How to understand and support marginalized students’ participation in a science classroom from the perspective of framing

Abstract

Ha and Kim (this issue) qualitatively portrayed how a marginalized student’s attempts to position himself as an accepted member were constrained or afforded by other members in the small-group argumentation activities. From a framing perspective, the authors described the features and changes of the marginalized student’s participation in small-group argumentation in a science classroom. In this commentary, based on the reported features and shift of the marginalized student’s participation, we illustrate how to understand and support marginalized students' participation in a science classroom from the perspective of framing. In particular, we interpret several features of marginalized students’ participation that were reported in Ha and Kim’s paper and existing studies from two aspects of framing: interactional dynamics and multilevel structures. Finally, we discuss how to support (re)framing of marginalized students as a basis of establishing equity in science classrooms.