Elementary Teacher Learning Through Co-Design: Place-Based and Justice-Oriented Curriculum Planning (Poster 7)

• In Event: Supporting Teacher Learning of Justice-Centered Ambitious Practice

Abstract

We are university teacher educators in a southeastern US city in a state with an anti-critical race theory law. Our work grew from a desire to support teachers in enacting instruction that was true to their justice goals without compromising their well-being. In a workshop, teachers revised a curriculum framework tool to assist in planning place-based, justice-oriented units, and we investigated their learning.

Themes from frameworks for justice-oriented science instruction (Madkins & Nazar, 2022; Patterson & Gray, 2019; Author, 2020) include emphasis on self, students, science, and community (Figure 1). Prior PD with these teachers focused on the student and community parts of Figure 1, supporting teachers to make space for students’ sensemaking through heterogeneity-seeking practices such as representations (Authors, 2022a; Haverly, et al., 2018). This PD focused on the self and science in Figure 1.

We designed the workshop for orienting six teachers involved in a multi-year PD to draft a curriculum-design framework (Figure 2). A sample unit about local, urban tree canopy created with the framework helped teachers understand it as a curriculum-design tool. They offered rounds of feedback for revision. Audio- and video-recordings and artifacts served as data sources.

The following activities prompted rich sensemaking:

A Sacrificial Framework as Mediator for Learning. We emphasized the in-progress nature of the framework, encouraging teachers to own their expertise in refining it. Teachers gravitated to positioning students as agents and pushed us to think deeply about centering students’ voices in the framework, e.g. starting with issues students perceive as important rather than standards. Additionally, they found synergies between the framework and existing classroom practices and offered suggestions to center joy and make the tool more practical.

Personal Allegories. They shared personal experiences with justice (allegories) and identified lessons learned, which helped co-create shared values to guide sensemaking. Lessons included: centering students’ ideas and communities, the necessity of culturally sustaining practices, and creating classrooms that encompass justice, activism, and joy.

Identifying Justice “Hot Spots” in Standards. This activity prompted a re-examination of standards to look for ways to pull out justice themes of community and environmental thriving. A re-examination of their experiences and science curriculum prompted them to recognize hot spots they had not noticed.

Local Map Study. Teachers examined a map of their city, overlaying transparency maps of tree cover, heat, income, racial demographics, and illnesses. They identified patterns across layers, e.g. low tree cover correlated with low-income housing and high illnesses, discussing implications of these patterns in their own teaching contexts. The map study prompted ideas about year-long projects they could enact starting this fall.

This is a project of collective hope and agency, taking up the call from NASEM (2022) to include science and engineering as part of justice movements. At a time of climate change denial, science skepticism, racial reckoning, high rates of teacher attrition, and censorship, we must work together to support teachers’ efforts to be as “creatively insubordinate” (Gutiérrez, 2016) as they deem possible in their settings.

Authors

• Heidi Carlone, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Tessaly Jen, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Adam Bell, TrainingConnections LLC
  Presenting Author

• Yelena Janumyan, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Diane Askew, Freed-Hardeman University
  Presenting Author

• Ashlyn Pierson, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• D. Teo Keifert, University of North Texas
  Presenting Author

• Andrea W. Henrie, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Heather J. Johnson, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author