Thread by @philiplbell

⚖️EQUITY IN #SciEd SLOW CHAT THREAD⚖️

Each day this week I'll post about one of 7 intersecting #SciEd equity projects including thoughts, resources, examples & open issues to explore. I encourage you to add to the 🧵 #NGSSchat #NGSS

Base Resource:
stemteachingtools.org/brief/71

7 INTERSECTING #SciEd EQUITY PROJECTS
🌿Centering Racial Justice
🌿Meaningful Phenomena
🌿Multi-Generational Learning
🌿Cultural Pedagogies
🌿Supporting Diverse Sense-Making
🌿Disrupting Ableism
🌿Place-Based Learning & Ecological Caring

Background paper: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

We center this #SciEd equity work on two core liberatory purposes:

INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION
🌿stemteachingtools.org/brief/10
🌿indiancountrytoday.com/archive/what-i…

ABOLITION: RACIAL JUSTICE IN EDUCATION
🌿nea.org/resource-libra…
🌿abolitionistteachingnetwork.org

#NGSSchat #NGSS

Given the complexity of inequity in social life, it is very productive to approach equity work from an INTERSECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE on individual identities & experiences as they relate to various systems of oppression.

Background paper by Boveda & Weinberg
aapt.scitation.org/doi/full/10.11…

⚖️ EQUITY PROJECT: CENTERING RACIAL JUSTICE ⚖️
By focusing on the brilliance of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Polynesian, Pacific Islander & other racialized groups and how science has and continues to produce racialized harms— in classrooms, communities, scientific fields…

…you can help disrupt anti-Indigeneity, antiblackness, and other forms of racism. Disrupt racist assumptions, practices, policies & systems that uphold whiteness.

Background on anti-Indigeneity…
aptnnews.ca/national-news/…

Background on antiblackness…
nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opi…

EXPLORE: SCIENCE TEACHING & ANTI-RACISM edited by Dr. @LeenaBMc for @NSTA

ACTIONS
🌿Create a culture of discourse on social justice
🌿Cultivate learning experiences that embrace each of your students
🌿Dismantle structural & systemic inequities in #SciEd

nsta.org/blog/building-…

To develop a broad, historical understanding of how racial equity & justice has been promoted through teaching & teacher education (including in #SciEd), read this new @Spencer_Fdn review by Dr. Niral Shah. He also highlights recommendations for the field.
spencer.org/learning/racia…

Dr. Shah recommends teacher learning efforts:

⚡️Explicitly name & focus on race & specific types of racism⚡️

In addition to anti-Indigeneity & antiblackness (see above), my network has been attending to anti-Asian racism. #AAPIHeritageMonth

Resources…

In a decade, I think we will have a robust infrastructure to promote racial justice in & through #SciEd (& beyond). Awareness has been growing around fabulous existing work, new resources are being developed & @NSF just launched a new R&D program to help…
nsf.gov/funding/pgm_su…

In terms of new materials for centering racial justice, colleagues @SciEdHutch—led by Dr. @jchowning—have developed fabulous high school #SciEd #NGSS instructional materials on:

⚡️Race, Racism & Genetics⚡️
fredhutch.org/en/about/educa…

⚡️DNA Exonerations⚡️
fredhutch.org/en/about/educa…

⚖️ EQUITY PROJECT: MEANINGFUL PHENOMENA ⚖️

Engage students in making sense of a range of phenomena across the school year, including contemporary scientific, everyday, culturally meaningful, globally significant, and justice-centered phenomena.

#NGSSchat #NGSS #SciEd

Position students as developing experts learning to take meaningful action in their world now—not as individuals preparing for a distant future. A key equity practice is to focus current learning on understanding phenomena & taking informed action for desired, collective futures.

These "early" NGSS resources provide guidance for how to approach #SciEd through PHENOMENA-GUIDED INSTRUCTION.

Making sense of phenomena is meant to disrupt didactic & content-delivery centered approaches to science teaching.
stemteachingtools.org/brief/28
stemteachingtools.org/brief/42

One of the challenges with phenomena-based instruction involves resisting instructional uniformity that leads to engaging students in one kind of anchor phenomena. This narrowing influence might come from instructional models, curriculum developers, or implementation efforts.

In response to this concern, @SciEdHenry & I developed a framework for selecting different kinds of #NGSS phenomena…


Different kinds of phenomena support specific equity purposes…


See slides for details…
drive.google.com/file/d/1dhfegB…

⚡️ Anchor phenomena can also be selected to support social justice goals ⚡️

This issue of @NSTA Next Gen Navigator @educatordeb & I edited includes elementary, middle & high school examples of #SciEd justice-centered investigations (by the authors shown).
nsta.org/blog/social-ju…

There's a growing focus on JUSTICE-CENTERED #SciEd PEDAGOGY that connects learning to broader struggles for social justice. Explore:

✳️PODCAST w/ @dmoralesdoyle
ngsnavigators.com/blog/059

✳️PAPER by @dmoralesdoyle
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

✳️@STEMTeachTools
stemteachingtools.org/brief/67

⚖️ EQUITY PROJECT: MULTI-GENERATIONAL LEARNING ⚖️

Powerful learning experiences typically bring multiple histories, life experiences & values into coordination. Multi-generational groupings are a key strategy to accomplish this. How do we do this in #SciEd?

#NGSSchat #NGSS

How can we continue to work to transcend the age-segregated approach to schooling?

In #SciEd, I've seen powerful…
🌿cross-grade collaborative investigations
🌿community science efforts
🌿experts visiting classrooms
🌿class fieldtrips
🌿family science learning

Other examples??

