Rachel E. Wilson

Dr. Rachel Wilson is an Associate Professor in the Elementary Education Program in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at Appalachian State University. She teaches courses related to science education, including CI 3552: Environmental Literacy in 21st Century Schools and Society—Directed Elective and CI 4401: Science and Science Teaching in the Elementary School. She holds a Ph.D. in Science Education, along with an Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies Graduate Certification, from The University of Georgia. Her research interests focus on cultural influences on student participation in science, as well as international education issues, due to her teaching experiences both in Santa Barbara, California and in rural Guyana, South America.

There are 18 included publications by Rachel E. Wilson :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Capturing Insects And Student Interest: First Graders Learn About Unusual Plants In Their Area In This Multimodal Investigation Of Carnivorous Plants 2016 159 Most plants are able to obtain all of the nutrients that they need from air, water, and soil; however, this is not true of carnivorous plants. Because they tend to live in boggy soils where there are small amounts of nitrogen, carnivorous plants have...
Cultivating Curiosity About Creatures: Using Crayfish To Investigate Physical And Behavioral Adaptations 2019 115 Bradbury and Wilson share how their fourth-grade students investigate the physical and behavioral adaptations of crayfish. Because crayfish are native to our area and many students have experience observing them in our local streams, we decided to us...
Developing Elementary Science PCK For Teacher Education: Lessons Learned From A Second Grade Partnership 2017 535 In this self-study, two science educators partnered with two elementary teachers to plan, implement, and reflect on a unit taught in second grade classrooms that integrated science and language arts. The researchers hoped to increase their pedagogica...
Exploring The Use Of iPads To Investigate Forces And Motion In An Elementary Science Methods Course 2013 116 Many science educators emphasize the need for meaningful science learning experiences and promote the idea of social constructivism in their methods classes, usually with inquiry-based activities that include physical manipulatives. However, the prol...
The Gendering Of Albert Einstein And Marie Curie In Children's Biographies: Some Tensions 2009 728 Few twentieth century scientists have generated as much interest as Albert Einstein and Marie Currie. Their lives are centrally depicted in numerous children’s biographies of famous scientists. Yet their stories reflect interesting paradoxes and taci...
Going Bananas Over Fruit! Using Habits Of Mind To Foster Nutritional Literacy 2009 219 Science literacy for all students is an education goal in the United States, as well as in many other parts of the world. Habits of mind are the skills and attitudes that students need to develop in order to understand science as a way of thinking. P...
Integrating Service-Learning Pedagogy For Preservice Elementary Teachers' Science Identity Development 2015 930 The purpose of this article is to explore how preservice elementary teachers (PSETs) interpreted their service-learning experiences within a pre-methods environmentally focused course and how their interpretations shaped their science teaching identi...
Let's Hear It For Ladybugs!: Observing Ladybugs Offers Opportunities To Integrate Language Arts Into A Life Cycle Unit 2015 633 "I eat bugs. Do you like to eat bugs?" & "You and I are a little bit the same. We can both fly, and we can lay eggs." These quotations are from letters written from ladybugs to butterflies at the conclusion of a unit exploring ladybug life cycles. As...
Multiple Modes In Science Instruction: Diversifying Opportunities For Students To Learn 2019 231 To become scientifically literate, students need to interpret science concepts using numbers, text, and visuals. Scientists use multiple modes to communicate their ideas to each other and the public, including images, text, mathematical notations, sy...
Perspectives On Positioning, Interaction, And Learning In Small-Group Discussion: Possibilities For Extending The Analytic Lens 2012 724 In this forum piece, we respond to Karin Due’s study of social dynamics in groups of students in physics class and gender issues that play out in this context. We discuss two threads that appear in Due’s paper: one pertains to patterns of talk within...
Positioning Within A Cultural Context: Using Ricoeur's Preunderstandings As A Heuristic For Narrative Data Analysis In Exploring Identity, Structure, And Agency 2014 973 I argue that Ricoeur’s preunderstandings can be used as a heuristic to aid researchers who collect narratives as data (1) to identify cultural meanings that become resources for participants’ positioning work, (2) to ground the identified cultural me...
Questioning The Prevailing Narrative About Elementary Science Teachers: An Analysis Of The Experiences Of Science Teacher Enthusiasts 2020 1080 The purpose of this study is to challenge the prevailing negative narrative related to elementary science teaching by investigating the experiences of elementary teachers who identify as science teacher enthusiasts (STEs). Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner...
The Role Of Struggle In Pre-Service Elementary Teachers' Experiences As Students And Approaches To Facilitating Science Learning 2011 940 Science education researchers are concerned with preparing pre-service elementary teachers (PSETs) to teach in ways that support students to learn science in a meaningful way. Preparing elementary teachers to teach science is complicated given that t...
Science As A Classed And Gendered Endeavor: Persistence Of Two White Female First-Generation College Students Within An Undergraduate Science Context 2013 1086 As colleges and universities aim for greater diversity in their undergraduate populations, one population researchers consider is first-generation students, or students whose parents do not have a college education. The research reported here address...
Stalk It Up To Integrated Learning: Using Foods We Eat And Informational Texts To Learn About Plant Parts And Their Functions 2016 261 The diet of many students consists of on-the-go processed food. As part of a larger school garden project, the authors wanted students to consider the relevance of plants in their own lives, both as food sources for us and for the animals that we eat...
Teaching Students How To Study: A Workshop On Information Processing And Self-Testing Helps Students Learn 2011 639 We implemented a “how to study” workshop for small groups of students (6–12) for N = 93 consenting students, randomly assigned from a large introductory biology class. The goal of this workshop was to teach students self- regulating techniques with v...
"Tomb It May Concern:" Visit Your Local Cemetery For A Multidisciplinary (And Economical) Field Trip 2013 234 Cemeteries have traditionally been cast as scary and creepy places in children’s literature, as well as in popular television shows and movies. Spooky media images, coupled with exaggerated stories from their friends, might leave young learners wary ...
Vibrating Insects: An Integrated Multimodal Unit On Sound For Early Elementary Students 2021 363 Working with second-grade teachers, the authors designed a six-day integrated science and language arts unit to investigate the structures that insects use to make their sound vibrations. They were inspired by "The Very Quiet Cricket" (Carle 1990), w...