“There Are Places Full of Beauty”
Desettling High School Students' Scientific Writing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21392682 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alejandra Frausto Aceves (0000-0002-0959-471X, School of Education & Social Policy Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 110 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1018-1042 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/sce.70049 |
| OpenAlex | W7122797459 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 49 |
This study contributes to desettling and expanding expectations about the forms of scientific language that belong in students' scientific writing. The primary empirical focus is the analysis of 52 high school student abstracts articulating community‐based investigations, submitted as part of their participation in a student conference in a big US city. Methodologically, constructivist grounded theory and discourse analysis are utilized to investigate how students communicated intentions and priorities in their science writing as evidenced through the weaving of their linguistic and extralinguistic choices. The study found that students articulated civic‐oriented versions of science practices in places consequential to their real‐world. Their grammar and genre choices departed from conventional depersonalized and atemporal writing in school science. Evidenced are the ways in which students take up the genre of abstracts alongside community‐based priorities to weave three modes of civic science education. Further, students writing and the forms of we they utilized also reflected collective, caring, and ethical commitments that not only identified harms but also beauty as worthy of scientific investigations. The meanings students construct show how scientific language and writing, including grammar(s) and genre(s), are entangled with ideology, ethics, pedagogy, and decision‐making. This study calls for teachers, designers, and researchers to prioritize collective learning, ethical sense‐making, and considerations of justice—rather than normed sections, genres, or grammars in students' scientific writing. This study suggests attending to grammar and genre in scientific writing helps support [trans]disciplinary learning and sustainable, ethical forms of human development more broadly
Construct (python library) · Focus (optics) · Focus group · Grammar · Professional writing · Science education · Scientific theory · Scientific writing · Systemic functional grammar · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Science Education and Pedagogy · Writing and Handwriting Education
Situational Analysis
Social Ontology
The Language of Schooling
Linguistic Features of the Language of Schooling
Attitudes towards science
Participatory Design Research and Educational Justice
Examining the literacy component of science literacy
Civic Participation Reimagined
Rethinking Race and Power in Design-Based Research
Justice‐centered science pedagogy
Temporal construal.
An Introduction to Functional Grammar
Toward Just and Sustainable Futures
The potential of “civic science education”
Toward What Ends
Making Space for Justice
A World of Many Worlds
An Invitation to Live Together
Youth as historical actors in the production of possible futures
Not in their name
Genre and academic writing in the disciplines
Narrative possibility and narrative explanation
Fostering Political Interest Among Youth During the 2012 Presidential Election
It Looks as if They Threw the Entire Periodic Table Into the River
An Instrument for Assessing Scientists’ Written Skills in Public Communication of Science
Desettling Expectations in Science Education
Grammatical Metaphor
The Power of Constructivist Grounded Theory for Critical Inquiry
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |