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.

This book is about the fundamental nature of talk in school science. Wolff-Michael Roth articulates a view of language that differs from the way science educators generally think about it. While writing science is one aspect of language in science, talking science may in fact constitute a much more important means by which we navigate and know the world-the very medium through which we do science.

Females and Harry Potter is a deconstruction of the representations of women's agency in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Using critical discourse analysis and focusing on five themes (rule following and breaking, intelligence, validating and enabling, mothering, and resistance), Mayes-Elma explores the construction of traditional gender roles in the book. Additionally, the author locates the foundations of feminist epistemology--binary oppositions, gender boundaries, and woman as 'other'--that is deeply embedded within the book's themes. Traditional gender constructions of both men and...

Females and Harry Potter is a deconstruction of the representations of women's agency in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Using critical discourse analysis and focusing on five themes (rule following and breaking, intelligence, validating and enabling, mothering, and resistance), Mayes-Elma explores the construction of traditional gender roles in the book. Additionally, the author locates the foundations of feminist epistemology--binary oppositions, gender boundaries, and woman as "other"--that is deeply embedded within the book's themes. Traditional gender constructions of both men and...