Reading and Writing in the Service of Inquiry-Based Science

In this paper, we present a working model of the science-literacy interface. This model has guided our development of curriculum units for the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading program and is currently being empirically tested through that program. We believe that we have a genuine contribution to make to the conversation about the science-literacy connection, but believe also that all who care about this interface, ourselves included, need to move beyond theoretical ruminations about the benefits of integration to tough-minded empirical examinations. We are pleased to report that we are in the process of gathering evidence that speaks directly to the science-literacy connection, but our work is still too preliminary to allow us to speak with great confidence about instructional implications and recommendations that could assist teachers in promoting synergy between science and literacy. Nonetheless, we do have a message, in the form of a model that might guide teachers, as it has guided us, in shaping an appropriate and supportive role for text and for literacy practices in inquiry-based science. What we have are some very good hunches that come with several sources of support, none of it definitive but all of it consistent in pointing to these synergies. First, there is a some good theory about the efficacy of integrated curriculum important in shaping this paper, is the insights we have gained as we have tried to develop just such an integrated curriculum. As literacy educators venturing into the world of science curriculum, we approach our work with the dual recognition of two assertions, one a statement of fact and the other an aspiration. • The fact: state and federal policies have, for better or worse (mostly worse) marginalized disciplinary curriculum, including science, in deference to a massive devotion to literacy teaching and learning. • The aspiration: in a perfect (or at least a better) world, language and literacy—like learning—would be regarded as a means to an end rather than an end unto itself. In that vein, our guiding principle has been the acquisition of the knowledge, skills and dispositions of science as the end, and language and literacy as part of the array of means that can help students achieve that end. For too many years, educators and policy makers have regarded literacy as an end unto itself, as a curricular enterprise on a par with science, social studies, art, or mathematics. As a result we have …

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