their article titled "What is science in preschool and what do teachers have to know to empower children?" (2012). I seek to continue the discussion begun with Andersson and Gullberg's paper, by further exploring the questions they introduce…

In this paper I discuss three issues relevant to the ideas introduced by Colucci-Gray, Perazzone, Dodman and Camino (2012) in their three-part paper on epistemological reflections and educational practice for science education for sustainability: (1) social studies of science for science education, (2) education for sustainability or sustainable…

In this paper I expand on the premises of Jesse Bazzul's thesis in his paper, "Neoliberal ideology, global capitalism, and science education: engaging the question of subjectivity," exploring the implications of the ideologies within the culturally emerging logic of science exposes the incommensurability of intents and purposes in its methods and…

In response to Goff, Boesdorfer, and Hunter's article on the use of a multicultural approach to teaching chemistry and the nature of science, I forward this critical reflective essay to discuss more general curriculum aspects of the relationship between the nature of science and science education in school contexts. Taking a social realist…

This essay addresses Katherine Richardson Bruna's paper: "Mexican Immigrant Transnational Social Capital and Class Transformation: Examining the Role of Peer Mediation in Insurgent Science", through five main points. First, I offer a comparison between the traditional analysis of classism in Latin America and Richardson Bruna's call for…

This commentary dialogues with three articles that analyze the same database about science and religion discourse produced 17 years ago. Dialogues in these three articles and this commentary across space and time allow us to develop new and different understandings of the same database and situation. As part of this commentary, I discuss topics…

In his article "Scientists at Play in a Field of the Lord", David Long (2010) rightly challenges our presumptions of what science is and brings forth some of the disjunctures between science and deeply held American religious beliefs. Reading his narrative of the conflicts that he experienced on the opening day of the Creation Museum, I cannot…

There have been debates about the place of religion in science and in what ways knowledge that is produced through religion can aid in the learning and teaching of science. The discord between science and religion is mainly focused on whose knowledge is better in describing and explaining the reality. Constructivist epistemology seems to give some…

This article consists of two parts. The first one is to a large extent a commentary on John R. Staver's "Skepticism, truth as coherence, and constructivist epistemology: grounds for resolving the discord between science and religion?" The second part is a related overview of Islam's philosophy of knowledge and, to a certain degree, science. In…

In this paper I respond to Long's paper in which he uses an ethnographic snapshot of a rally of scientists against the perceived "dumbing down" effect of the new Answers in Genesis Museum in Kentucky to raise educational concerns about the effects of creationist influence on the science curriculum in American schools. In my response I…

John R. Staver's article calling for a constructivist epistemology to maneuver between the disparate ways of knowing between science and religion prompts this response. This paper acknowledges Staver's scholarly analysis of the issue. Scientific and religious conflicts do present prominent challenges because these are profound but often-monolithic…

In approaching how the grotesque is--or should be--situated within contemporary science (biology) education practices, Weinstein and Broda undertake a passionate reclaim of an education that is at the same time scientific, critical, and liberatory. However legitimate, their work offers more than they probably could have anticipated: It exemplifies…

In this commentary on Weinstein and Broda's paper, I consider their promising claims for the liberatory potential of the grotesque in biology/science education. In response to their analysis of four "specimen" examples, I address the question of confronting the limits of pedagogical representations of the grotesque and the abject. I offer…