TEACHING GRADE NINE STUDENTS TO CONDUCT ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH WITH INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES: THE NATURE OF DISCOURSE IN CLASSROOM AND COMMUNITY CONTEXTS

The purpose of this study is to portray how a biology teacher enabled his students to conduct environmental research with innovative technologies (IT) when he shuttled between the classroom and community contexts. The teacher connected students mentally and physically to authentic problem contexts and socio-culturally to peers and scientific community experts. The study is thus framed by socially situated cognition (SCC), which expresses social character and transformation. The ninth grade students learned how to (a) measure temperature (an abiotic factor) of surrounding, and (b) determined the quality of groundwater in a nature conservancy with innovative technologies through teacher-student, student-peer, and expert-student discourse. The discourse was captured with an audio-digital recorder and transcribed verbatim. Findings based on the triangulation of theory (SSC), method (qualitative), and data (inductive-deductive, interpretive analysis) reveal that the teacher used three pedagogical structures--“instruction”, “investigation”, and “interpretation”--embodying a social character. Students’ connection with the field experts in their long-term environmental project was the beginning of social transformation. This study implies that discourse with the teacher, peers, and experts when engaging students in environmental research with innovative technologies in authentic learning contexts will develop a social character to learning and bring about social transformation.