Nurturing Justice-Centered Ambitious Science Teaching (JuST) Through Professional Learning Communities (Poster 9)

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

Abstract

Current educational systems create barriers for science educators in developing and implementing ambitious and/or justice-centered practices. Although developed to promote deep learning for all students (e.g. Windschitl et al., 2018), the Ambitious Science Teaching framework (AST; Windschitl et al., 2012) has been challenged for an inability to support justice-centered teaching (Kang & Zinger, 2019). In this study, we explored how an intentionally designed professional learning community (PLC) pushes the boundaries of Ambitious Science Teaching to center justice and equity.

Centering Philip and Azevedo’s (2017) four equity discourses (i.e. D1-providing access to science; D2-building science identity; D3- challenging science; and D4 transforming society through science), this study explores potential intersections with the four sets of AST practices (see Figure 1). We examined how PLC discussions integrated equity discourses with AST practices and the tensions teachers felt between the two frameworks.

To support science teachers developing justice-centered ambitious science teaching (JuST) practices, university partners designed tools and curated resources for year-long PLCs in design-based research (DBR) to develop or modify one practice or instructional tool by explicitly engaging the four equity discourses. We employed a case study design (Stake, 2006) to explore how one PLC, Coolest Chemists, worked together in making sense of JuST teaching practices in their classrooms. We used constant comparative analysis (Glaser, 1965) of meeting recordings, notes, and asynchronous work to capture how the participants integrated equity discourses into their AST practices.

In the studied PLC, teachers planned and discussed efforts to support students moving from validating questions (“did I do it right?”) to “higher-tiered” questions (asking about science, making connections) as their DBR practice. Due to the explicit charge of integrating equity discourses, the teachers made efforts to blur boundaries between who holds the authority as to what counts as science, nurturing the interpretive power of teachers and students as they moved through the AST practices (Rosebury et al., 2016). For example, as the Coolest Chemists worked through their DBR cycles, they were careful to consistently co-construct concepts with students, including what counted as different tiers of questions. Teachers applied different equity discourses to justify their reasons for implementing higher-tiered questions, from supporting non-validation questions so students knew there was no right or wrong answer in science, to challenge what school science looked like (D3), to using higher-tier questions for higher-level sensemaking (D1 built upon D2 and D3). During planning sessions, the equity discourses, especially Discourse 3, were pursued to elicit students’ wonderings (AST 2) and centered to support changes in student sensemaking (AST 3) and to press for explanations by pushing students to answer their own higher-level questions using what they learned.

JuST practices materialize when teachers intentionally know students, affirm their value to the classroom, and examine the systems and contexts they participate in, while critically exploring the ways that they, as teachers, influence students’ trajectories. Designed PLCs offer a structured environment for teachers to question and challenge systemic constraints, and build competence in both ambitious and justice-centered pedagogy.

Authors

• April L. Luehmann, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author

• Yang Zhang, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Gena Merliss, Nazareth University
  Presenting Author

• Kyle Sullivan, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author