Potential Barriers

Support learning in deep and meaningful ways by paying careful attention to potential barriers to science learning that may prohibit access. Anticipating these barriers in advance enables learning environments to be designed for accessibility from the beginning instead of retrofitting inaccessible tasks through modification or adaptations. We provide guidance about four different kinds of barriers below:  

• Barrier # 1 — Teacher-centered learning environments
• Barrier # 2 — Inaccessible materials
• Barrier # 3 — Unsupported collaboration
• Barrier # 4 — Bias in representation and language

Barrier # 1 — Teacher-centered learning environments

Curriculum materials and/or teachers may incorrectly assume that the complexity and sophistication of three-dimensional learning as outlined by the latest NRC Framework and the NGSS is beyond the grasp of students who receive special education services. Therefore, learning activities may be designed in ways that can restrict students’ opportunities for choosing how to participate. Relatedly, relying too heavily on teacher-directed lectures can close opportunities for students to build on their prior knowledge, experiences, and sense-making strategies. This can also happen when learning activities are so closely regulated that they leave few possibilities for students to engage in meaningful learning, in other words, over-scaffolded.

Possible ways to remove barrier:

• Student-friendly learning goals: Providing opportunities for student-driven learning starts with clear expectations of learning goals that are written in student-friendly language. One way to do this is to leverage three-dimensional performance expectations from the NGSS to create goals that are easy for students to understand. For instance, performance expectations  could be presented as  “I can argue why certain animals can survive in their habitat using evidence”, rather than “Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.” (e.g., PE: 3.LS4.3)
• Student choice: Once students are aware of the expectations of the unit, students are then able to make choices about how they will meet their goals. Teachers can provide students with options to explore different organisms within a given habitat, different methods to obtain information on that organisms (e.g., watching a video or reading an article), and support different participations structures that can support their work (e.g., small group, dyads or individual options). When providing student choice, all options should be presented as valuable, as opposed to hierarchically. To ensure that all options contain the same level of rigor it is essential to think about the different expectations for each method of gathering information as it relates to the task. Additionally, learners should be positioned to make instructional decisions based on their personal goals and strengths.
• Student tools for self-monitoring: Curricular materials provide tools for self-monitoring and assessment that allow students to determine when they have completed a task or how they will plan next steps. For example, curriculum materials can include checklists that articulate the steps needed to meet the goals of the unit, written from students’ perspective: (1) I have selected strong evidence to support my argument about why certain organisms can live in an environment; (2) I can create a visual that describes the evidence I have collected; (3) I can explain my evidence to a partner; and (4) I read my response outloud to check for any errors.
• Support Students Set Goals: Learning environments must support student goal setting by providing prompts that lead learners to set goals and break them down into manageable next steps. This could be achieved through providing checklists that are aligned to three dimensional learning tasks, make goals for the instructional sequence clear by referring to them throughout the unit, and prompt learners to “stop and think” or “show and explain” and ask questions for self monitoring and reflection.
• Modeling failure and perseverance: It is important to be transparent and demonstrate how scientists and engineers self-monitor their experiences of and self-regulate their responses to challenges that arise during group-work, during the iterative processes of design thinking, and/or planning and implementing investigations.

Barrier # 2 — Inaccessible materials

Curriculum materials and science instruction typically emphasize written and spoken language as the main means of communication, which can be restrictive for students who benefit from expressing their reasoning through multiple means. For many learners, the inflexibility of print-based materials limits the accessibility to the content for those with reading impairments, such as readers who are blind. Difficulties can range from issues with font size to a complete inability to interact with any part of the page or screen. Also, science environments are often designed to promote investigations of the natural world, but those designs might not take into account the range of physical and mental demands that go into planning and implementing an investigation. For example, experimental materials are designed with students with fine-motor skills in mind; field experiences seldom consider students who use mobility equipment, such as wheelchairs.

