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Abstract: This paper emerges from a reflection inspired by Kristen A. Searle et al.’s Whiteness at work in the elementary classroom: A case study. Through the lens of Whiteness, the authors explored how a White male elementary teacher, who engaged in an integrated technology professional development, implemented culturally responsive teaching. Unfortunately, the teacher was described as falling short of achieving the pedagogy and practice set out by the professional development. With this, we were left to wonder how the outcome of the study would have differed, if the authors chose to focus on social justice education, rather than make it a companion to their professional development on integrated technology. Therefore, in this piece, we explore how science teacher education, like the one presented in Kristen A. Searle et al.'s work, would look if it prioritized the development of socially just science teachers. PubDate: 2022-05-04
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Abstract: Gene technologies are developing at a high speed. Yet, the understandings and ethical conceptions about these developments are not sufficiently scrutinized and reflected. Our qualitative analysis examines everyday myths of younger generations about genome editing; these contribute to a complex fabric of rationally and intuitively justified opinions on genome editing. We argue that current thought patterns and social ways of thinking co-constitute the everyday myths. On the basis of group discussions with teenagers and students about genome editing, we reconstruct their topical views of humanity, the world, science and technology, value orientations, fears, hopes, and desires that are connected to genome editing. Our focus is on everyday myths about health and nature (particularly the nature–culture dichotomy) as well as their implications for social developments in the times of genome editing. Among these developments feared by the young generations are first and foremost conceptions regarding population density, environmental destruction, family relationships, normalization processes, and nature as a fundamental normative authority. The juveniles and students also reflect abstract ideals, e.g., perfection and health, within their contexts, and demystify these ideals. PubDate: 2022-04-17
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Abstract: Abstract This paper is a result of the reflection on Kristin Searle, Colby Tofel-Grehl, Andrea Hawkman, Mario Suarez, and Beth MacDonald’s paper, “Whiteness at work in the elementary classroom: a case study,” which follows a White male teacher as he is trained to employ an integrated technology unit that connects science, social studies, and language arts. The need for teachers to integrate content in culturally relevant ways is imperative as schools become increasingly diverse. Our engagement with this paper left us to question whether the professional development program was designed to support Mr. Anderson’s (and other teachers’) sociopolitical consciousness and subsequently his (and their) capacity to enact Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. In this forum, we offer grappling with racism as a foundational practice for teacher education as a way to interrupt dysconsciousness among science education researchers and teacher educators, as well as those with whom we learn. PubDate: 2022-04-09
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Abstract: Abstract This research envisioned as its main objective the comprehension of the process of knowledge production concerning the Afro-Brazilian boldo (Plectranthus barbatus Andrews), with the contributions from both scientists and the Afro-Brazilian people. As specific objectives, we attempted to reconstruct the research pathways traveled by medicinal plant scientists and by the Afro-Brazilian people and to evaluate the conduct of scientists along this process. The method exploited in this investigation consisted of a systematic literature review followed by content analysis from a bardanian perspective. Within the framework of this investigation (decoloniality of knowledge), the theories of epistemicide, epistemic pillage, and ethics of Ubuntu comprise the main theoretical constructs employed. During content analysis, we formulated a category discussing how the ancestral wisdom was presented in the papers investigated herein. The process of knowledge production always occurs in collaboration with other scientists, which, according to the theory of Ubuntu, can be considered ethical. We analyzed how the ancestral knowledge is presented in the research papers related to boldo in order to understand both its influence on the body of research examined and the possible processes of epistemic injustice. It is possible that, in the process of knowledge production depicted herein, Afro-Brazilian people might have had their epistemes pillaged, which appears to be unethical under the perspective of Ubuntu theory, and this motivated, in this work, the proposal of an ethically oriented process of knowledge production. This research first establishes the approaches between ethical and epistemological aspects with respect to processes of knowledge production, from a decolonial perspective, and reveals the nuances of those processes, the epistemic injustices that have occurred, and the ethical problems due to these injustices. PubDate: 2022-04-02
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Abstract: Abstract The contributions, participation, and exploitation of Black people within science and science education are devalued within the cannon of science teaching and learning. This in part is due to the Eurocentric nature of science and education. As a result, Black youth participate in science regularly; however, it is overlooked, not recognized, and/or misinterpreted within formal learning experiences. In this qualitative case study, the authors address this tension through the oral traditions of storytelling which historicize Black excellence in science while centering the voices and engagement of youth as scientists. This work is guided by critical race theory as a means of critiquing science education and its practices. While presenting a counter-narrative to mainstream science descriptions of Black youth, the authors posit the role of liberatory science education for Black learners. PubDate: 2022-03-27
