Environmental Biliteracy Across Content Areas: Addressing Next Generation Science Standards' Environmental Sustainability Focus in Culturally Sustaining Ways

• In Event: 66.057 - Establishing Sociopolitical Consciousness as the Fourth Goal of Dual-Language Education

Abstract

This theoretical paper will make an argument for a robust environmental justice component (Martusewicz, Edmundson, and Lupinacci, 2014) to dual language (DL) education that can support all four goals of the transformational DL framework (Author of paper 1 in this session, 2018). The paper will start from the lens of discourse as a key tool to understanding social injustices and inclusion/silencing in school curriculum (Fairclough, 2010). Discourse will be seen as a strategic resource for social change (Hardy, Palmer & Phillips, 2000) to persuade fellow educators to make their practice more courageous. I will argue that environmental issues may be especially effective at helping move hesitant teachers toward embracing DL’s fourth goal of sociopolitical consciousness.
The paper will ask readers to consider how a culturally sustaining (rather than just relevant or responsive) approach (Paris, 2012) can guide equitable and empowering access for to the environmental sustainability issues in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for students classified as English learners and other marginalized students in DL programs. Studying issues of sustainability not only resonates with the third goal of biculturalism via its potential to bring diverse communities together to solve shared problems; it is also conducive to the first two goals related directly to content and language learning because science and pressing world issues can often be dramatically illustrated non-linguistically.
First, the concept of culturally sustaining teaching will be presented as a more robust version of culturally relevant or responsive teaching. I will argue that there can then be a close and simple connection made between this concept of cultural sustenance to environmental sustainability. I will review the literature of scholars who have demonstrated how these can fit closely together in teachers’ and students’ minds.
Second, the paper will outline current thinking about the reasons that DL educators and educators of students designated as English learners should see their work in particular as connected to issues of environmental sustainability, emphasizing how it is not just a narrow issue for science education. Even non-science educators can consider planning cross-curricular connections to NGSS to engage students in passionate and complex thinking.
Third, the paper will outline the sustainability issues emphasized by NGSS and state initiatives such as California’s 2016 standards for integrating “environmental literacy” in several content areas.
Fourth, a model will be presented for guiding students through research on environmental issues and activists they culturally identify with. For the students with more marginalized identities, this will offer recognition and empowerment. For more privileged students, this structure will create another opportunity to deepen their bicultural empathy and respect for marginalized groups.
Lastly, I will offer examples of environmental problems that diverse communities are effectively tackling both locally and globally. These will model what readers might communicate to P-12 educators they interact with in order to make this transformative work seem more feasible than it might seem when left in abstract terms. These will also serve to leave the reader with hopeful thoughts about collective, global action toward justice.

Author

• Garrett Delavan, California State University - San Marcos