Connecting Soccer to Middle School Science: Latino Students’ Passion in Learning

ABSTRACT

Building on a pedagogical model designed to support the teaching and learning of the language of science investigation practices with middle school emergent bilingual learners, we developed a series of soccer and science investigations to promote interest and engagement in science learning. We used assemblage theory to study how students engaged in and acted within this bilingual curriculum situated in an afterschool soccer practice context. We found that soccer, a passion for several Latino students, can be used as a cultural tool for science teachers to support the emerging bilingual students’ learning process. Implications for educators and researchers considering ways of integrating diverse students’ cultural practices and passions with culturally sustaining pedagogies for science teaching and learning are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Assemblage theory
• Latino students
• middle school
• passion
• science
• soccer

Notes

¹ We use the term Latino/a throughout the article to include both males and females who identify as and are identified as of Latin American or Mexican cultural heritage and Spanish linguistic heritage, but when discussing the research, we use the term Latino because the context for the research was our work with a boys-only soccer team.