CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL
FRAMEWORKS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION
RESEARCH
Personal values
Educational opportunities
Family practices
Family Income
Residential neighborhood
Personal interests
Parents’ Experiences
Preferences
Extracurricular Activities
Expectations of significant
others
LENSES
THEORIES

They consist of a set of
concepts, shared ideas 
that capture regularities in
events, that seeks to
explain how and why.
They are broad enough in
scope to apply to
numerous situations
under a myriad of
circumstances.
CONCEPTUAL
FRAMEWORKS
They consist of various
concepts that originate from
different theories. These
concepts are used to develop
understandings of the
unfamiliar and reveal new
insights about the unfamiliar.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS IN
ACTION
Research Questions
 Methods

 What
data are collected
 How data are analyzed

Findings
 How

they are framed and explained
Implications
 What
is highlighted as important
Individual
Contexts in
close proximity
to the individual
Individual
context
context
context
context
INDIVIDUALS AND CONTEXT
SOCIO-CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES
 Human development
is mediated by
culture. The
development of
individuals is
embedded in the
culture in which they
live.
CRITICAL
PERSPECTIVES
 Human development is
influenced by power
structures and subsequent
relations that exist within
historical and
contemporary contexts in
which development occurs.
SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
Communities of Practice
 Figured Worlds
 Funds of Knowledge
 Third Space
 Culture (cultural difference, cultural
reproduction)
 Social constructivism
 Activity Theory

Mediating Artifact
Object
Subject
Outcome
Rules
Community
(Engestrom et al, 1999)
Division of Labor
horizontal
vertical
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
Social Reproduction
 Cultural Reproduction
 Colonialism
 Hegemony
 Critical Social Theory
 Critical Feminist Theory
 Critical Race Theory

CRITICAL RACE THEORY TENETS
Racism is normal in America.
 Racism has advantaged some groups over others
(whiteness as property, interest convergence).
 The existence and attainability of objectivity,
neutrality, color-blindness, and meritocracy are
questionable at best and are vehicles to maintain
an oppressive status quo at worst.
 Historical and contextual analyses of phenomena
are imperative.
 The experiential knowledge of people of color and
their communities of origin are central to analysis

RACISM

Racism is a combination of racial prejudice
(racial biases) and power that is used to
dominate and oppress. Prejudice and power in
concert are employed in maintaining and
advancing a person or a group’s dominance.
Racism functions at the level of individuals
(individual racism) and institutions (institutional
racism.) (Bonilla-Silva, 1997)
HISTORICAL AND CONTEXTUAL
ANALYSES
CulturalHistorical
(Cole, 1996)
Ontogeny
Microgenesis
WHITENESS AS PROPERTY
The right to possess
 The right to use
 Power to decide who is included and
excluded
 The right to dispossess
 Power to transfer privileges to others

(Harris, 1995)
Personal values
Educational opportunities
Family practices
Family Income
Residential neighborhood
Personal interests
Parents’ Experiences
Preferences
Extracurricular Activities
Expectations of significant
others
WHAT CONCEPTUAL OR
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS ARE
MOST SUITED FOR YOUR WORK?
REFERENCES





Bonilla-Silva, E. (1997). Rethinking racism: Toward a structural
interpretation. American Sociological Review, 62(3), 465-480.
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Engestrom, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamaki, R-L. (1999). Perspectives on
activity theory. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Harris, C. (1995). Whiteness as property. In K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G.
Peller, & K. Thomas (Eds) Critical race theory: The key writings that formed
the movement (pp. 276-291). NY: The New Press
Ladson-Billings, G. & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of
education. Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47-68.