Exploring the Impact of Reality Pedagogy: Understanding its Implementation on Urban Immigrant Students

Abstract

This ethnographic case study follows two urban immigrant students in their yearlong journey in an urban science classroom where the first two pedagogic tools of reality pedagogy (cogenerative dialogue and co-teaching) were implemented. This study examines the role reality pedagogy plays in the science classroom for these two students, while focusing on their social capital and how distributed cognition is used to frame understanding. The three emergent themes that were generated and observed among the two participants indicated that the implementation of the first two tools of reality pedagogy increased the two immigrant students' participation within their science classroom, increased opportunities for voice in the classroom, and increased ability to access the human and physical resources of the classroom for the participants' own benefit. The study revealed that both students' social capital was impacted and the frame of distributed cognition played a role in their science classroom participation. Implications relate to the importance of developing community within science classrooms for immigrant students.