Preservice Science Teachers' Conceptions of Culturally Relevant Science Teaching: What's There and What's Missing?

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Culture, Identity, and Inquiry in STEM Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper aims to fill a gap in our understanding of the persistent nature of racial science achievement gaps by honing in on pre-service teachers’ perceptions of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. I generate several themes to describe how participants conceptualize Culturally Relevant Science Teaching (CRST), as well as trends on what is absent from their characterizations. I found that most participants tended to only draw on the first two tenets of CRST (Academic Success in Science and Cultural Competence in Science). Responses that aligned with the third tenet (Development of Students’ Sociopolitical Consciousness in Science) were much more limited. This finding is one of the first to empirically support the theoretical assertion that the third tenet is often the most elusive.

Author

• Britney LeAnn Jones, University of Connecticut