Teachers’ Understandings of Justice-Centered Ambitious Science Teaching Practices (Poster 10)

• In Event: Justice-Centered Pedagogy: Context-Specific Adjustments and Cross-Cutting Constants

Abstract

Objectives, Theory, Methods
As part of a larger study, we investigated teachers’ perceptions of generalizable and context-specific aspects of justice-centered ambitious science teaching (JuST). In the first of a three-year NSF-funded project, teachers worked in networked professional learning communities to develop JuST practices and understandings. Following this year, 41 participants responded to a retrospective survey asking them to rate and explain / provide examples related to components of JuST before and after the project. For this study, we asked: What did participating teachers identify as generalizable and context-specific practices of JuST pedagogy? How did they describe the relationship between the two?
The JuST framework (Figure 1) synthesizes four sets of practices from Ambitious Science Teaching (AST; Windschitl et al., 2018) with Philip and Azevedo’s (2017) equity discourses (EQDs), resulting in four sets of core practices that center transformational notions of equity. The bottom two of the four quadrants foreground teacher learning from students and communities in order to challenge limited ways of knowing and doing science in order to nurture cultural plurality (Paris & Alim, 2014). The top two quadrants foreground teaching practices that plan for and implement the use of science to make a positive difference beyond school.
Findings and Significance
Overall teachers appeared to have adopted Philip and Azevedo’s (2017) four EQDs as generalizable sets of “Teaching for Equity” practices that they are working with, on, and toward. In addition, many teachers identified generalizable practices that cut across the four quadrants of the JuST Framework such as nurturing student voice and choice, using multimodal and diverse representations of science and scientists, and engaging with community members.
Contextualized JuST practices, not surprisingly, underscored the critically important investments of each individual teacher. Foundational to JuST practice is the work to understand teaching for equity as well as to develop comfort and competence with its implementation. Other context-specific practices included addressing particular students' needs, choosing the appropriate tools for a particular task, and catering curriculum to local communities. A number of teachers, like this one, related the context-specific practices to the generalizable practices:
Through the community-facing performance task I developed through our PLC work, for example, I got to develop a task that was important to my students and their community, and use connections around [hometown] to create an authentic audience for my students and their work [context-specific practices]. This has shown me through DOING how student engagement and achievement can greatly increase when all dimensions [EQDs] are truly used as cornerstones when developing learning experiences [generalizable practices].
The varied ways teachers used to talk about “teaching for equity” core practices suggest a need for shared language like that offered by the JuST Framework.
Teacher educators and researchers need to consider teachers’ knowledge of themselves and their contexts as well as the ways in which they take up practices that align with their commitments to justice. This work builds upon and extends AST, justice-centered science pedagogy (Morales-Doyle, 2017), and EQDs scholarship by honoring the highly agentic work of teachers.

Authors

• April L. Luehmann, University of Rochester

• Todd Campbell, University of Connecticut

• Hannah Cooke, University of Connecticut

• Yang Zhang, Northwestern University

• Déana A Scipio, IslandWood