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Abstract: Abstract In her critical analysis of a popular children’s television show which centers the experiences of a Black girl veterinarian, Sheron Mark finds that although the positioning of these identities illustrates progress vis-à-vis representation, diversity through representation further upholds whiteness. Consequently, to meaningfully engage tenets of diversity and equity in STEM formal and informal learning spaces, the sociocultural contextual factors that account for the systems of power which shape broader ideological perspectives of STEM must be acknowledged. As she calls for such a reckoning within informal and formal STEM spaces, this forum contributes to Mark’s argument by illustrating how the term “equity” is operationalized within current science reform-aligned curricula. Throughout the forum, I provide parallel examples of how such standards which implicate equity function much like diversity, thus maintaining whiteness. Returning to Mark’s charge, this forum concludes with an actionable vision for STEM learning that is truly accommodating of diverse epistemologies and identities in the pursuit of a more equitable STEM experience for youth of color. PubDate: 2022-03-22
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Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we reflect on Felicia Moore Mensah’s study, “Educating Klaren: Ideology in Teacher Education Impacting Teaching Black Students.” We grounded our reflections in our attempts to better understand the sociocultural perspectives of Klaren and Mensah. We also provide our insights on the importance of where science is situated in the preparation of elementary teacher candidates to work with Black children. Finally, within the context of Klaren’s experiences and Mensah’s interpretations of those experiences, we offer several sociocultural wonderings about those experiences and interpretations as they relate to science educators’ roles in preparing teachers to address neoliberalism in classrooms. PubDate: 2022-03-21
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Abstract: Abstract Building on Miles and Roby’s notion of a Black liberatory education where freedom includes experiencing Black joy, this forum article further articulates BlackJoy as a framework for designing research-to-practice spaces that centre Black liberation and flourishing for authentically equitable learning engagements and to counter ongoing deficit narratives and corresponding oppressions that Black and other racialized/minoritized learners experience in schools and other learning environments. The BlackJoy heuristic has four key tenets: Black Excellence, Black Inventiveness, Black Kinship and Black Aesthetics. Data and vignettes from prior research projects will be described of examples of BlackJoy in education and used as a point of departure discussions about the design of research and learning environments that cultivate BlackJoy and expanded ways to think about evidences of learning. PubDate: 2022-03-20
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Abstract: Abstract Science museums have long been heralded as important informal science education sites where people can engage in voluntary and experiential science learning. In this paper, we identify and raise questions about how science museum responses to a global pandemic could impact on accessibility of informal science education for the public. To explore these issues, we examined the response of the Gwacheon National Science Museum (GNSM) to COVID-19 in South Korea using publicly available data from the museum website and museum YouTube video channel. Analysis shows that the pandemic has increased and diversified the GNSM’s provision of science content for the general public via online platforms, such as YouTube and the museum website. In addition, GNSM educators are preparing special outreach education projects for deaf and blind visitors, who have often been excluded from informal science learning opportunities. By discussing these changes, we seek to raise questions about the potential for a global pandemic, like COVID-19, to affect informal science learning opportunities for a diverse group of people. PubDate: 2022-03-18
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Abstract: Argumentation activities in the science classroom bring students’ social relationships to the forefront, which can make it difficult for a student who is marginalized in peer relationships to participate in discussions. In this study, we qualitatively analyzed how a marginalized student’s attempts to position himself as an accepted member of small-group argumentation activities were constrained or afforded by other group members in a Korean science classroom. The results show that the students limited the marginalized student’s participation by shifting to unproductive framing. The following two features were identified when the marginalized student’s ideas were addressed in the discussions: (a) his idea was acknowledged as being closer to group members’ understanding of the argumentation activity in the science classroom, and (b) he invited the other students to modify his understanding. This study’s findings provide useful information for designing instructional strategies that provide equitable learning opportunities in argumentation activities in the science classroom. PubDate: 2022-03-18
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Abstract: Abstract This article considers science teaching and learning as may be understood through the integration of indigenous artefacts into physics curriculum in Zimbabwean schools. It comments significance of and elaborates on the issues raised in Nadaraj Govender and Edson Mudzamiri’s paper entitled: Incorporating indigenous artefacts in developing an integrated indigenous-pedagogical model in high school physics curriculum: views of elders, teachers and learners. At the outset, I examine the study’s conceptualisation of the terms indigenous knowledge (IK) and school science. Then, I offer an alternative view on the findings in light of the ubuntu theoretical framework, as used in other studies. The article foregrounds theoretical and methodological arguments put forward by Govender and Mudzamiri for the incorporation of IK artefacts with physics education in schools. After that, I analyse the applicability of the article’s proposed integrated indigenous physics pedagogical model in the school curriculum. The paper ends with the contention that school science should be taught as a cultural way of knowing rather mere facts divorced from learners’ culture. PubDate: 2022-03-14
