ABSTRACT
The LISELL-B (Language-rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners through Biotechnology) project is a longitudinal, mixed methods, teacher professional development research project implemented in the state of Georgia. Other aspects of this project are described in detail elsewhere (e.g., Buxton, AllexsahtSnider, Kayumova, Aghasaleh, Choi, & Cohen, 2015) as well as in the preceding two chapters in this volume. In this chapter we take turns discussing how contexts of the LISELL-B project allowed each of us to work with multiple theories in order to make sense of teaching and learning science with emergent bilingual students, their families, and teachers. The common threads among the multiple theories we use are our shared reliance upon so-called “post” theories and new materialisms. These theories are highly suspicious of the idea of “method,” as conceptualized in modern social (and natural) science research. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notions of assemblages and plug-ins, we position the LISELL-B project as an open-ended and dynamic assemblage of discursive, social, and material entities. Written in the form of narrative genre, each plug-in we describe illustrates (1) a distinct piece of situated experience and (2) the ways in which each of us utilize multiple theoretical perspectives to interpret the complex work of the LISELL-B project.
