Intergenerational Science Stories: Cultural Wealth of Latine Teacher Candidates For Climate Justice Teaching (Poster 2)

• In Event: Building STEM Teachers’ Social Justice Teaching Capacities: Future Directions for Teacher Education

Abstract

Purpose
Human-caused climate change and environmental racism affect our lived realities in increasingly obvious ways, including extreme precipitation, wildfires, and exposure to environmental toxins. As teacher educators, we hope to prepare and support teachers, and ultimately their students, to address these challenges in humanizing and liberatory ways.

Theoretical framework
Drawing from the construct of justice-centered science pedagogy (Morales-Doyle, 2017), we characterize our approach as “justice-centered climate change pedagogy.” In this framework, social justice practices (Learning for Justice, 2022) and scientific numeracies (Zummo, 2023) are leveraged to make sense of local climate change and environmental justice phenomena.

Intergenerational storytelling was used to center cultural wealth of communities of color (Yosso, 2005), including experiences navigating environmental racism. Intergenerational storytelling also supports individual and family identity development and well-being (Thompson et al., 2009; Reese et al., 2017) and can help build counternarratives, sustain cultural knowledge, and empower action.

Data Sources
Participants (n=41) were elementary credential students in science methods courses taught by the lead author. About half of our students have immediate family members who work in agricultural fields; many students have multiple marginalized identities (e.g., as Latine students, women, first generation college students, and/or low-income students).

We designed a series of activities for teachers to investigate local climate impacts, drawing on community cultural wealth and scientific numeracies. As a culminating project, teachers presented an intergenerational science story, which included an intergenerational connection to science, problem-posing around a community issue, analysis of evidence including quantitative data and personal or community experience, suggesting solutions, and future teaching commitments.

Methods
Data collection included participants’ coursework and video and audio recordings. Data analysis focused primarily on submitted slides and optional voice recordings of the presentations. These were coded based on: the community issue chosen, quantitative data representations analyzed (e.g., map, chart, graph, other), types of non-quantitative data analyzed (e.g. personal narrative, local news photo), and justice practices and scientific numeracies used in claim-evidence-reasoning statements.

Results
Credential candidates crafted narratives around local climate impacts including lost homes and livelihoods due to flooding and fires, pesticide exposure harming the health of close family members, and pollution of local bodies of water.

Preliminary results show that many claim-evidence-reasoning statements around a community issue integrated justice practices and scientific numeracies. Several candidates compared and contrasted marginalized and privileged communities to show the disproportionate impact of various climate risks (extreme heat, pesticide exposure). Other candidates also used maps to connect justice impacts and scientific numeracies, for example using CalEnviroScreen Indicator Maps to determine pesticide application on their census tract or mapping the ¼ mile radius around their school site to determine where pesticides legally should not be sprayed during school days.

Significance
By layering activities centering scientific numeracies and justice practices, candidates thought creatively about their future teaching philosophy and inquiry-driven learning. The work helped teacher candidates place their experiences in a historical and scientific context and imagine future teaching supporting children to connect science and justice.

Authors

• Alyssa Manogue Dray Sayavedra, California State University - Monterey Bay

• Corin Slown, California State University - Monterey Bay

• Sandra Zuniga, San José State University

• Helen Fitzmaurice, University of California - Berkeley