Intersection of Science Disciplinary Culture and Teacher Leadership Hindering Equity in the Secondary Science Classroom

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Dimensions of Intersectionality and Education: Challenges of Gender, Race, and Culture Within Institutional Hegemony (Table 3)

Abstract

Objective

Using science teachers’ binary interpretation of students’ scientific drawings as the context, this study explores the intersection of science disciplinary culture (SDC) and science teacher leadership in hindering equity in the secondary science classroom for marginalized students.

Framework

To illuminate issues of inequity, I embrace intersectionality as a heuristic (Collins, 2019). Specifically, I draw upon the heuristic of culture/knowledge/power, inspired by Hall (1997) and Foucault (2007) since it is better adapted for understanding the asymmetrical power relation between students and science teachers who bring different knowledge economies (Day, 2005) and cultures to drawing activities. In other intersectionality projects, the heuristic of race/gender is often infused. However, I deviate from this established path, because binary thinking is also reproduced by teachers from marginalized races and genders under the guise of objectivity (Author). As members of the SDC, we have all internalized these objectivist norms through our academic and professional training (Author).

Method

To expose the norms of the SDC that reproduce binary thinking when science teachers interpret students’ scientific drawings, a constructivist grounded theory (CGT) study was conducted. Naturalized transcripts were generated from observations, documents, and interviews of five New York State secondary school science teachers and coded to reveal categories representing SDC norms. Once these SDC norms were identified, I applied Foucault’s “principles of power” (Schirato et al., 2020), Alcoff and Potter’s (1993) “politics of knowledge,” and Freire et al.’s (2018) “banking concept of education” to reveal how issues of inequity operate below the radar in the science classrooms but are made visible through the heuristic of culture/knowledge/power.

Results

The CGT portion of the study identified the universal knowledge of the SDC. This includes the symbol, language, interpretation, and logic (Author). Integrating the epistemic lenses shows that in a leadership capacity, science teachers promote SDC knowledge as universal truth using objectivity or binary thinking (Alcoff & Potter, 1993). During the scientific drawing instruction, students memorize and regurgitate the universal knowledge (Freire et al., 2018) (Figure 1).

Conclusion
In synthesizing the theoretical and empirical findings using the lens of culture/knowledge/power, it is evident that these issues of inequity pertaining to scientific drawings are not a product of individual science teachers; rather, they stem from the enculturation process of learning and communicating science disciplinary symbols, language, interpretation, and logic during their academic and professional training (Smith, 2012). In essence, we learned these objectivist ways of thinking from science teacher educators who re/enforced the SDC knowledge, which until recently, was never interrogated.

Significance
The study highlights the urgent need to redesign science teachers’ academic training and professional development. To initiate the process, I challenge science teacher educators to conduct an internal audit that reviews their pedagogical practices for evidence of objectivist language and behaviors that replicate and perpetuate inequities in scientific drawing activities. For science teachers, the study makes a compelling argument for a shift to a culturally responsive STL.

Author

• Alecia M. Redway, Yonkers Public Schools