Redressing Health Inequities in Science and Mathematics Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores pedagogical tensions and transformative possibilities when science and mathematics education seek to redress the health inequities exposed and exacerbated by intertwined pandemics of COVID-19 and White supremacy. The first two studies highlight the complexities that emerge when science educators and community activists collaborate for environmental health and water justice, and when mathematics educators aim to address students’ emotional health across differently racialized contexts. The final two studies examine how disciplinary boundaries of science and mathematics education have tended to decontextualize health disparities, responsibilize affected communities, and erase community health activism. The session will open robust dialogue on how health inequities are theorized and addressed in educational research and pedagogy—a conversation long overdue and especially pressing today.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Ryan Ziols, Georgia State University

Papers

• Reflections on the Co-Design of a Socioscientific Unit on Water (Justice) for Health, Healing, and Transformation - Natalie R. Davis, Georgia State University

• Centering Students' Affective Needs With Social Justice Mathematics - Kari Kokka, University of Pittsburgh

• Science Classroom as Clinic: Paradoxes of Edu-Health-Equity Intervention Spaces - Kathryn Lewkowicz Kirchgasler, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Why Theorizing Health Matters for Mathematics Education - Ryan Ziols, Georgia State University; Abhinav Ghosh, Harvard University

Discussant

• Felicia Moore Mensah, Teachers College, Columbia University