Expanding Possibilities for Social Justice in School Science

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

In science education research, there is a growing literature base on how researchers can facilitate transformative and socially just learning experiences for/with minoritized students and their teachers. Yet, much of this work has been conducted in informal learning environments beyond the institutional and political constraints of schools and classrooms. Research on social justice education in school science consistently demonstrates that teachers are unable to sustain reforms within the constraints of underserved schools and classrooms after the research or intervention has been completed (Buxton, 2006; Rodriguez & Berryman, 2002). These failures are often attributed to a single or set of discrete factors, such as political or institutional constraints (e.g., time, district mandates, accountability measures), curricular constraints (e.g., breadth of content to be covered), material constraints (e.g., access to resources), student-related issues (e.g., disciplinary issues, attendance, motivation), and/or teacher attributes (e.g., prior life experiences, disposition, identity, content knowledge, preparedness, etc.) (e.g., Buxton, 2006; Roth, Tobin, & Richie, 2008). Part of the problem can be attributed to an inadequate understanding in science education of the structure-agency dialectic: Few studies reveal (1) how science teachers are agents who are not only constituted by the institutional and political factors in which they work, but also act upon and within them to expand possibilities for teaching school science from a social justice perspective in underserved schools, or (2) how political, institutional, curricular, community, and personal contexts can contribute to the pedagogical successes of justice-oriented science teachers.

Study Design:
To address this underexplored avenue, I am conducting multiple case studies of science teaching with four justice-oriented science teachers of minoritized students in low-income communities across four different contexts. I purposefully selected participants through prior relationships I had developed with each of them over the past seven years via networking within social justice organizations within science education (e.g., T4SJ, MESA), and other professional relationships (as part of professional learning communities, prior research partnerships, etc.). Through site visits, classroom observations, interviews with students, teachers, and school/district administrators, I am exploring the following research questions:

(1) How are constraints and opportunities for social justice teaching in science constituted by micro- (e.g., classroom) and macro-level (e.g., school-level, district-level, political/institutional contexts, etc.) interactions?

(2) How do/can teachers negotiate teaching science for social justice, given the particular constraints and opportunities afforded by their current teaching placements?

(3) How do students experience TSSJ in each science classroom?

Using an inductive and iterative approach to data analysis (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), I am coding and developing themes from transcribed interviews with teacher participants, school/district administrators, student focus groups, and from video-recorded classroom observations (6-8 per teacher). In addition, teachers are each video-recording and annotating (using an online annotation tool, GoReact.com) six of their own enacted lessons to document and analyze how their approach teaching science exemplifies social justice principles. This summer (June 2016), the teacher participants and I will convene to share video clips and reflect on the similarities and differences in how each teacher articulates and understands her pedagogy of teaching science for social justice, as well as how each teacher leverages the supports and negotiates constraints of her school/community context. In this way, teachers engage in both an individual and collective narration and analysis of their professional and pedagogical practice.

Preliminary Findings:
Common challenges that participants face include limited access to material resources (such as laboratory supplies and equipment, textbooks, funds for field trips, etc.), large percentages of students in need of substantial supports/remediation in reading/writing/math, and insufficient planning time. Though it is common for teachers of minoritized and/or working class students in low-income communities to attribute academic deficiencies to a perceived lack of parental/family involvement and/or perceived deficits in a student’s race/class background (see Valencia, 2010), none of the teacher participants in this study attributed academic deficiencies to these perceived deficits. Rather, they located barriers in the context of economic oppression (e.g., family members working three jobs so students are home alone and/or having to care for younger siblings, etc.). Preliminary findings indicate that participating science teachers negotiate challenging contexts (i.e., limited material resources, students lacking sufficient prior academic preparation, etc.) through connecting with like-minded colleagues, taking on school leadership roles, seeking out professional learning opportunities, building strong and positive relationships with parents and community members, foregrounding their commitments to a cause (science for social justice), leveraging partnership with community organizations, and—most of all--developing classrooms characterized by reciprocal caring (caring for and being for by students; students caring for each other, caring for land and community, etc.). Each teacher feels that the principal and district administrators highly value her contributions to the school and that administrators make concerted efforts to accommodate her requests, whenever they are logistically and financially feasible. No teacher feels particularly bound to or constrained by state accountability measures in science, though each teacher holds herself accountable for students’ overall academic success in science.

Significance of the Study:
While national policy initiatives seek to fund programs that recruit and prepare science teachers, research shows that despite recruitment efforts, retaining high quality and highly qualified science teachers is a continued challenge in underserved districts and schools (National Academy of the Sciences [NAS], 2011). We must seek to understand how findings from science education research can be translated as equitable and socially just learning experiences for minoritized students in school science across a variety of contexts, as well as how successful science teachers persist despite formidable challenges (Tolbert & Eichelberger, 2014). Indeed, a more dialectical approach that is responsive to the unique and context-specific dimensions of underserved science classrooms would contribute significantly to the field’s conceptualization of TSSJ. By learning from four social-justice minded science teachers who teach science for social justice across a variety of school and community contexts, I hope to illustrate
not only how political and institutional contexts constrain or support their efforts, but also reveal the diverse ways that science teachers, and their students, enact agency and are empowered to successfully negotiate those constraints. Perhaps even more importantly, these portraits of the multiple opportunities for TSSJ in school science can inform the development of frameworks and exemplars for use in teacher education and professional learning experiences, for which there are currently few resources.

Author

• Sara E. Tolbert, The University of Arizona