Chapter 4: Mr. Hill’S Pedagogy-Enacting Critical Science Education

There were many similar elements between both Mr. Hill and Mr. Smith’s class concerning the types of students who took the course, and how the school administration perceived who should take the course. These served to frame the context of the Health Science classroom. In addition, there was certainly an implicit administration policy that allowed class sizes in the Health Science course to exceed those of the other courses at Rock City High School. Typically, AP science courses were limited to 15 or fewer students and other science courses that were generally associated with college preparatory such as Biology and Chemistry were usually limited to 25 or fewer students. Mr. Hill was the only teacher of the Health Science Course and his class rosters always exceeded 30 students with his largest at 37. His classes also typically demonstrated a wider array of student ethnicities as compared to the other science offerings.