Cultivating Inner Witnesses Attuned to Student of Color Emotional Expressions in Science Education (Poster 6)

• In Event: Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education

Abstract

Objective
The professional vision of science education shapes the pedagogical understandings, decisions, and values members of the field uphold (Goodwin, 1994; Sherin & van Es, 2009). This professional vision–socially constructed and political–is disciplined through representations of science, policy documents, professional socialization (e.g., teacher education), and school-level processes (Louie, 2018). Reflecting dominant priorities that consider disciplinary science as void of emotions, the professional vision of science education has excluded attending to the emotional needs of students of color (SoC). Emotional expressions reflect how SoC, individually and collectively, feel in relation to themselves, each other, and science across a web of power relations (Author, 2024; Zembylas, 2016). In this conceptual paper, we argue for the professional vision of equitable science education to socialize science teachers to attend to SoC emotions signaling disconnection.

Framing
Our argument draws upon (1) sociopolitical and discursive conceptualizations of emotional expression and experience, (2) teacher noticing for equity (Hand, 2012; van Es et. al., 2022), and (3) professional vision. Emotions are multidimensional responses that mediate the relationship between psychic and social aspects of experience, including unresolved societal and educational injustices (Zembylas, 2002; Yoon, 2019). Our argument centers emotional expressions–the discursive expressions of emotions through words spoken in context, intonation, facial expression, body language, and cadence (Hufnagle & Kelly, 2018). Noticing for equity enables teachers to make an intentional effort to see, interpret, and respond to behaviors within the classroom that facilitate equitable engagement (Author, 2020). We posit that teachers engage in equitable noticing through an inner witness (Mason, 2011), cultivated through lived, academic, and professional experiences, that guides how they make sense of sociopolitical forces that shape classroom interactions.

Methods
We make our argument by excavating and animating our inner witnesses. First, we present our positionalities (Mensah, 2019) to make visible key experiential and theoretical resources we engage to bear witness and respond to SoC in science learning environments. Then, we cue our noticing of equity inner witness in the context of two classroom vignettes. We focus on instances that have haunted (Yoon, 2019) us–triggering deep emotional responses that signal unresolved collective injustices particular to science–to highlight the significance and power of attending to SoC emotional expressions for equity-oriented science education. Lastly, we animate our inner witnesses to pedagogically imagine what happened, what could have been different, and what taken-for-granted constraints limited possibilities (Skovsmose, 2011).

Claims
We articulate how our inner witnesses summoned us to notice and interpret the emotional expressions in these scenarios and how we could respond in ways that would create new norms where engaging with SoC emotional expressions becomes a part of a healthy science learning environment. Additionally, we excavate constraints embedded in professional vision that present barriers to the cultivation of such inner witnesses.

Significance
Building alongside colleagues focusing on emotions and racial equity in science education, we offer a reconstructed professional vision, with recommendations for teacher education programs and multi-level policies, that prioritize teacher inner witnesses development to attend to SoC emotions, as expressions of broader unjust relations.

Authors

• Alexis Patterson Williams, University of California - Davis

• Manali J. Sheth, University of Illinois at Chicago