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Abstract: Abstract School science curricula habitually encourages students to develop science knowledge alongside ‘ethical understanding’, the moral theory of right and wrong. Drawing from the ideas of Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, this paper critically examines the ‘science-ethics nexus’ in Australian secondary schooling. In doing so, it offers a renewed definition of ethics that negates humanism’s anthropocentrism and problematises humanist dualisms by centring a relational world. While posthumanism and new material feminism directly and critically engages with science and ethics, there is limited attention to how it might renew our understanding of these ideas in schools. Thus, the research question driving this study is, How does posthumanism help renew thinking about the science-ethics nexus in secondary schooling' A thinking-feeling-doing diffractive practice is utilised to analyse two data sources: the Science and Ethical Understanding streams within the Years 7–10 Australian Curriculum and a speculative short story by the first author, The Beforetimer. ‘Plugging in’ concepts of posthumanist ethics and relationality, this alternative methodological approach mobilises the power of diffractive forces to help illuminate how the science-ethics nexus in schools can reproduce onto-epistemological traditions of ‘Euro-Western’ cultural and masculinist hegemony. This hegemony restricts diverse cultural approaches to understanding the science-ethics nexus by (a) giving credence to reason, as divorced from emotions, and objectivity; (b) defining ethics as separate from knowledge production; and (c) undermining ethical responsibility by merely associating it with specific topics/issues. In contrast, integrating posthumanist ethics in school science requires those implicated to explicitly attend to cultural hegemony and relationality and to place ethics at the centre of knowledge production. Pursuing a posthumanist ethics in science education must do more than critique anthropocentrism/humanism broadly but also interrogate and unsettle this Euro-Western hegemony over diverse ways-of-knowing-being. PubDate: 2022-03-12
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Abstract: Abstract Despite acknowledging issues of inequity within science education, practices, standards, and reform-guiding documents like the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) still fall short in actions that result in substantive and sustained progress in achieving their expressed goals and expectations. Issues of inequity in science education have been and are continuously documented for certain populations, Black students are of particular interest in this study. Using student responses to a survey to elicit the students’ nominations of teachers to receive a fictitious “Best Science Teacher Award” and reasons for their selections, we explored what captured Black high school students’ attention within their science educational experiences over time (N = 261). Deductive and inductive coding resulted in a category system which was synthesized into three dimensions: affect, praxis, and personal traits. These dimensions encapsulated what students deemed most important in supporting their nominations for the best science teacher award. Collectively, these dimensions suggested that emotion and pedagogy captured Black students’ attention. Additionally, the category system was used to derive student profiles which reflected the various reasons posited in a student’s rationale. Chi-square analyses of student profiles showed significant associations at p < .05 between student profiles and level taught by the nominated teacher (Cramer’s V of 0.783) and student profiles and survey respondent’s grade level (Cramer’s V of 0.480). Implications for studying attention as it relates to learning and the importance of incorporating student perceptions and experiences into policy, reform, and implementation efforts that ensue from each are discussed. PubDate: 2022-03-12
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Abstract: Abstract African-American women continue to be underrepresented in science and engineering field despite years of interventions, including providing out-of-school time STEM experiences. Although some out-of-school time programs have shown impacts in participants’ content knowledge and skill acquisition, impacts on science identity development have been mixed, with some research indicating that participants’ struggle to access science identities developed in out-of-school time in a formal educational setting. In order to better understand the barriers to accessing and developing science identity across contexts, this study uses a combined framework of Activity Theory, communities of practice, and Critical Race Theory to compare the in-school and out-of-school time STEM experiences of African-American girls. Using data collected in both settings, activity systems for an out-of-school time STEM Club and an in-school seventh grade science classroom are reconstructed and examined for contradictions. The results indicated that objects, and therefore outcomes, of the two systems contradicted each other and tertiary tools (ideologies) from the in-school activity system created contradictions and barriers within the out-of-school time activity system. We show how the contradictions were resolved through contraction, instead of expansion, of the activity systems and how this contraction can be viewed as maintaining science (and STEM) as a property of whiteness. This work has implications for both formal and informal educators and researchers who wish to support students’ science identity development across contexts and disrupt inequitable distributions of science (and STEM) resources (physical and ideological). PubDate: 2022-03-12
