Designing for Collective Futures: The Engineering for Ecological and Social Justice

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Integrating Climate Justice Education Across Teacher Education Programs: A Remedy of Critical Transdisciplinarity and Collective Action (Table 6)

Abstract

Background
Learning and teaching in and for the climate crisis requires a new set of frameworks and
practices in science education, as well as questioning universalizing ontologies or powered and
industrialized ways of worldmaking that have given rise to the Anthropocene. Traditional siloed
approaches to disciplinary learning, while consistent with Western dualistic and substance
ontologies, are insufficient for preparing learners to live and relate differently in the world in
addressing the complex, interconnected, and transdisciplinary problems associated with the
impacts of climate change on Earth’s systems and the human and more-than-human communities
that inhabit these systems.

Theoretical Framework
Engineering broadly defined to include pluralism as both inputs and outputs of the engineering
design process (Costanza-Chock, 2020; Dunne & Raby, 2013; Escobar, 2018) offers a pathway for designing both with and for multiplicity for just and equitable science instruction in K-12 contexts. Here we introduce a framework for teaching Engineering for Ecological and Social Justice (EESJ) and an associated set of four high leverage practices (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Calabrese et al., 2020) for supporting preservice teachers in using socioecological and
sociotechnical framings of engineering for science learning. We measure shifts in justice-
centered curriculum design and knowledge using Philip and Azevedo’s (2017) four categories for
just and equitable STEM education which move along of spectrum from access to using learning
to support community transformation.

Methods
We used case study analysis (Yin, 2009) to follow the learning trajectory of one preservice
educator across a 10-week secondary science methods course using the EESJ Framework to
support the learning of justice-centered approaches to NGSS-aligned science instruction in
secondary settings. Data include emergent engineering lesson units, exit tickets, and pre and post
interviews with preservice educators.

Findings
Through three iterative lesson plan cycles, across a 10-week quarter, our case study teacher
shifted her understanding of engineering from top-down problem solving to more expansive
views of engineering as problem understanding in partnership with communities that centered
students’; everyday knowledges as foundations for disciplinary learning and emergent design
solutions. These shifts towards more justice-centered teaching and curriculum design are
embodied in this case study teacher’s culminating lesson in which students used complex
systems models and design charrettes to collaboratively construct models of food sovereignty in
their own communities using the virtual world of Minecraft. This form of student-led,
speculative worldmaking in virtual spaces affords students to imagine new versions of what is
possible and provides new visions for what engineering can look like in science classrooms.

Significance
When we foreground Western science, uphold techno saviorism, and allow our students to engage in problem solving for distant peoples or communities without their partnership and consent, we reify and reinscribe extractive, capitalist, and colonial engineering practices for future generations. Here we show that, with supports and scaffolds, preservice science teachers can be brought into designing climate science learning environments and enacting justice-centered visions of engineering in traditional K-12 science classrooms.

Authors

• Veronica Cassone McGowan, University of Washington - Bothell

• Todd Campbell, University of Connecticut