1. Accessible Visual Information: Teachers should acknowledge the limitations and challenges presented by images, graphics, animations, videos and text by providing text and/or audio descriptions for all visual information. Audio, text-based, and visual descriptions that highlight essential takeaways from diverse media can support learners with a range of needs.
2. Comprehension Considerations: Teachers should support comprehension by making links to other ideas clear using transitional phrases or by created a concept map. Ensure that all vocabulary or unfamiliar concepts include alternate references that define the word (i.e. graphics to support vocabulary words or a glossary with definitions).
3. Processing Information: Information processing should be supported by the inclusion of opportunities to activate prior knowledge (e.g., prompting class discussion related to connected topics, providing first hand experience for learners to draw from), highlight patterns and make connections to other concepts (e.g., providing opportunities to have students make connections to cross cutting concepts during instruction), and guide the information processing by sectioning text by key ideas and promoting reflection.
4. Accessibility of Lab Materials: Teachers should consider the barriers that lab layout and/or equipment suggested in science activities can present to learners with needs. Curricular materials should anticipate and list the barriers some equipment may present to students, and suggest alternative equipment and/or setups. Teachers should speak with their students about potential strategies for addressing their learning needs and create opportunities for equitable three-dimensional science learning. For more information please visit the Do-It Center website.

Barrier # 3 — Unsupported collaboration

It is important to create opportunities for students with unique learning needs to work with peers to investigate phenomena and/or design solutions. Nevertheless, group-work assignments are seldom designed to account for the range of abilities of participating students, which can lead to the students benefiting differentially from the activity; this can be exacerbated in inclusive learning environments where non-disabled students can complete tasks without the input of their peers with learning needs. Teachers should create opportunities for students to actively participate in group-work, supporting teachers to set clear goals for activity-driven learning, as well as scaffolds to self-regulate progress in groups and promote students’ agency. Learning environments should reinforce a positive group-work culture by encouraging students to identify their resources that can strengthen their group, as well as systems to ensure that all students are actively participating in sense-making. For this purpose, every unit has complex tasks that require the work of all group members to accomplish.

• Complex Group Tasks: Instructional materials should engage learners in group tasks that are are complex and require the participation of all members to complete them. These group tasks are grounded in prompts that do not point to one correct answer. Performance expectation 3-ESS3-1 is a productive example, asking students to “Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard,” allowing the solution to be uncertain and open-ended.
• Supporting Group participation: Curriculum materials should provide supports for each student to participate in group decision-making. The use of protocols that allow for individual time to think about ideas and processing time to review the ideas of others before a whole group conversation can help to ensure that all ideas are being represented whether it is in the visual, written, or verbal form.
• Promoting Student Self-Reflection: Reflection activities should be embedded throughout the collaboration process to ensure that students are attending to shared norms that were set, not just at the end. Asking learners to reflect on their personal contribution to the group, as well as the contributions of others multiple times throughout the process can help ensure that group work includes all group members.
• Intellectually Fulfilling Group Roles. If group roles are being used, they should be related to sustained effort throughout the process. Being the timekeeper or material management do not require much of an intellectual contribution to the work. Instead consider offering the option for students to play multiple roles that are grounded in a sustained group contribution (i.e., innovative thinker, idea summarizer). Visit the “Designing Group Work” document created by Ambitious Science Teaching for some suggestions.

Barrier # 4 — Bias in representation and language

Curriculum materials are seldom attentive of and responsive to the diverse ways that students make sense of the world. Teachers and curriculum designers may be unaware of how language and colloquial expressions may accidentally reflect prejudiced positions against people with unique learning needs. Also, curriculum materials seldom reflect the diversity of STEM professionals, including those that may identify with having a disability or a learning need. The accurate depiction of the diversity of STEM professionals helps students reimagine future pathways

1. Anti-bias Representations: Classroom environments need to reflect a more accurate depiction of the diversity of STEM professionals, including those that may identify with having a disability or a learning need. The accurate depiction helps students to recognize that people with disabilities make contributions to science and they can too.
2. Anti-bias Language: Learning environments should support the use of “People-First Language” that emphasizes the person, rather than the learning need. For example, it is more equitable to say “a student has dyslexia,” than to say “a dyslexic student.” By focusing on the person first, the learning need is no longer the primary, defining characteristic of an individual, but one of the many aspects of the whole person. Teachers should also avoid using pejorative terms associated with mental health (e.g., crazy, retarded, loony, psycho), as well as terms associated with physical disabilities (e.g., lame, invalid, dumb). Teachers should also be particularly vigilant about ableist language in context-specific text, given that some topics are more prone to include pejorative terms. For instance, topics such as evolution and genetics may include terms like “defective” when referring to certain phenotypic expressions; it is best to use “typical” or “abnormal,” but only within a biological context—it is never acceptable to say a person is abnormal.