Designing for Epistemic Justice With an Ethic of Critical Care in Preservice Science Methods Courses

• In Event: Epistemic Justice Across Learning Environments

Abstract

Purpose
Positioning students as knowledge constructors by valuing a sensemaking stance (Russ, 2014) and fostering heterogeneity of ideas (Rosebery et al., 2010) is important for promoting epistemic justice in science. However, scholars have also called for a relational ideology of schooling characterized by critical caring (Antrop-González & de Jesús, 2006), where teachers support students in developing as persons who care and are cared for within oppressive systems (like schooling and science).

Here, we describe two iterations of science methods courses that aim to foster pedagogies of critical care in science. We argue that critical care is necessary for preventing efforts towards (epistemic) justice from centering individualistic, utilitarian notions of knowing, and we suggest design principles that center relationality and reflectivity.

Theoretical Framework
In conceptualizing pedagogies of critical care for science, we draw on the notion of justice from intersectional feminist legal scholarship that articulates characteristics guiding decision-making that lead to human dignity, growth, and flourishing (Hudson, 2003):
1. relational - account for relationships between individuals, groups, and communities;
2. discursive - appraise critiques and defenses of existing values in undominated discourse;
3. plurivocal - recognize the voices of multiple groups and meet their claims;
4. rights regarding - defend the rights of individuals and communities;
5. reflective - consider individual cases rather than subsuming unique circumstances under generalities.

We see obvious overlaps between Fricker’s (2007) notion of epistemic injustice and characteristics (2), (3), and (4). Thus, our contribution focuses on how we leveraged (1) relationality and (5) reflectivity to support PSTs’ science pedagogies of critical care. In examining the embodiments of these characteristics in our courses, we asked: how do PSTs come to know science (pedagogies) through relationality and reflectivity?

Method & Data Sources
Following a design-based research approach (Cobb et al., 2003), we modified activities in pre-service methods courses at two universities for future elementary and middle-grades teachers in Fall 2021 and Fall 2022. These modifications aimed to attune PSTs to the relationality and reflectivity of pedagogical and science practices. The modifications reflected two design principles: (a) pressing PSTs to attend to students’ relational bids amidst their science ideas; and (b) pressing PSTs to interpret those bids through the power dynamics of schooling. We collected copies of PST-created artifacts (surveys, interviews, lesson plans) from each course (Fall 2022 data forthcoming).

Substantiated Conclusions & Scholarly Significance
Initial analyses from Fall 2021 showed that PSTs initially focused on the negative emotions associated with doing science, like shame. As they learned more about their placement sites and students, considered multiple sources of vulnerability for students, and connected those sources to pedagogical practices, like “eliciting students’ science ideas,” we saw an increasingly nuanced presence of relational and reflective considerations in PSTs’ assignments. For example, in considering when to use a “Discussion Diamond” structure, PSTs across both courses reflected on how it allowed students to contribute comfortably (i.e., reducing shame) and allowed them as instructors to see how heterogeneous knowledge contributions were being taken up (or not) and by whom. We offer these initial design principles as a means toward supporting relationally-oriented epistemic justice in science.

Authors

• Christina Krist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Enrique Suárez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  Presenting Author