Our colleagues from the Family Learning Design Collaborative—@prof_ishimaru @meganbang3 & the FLDC network—have troubled our understanding of traditional ways in which people working in schools have engaged families & communities.
familydesigncollab.org

The @LearnInPlaces project is a stelar example of family-centered #SciEd engagement & instruction. Definitely explore their Family & Community Engagement Framework, other frameworks & lessons engaging families & classes in learning.
learninginplaces.org

⚡️ Individuals only ever develop scientific literacy as they participate in learning across a broad variety of contexts. ⚡️

Various models of COMMUNITY & CITIZEN SCIENCE engage multiple generations in shared, authentic inquiry across different settings.
nap.edu/read/25183/cha…

Here's a fabulous INTERGENERATIONAL PARTNERSHIP approach in #SciEd. This state-level effort forms and supports collaborative teams as they work on place-based conservation science projects. It is a powerful way for youth to develop a science identity!

REFLECTION: Based on our surveys of ed leaders, the MULTI-GENERATIONAL EQUITY PROJECT is the LEAST likely to be taken up by formal education. Likely, this is because the colonial, age-segregated model is just so deeply entrenched structurally & systemically. It is unquestionable.

This has me profoundly worried because we must mobilize to decarbonize & transform human-nature relations at a societal level. We need to be educating across generations—centered in historicity & toward just futures—such that necessary actions are politically & locally possible.

PLS RT & SHARE #NGSSchat #NGSS

🥤🍿 THREAD INTERLUDE 🍿🥤

I just presented on the 7 #SciEd equity projects at the @NSTA Engage Conference. Here are my slides. The PowerPoint has slides to open up 5 of the 7 projects & a smaller PDF version has a subset.
tinyurl.com/Bell-NSTA-21

⚖️ EQUITY PROJECT: CULTURAL PEDAGOGIES ⚖️

All deep learning happens in ways that are culturally significant to learners and their communities. Diversify learning by rooting instruction in the cultural knowledge, worldviews, and ways of knowing of students’ communities.

⚡️ All Science Learning is Cultural ⚡️

The cultural diversities connected to your classroom learning community are key assets for focusing instruction and learning goals. Form partnerships with community to revitalize and sustain their cultural practices and assets.

One instructional practice that powerfully supports cultural pedagogy in #SciEd is called SELF-DOCUMENTATION. It allows students to capture local, dynamic dimensions of lived cultural practice, knowledge & values that are then related to instruction.
stemteachingtools.org/pd/sessionc

⚡️ Multiple forms of CULTURAL PEDAGOGY have been developed—& continue to be created. ⚡️

Research on cultural dimensions of learning has expanded greatly over the past 20 years. This @theNASEM report section highlights some of the key work and variations.
nap.edu/read/25603/cha…

⚡️ CULTURAL PEDAGOGY is multifaceted ⚡️

In our cultural pedagogies workshops, we engage groups with this @STEMTeachTools after we've made our way in. It tends to open up powerful reflections on practice—even with teachers years into cultural teaching.
stemteachingtools.org/brief/53

⚖️ EQUITY PROJECT: SUPPORTING DIVERSE SENSE-MAKING ⚖️

As students develop and express their understanding, they should be supported in using the full range of their creative, intellectual resources.
#LinguisticJustice #MultipleWaysOfKnowing #CulturalHeterogeneity #NGSSchat #NGSS

Elicit and leverage multiple ways students make sense of science phenomena (e.g., multiple languages, everyday talk, perspective-taking, gesture, ethical reasoning, drawing, poetry). #MultiModalForTheWin

How do you support cultures of diverse sense-making of #SciEd phenomena?

These equity principles continue to guide our work promoting DIVERSE SENSE-MAKING. It is fabulous that @NSTA has made the chapter that describes & opens them up a free download!

I think this chapter is a #MustRead for all #SciEd teachers! #NGSSchat #NGSS
static.nsta.org/pdfs/NSTAPress…

The teacher expertise beneath those 3 equity principles has been theorized as INTERPRETIVE POWER.

Our @AcesseProject PD Resource G opens up a multi-faceted learning experience to help teachers learn to see diversities of students' INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES.
stemteachingtools.org/pd/sessiong

In the new @NSF program on Racial Justice in STEM Ed, check out this purpose…

🔥proposals funded by this Program Description will…expand the array of epistemologies, perspectives & experiences in STEM🔥

DIVERSE SENSE-MAKING as racial justice goal! 🙌🏼❤️
nsf.gov/funding/pgm_su…

The concept of RIGHTFUL PRESENCE from @CalabreseBarton & Edna Tan moves us beyond access & inclusion approaches to equitable instruction that fail to frame needed actions as tied to disrupting dominant power structures & connecting to political movements.
invincibility.us/wp-content/upl…

⚡️To support DIVERSE SENSE-MAKING & all equity projects, it is key to create IDENTITY SAFE & AFFIRMING #SciEd learning communities through the work of rightful presence.⚡️

Check out this powerful guidance on how to support GENDER-DIVERSE STUDENT BELONGING
genderwheel.com/resources/10-t…

⚖️EQUITY PROJECT: DISRUPTING ABLEISM⚖️

Leverage students’ intellectual strengths & contributions regardless of their school-recognized disability status. Work towards ability justice by disrupting narrow views of ability & prejudices against those perceived to have disabilities.

Intentionally use strategies to meaningfully include students receiving disability services.

Here is a @STEMTeachTools that opens up specific guidance & examples for engaging in this work in #SciEd. #NGSS #NGSSchat

stemteachingtools.org/brief/59

The #SciEd research community has not significantly grappled with ABLEISM in the pursuit of (dis)ability justice in the past.

Our design group in the @AcesseProject is leveraging this definition & others to guide the design of educator learning resources.