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Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the social fever of MBBS (undergraduate medical) aspiration in India. It analyzes interviews conducted with 139 pharmacy graduates and 37 currently enrolled students in the western Indian state of Gujarat, of whom 147 pursued but failed to get admission to medical college. Respondents include graduates from the 1970s onwards. 51% are female. 28 respondents are from Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, 9 from the Scheduled Castes, and 13 from the Scheduled Tribes. The methodological foregrounding of failed aspirations gives a unique perspective on the cultural production of merit, which activates aspiration across social differences. The analysis suggests that institutional structures which narrowed the meaning of merit to programs located outside the university system; local interpretations of medical-engineering study as more valuable than that of the basic sciences, humanities, or social sciences; collective imaginations of meritorious students as necessarily pursuing MBBS study; and the enactment of pedagogic care within these cultural imaginaries produced widespread aspirations for high school science and subsequent medical-engineering study. Within this overdetermined world, respondents narrated their selves in diverse ways. The terrain of aspiration included substantive, ambivalent, and even hostile affects. Meanwhile, non-elites who did not pursue MBBS posit aspirational marginality as an effect of social marginalization. Unlike in the US or UK contexts, where researchers lament the paucity of science aspiration and consider family science capital to be a key determinant of student interest in science, in India, the strict limiting of academic value to medical-engineering has massified science aspirations. PubDate: 2022-03-11
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Abstract: Abstract The focus of this study was to examine peer-reviewed ‘draw-a-scientist’ test (DAST) research studies conducted primarily in the USA. In a similar review of science education research into the ‘nature of science views’, it was found that race played a prominent role in that research agenda and therefore may be impacting DAST research as well. Using critical race theory (CRT) as a framework, 28 published draw-a-scientist test (DAST) studies spanning from 1976 to 2018 were selected and reviewed. This study is unique in the fact that it is the only critique of the instrument in which race was the focus. Results suggest that race and language have played a significant role in DAST research to date, as Black, Latinx, Native American and other people of color were found to be disproportionally excluded as participants. Implications of excluding these individuals are explored, and suggestions for making DAST research more equitable are discussed. PubDate: 2022-03-11
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Abstract: Abstract According to cognitive and spiritual developmental theories, individuals construct and transcend their previous thought processes by incorporating more sophisticated ways of understanding the world as they progress through stages requiring efforts in different modes of thought. These theories focus on the importance of contextual variables in development and emphasize that these variables will spark a change in cognitive and spiritual development or awareness. We have investigated the effects of blended learning on cognitive learning and spiritual interpretations of science teacher candidates. The study with a quasi-experimental design had 54 science teacher candidates attending the science education department of a state university in Turkey. Our study showed that when learning Einstein’s theory of special relativity, a blended learning environment affects students’ cognitive learning positively. In the spiritual sense, too, significant results were found in favor of the blended learning group students. This effect that triggers spiritual change has been discussed in two contexts: “the effect embedded in the variable” and “indirect effect from the variable.” If supported by further research, the results of this study suggest that the spiritual dimension can be incorporated into three domains of learning, namely cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. PubDate: 2022-03-11
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Abstract: Abstract This forum paper dialogues with Crystal Morton and Demetrice Smith-Mutegi’s Making “it” matter: Developing African American girls and young women’s mathematics and science identities through informal STEM learning. Their article unveils the experiences of participants in Girls STEM Institute, and how they challenged beliefs about their ability to perform in science and mathematics. I extend the discussion to explore the importance of access through community-based initiatives and stand on the premise that we will continue to oxygenate master narratives and perpetuate inequities if the structure and function of our programs fail to challenge the status quo. Therefore, this paper serves as a call to action to (1) recognize and address spirit murdering from teachers and authority figures who dismiss the abilities of Black girls to perform in STEM; (2) create humanizing spaces within schools and the larger community for Black girls to access STEM with authenticity; and (3) leverage the multidimensional identities of Black girls in ways that validate their cultural resources and brilliance. When we commit ourselves to creating more equitable learning spaces in STEM, then our actions will align with our responsibility to make Black girls matter. PubDate: 2022-03-01
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Abstract: Abstract This study employs a qualitative case study approach of one elementary preservice teacher as a critique of neoliberal ideology on teacher education for equity and teaching Black children. The study specifically seeks to understand the role of science teacher education in the preparation of an elementary teacher candidate and her learning about sociocultural perspectives in science education and how her ideas about teaching converge within the larger framing of neoliberal ideology. Sociocultural perspectives are defined broadly to include diversity, equity, and identity with a neoliberal ideology to focus on how the teacher candidate talks about equity issues and the teaching of Black children. The case is constructed using multiple course artifacts collected over one semester (i.e., reflective papers, informal conversations, and a semi-structured interview). The case study discusses the importance of science teacher education in the preparation of teacher candidates for classroom practice where sociocultural perspectives are given attention and how neoliberal ideology may impact teacher candidates’ teaching and learning of science in culturally and racially diverse classrooms. PubDate: 2022-03-01
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