Co-designing for Climate Justice in Middle School STEM

• In Event: Expanding Research Practice Partnerships: Integrating Youth Voices for Equitable and Impactful Collaboration

Abstract

Objectives
Families and communities hold valuable knowledge often marginalized in STEM curricula. While research highlights the importance of youths’ ingenuity and family funds of knowledge, these insights are frequently treated as supplemental rather than central. This paper explores intergenerational co-design of a climate justice science unit in a middle school. We ask:
How do participatory co-design structures challenge power dynamics in roles, responsibilities, and idea flow among youth, families, teachers, and researchers?
How can these insights support justice-oriented approaches support rightful presence in STEM?

Theoretical Framework
Learning is shaped by experiences, values, and worldviews embedded within intergenerational communities (Tzou, 2020). Intergenerational co-design, where youth, families, educators, and researchers collaboratively shape curriculum, positions learning as a dynamic cultural process that crosses age boundaries and fosters expansive forms of engagement (Simmons, 2022). Such designs support sustained knowledge exchange across generations, strengthening community-based innovation (Rodriguez, 2021).
We also draw upon Rightful Presence, which includes three tenets: 1) Allied political struggle is key to re-authoring disciplinary learning rights; 2) Rightfulness is claimed by making in/justice visible; and 3) Disrupting “guest-host” relationships through sociopolitical amplification. Rightful presence can emerge through co-design when teachers, youth, and families work together to co-examine, co-disrupt, and co-transform how power structures shape participation in schooling.

Methods
Using participatory design-based research, university researchers partnered with a middle school teacher, Ms. Hened, and Arab immigrant youth and families in an urban school surrounded by factories. Youth were invited to participate in FamJam sessions after school and on family science nights with their families. These sessions involved: Exploring familial capital for STEM, Co-creating curricula, Enacting the curriculum in classrooms, and Reflective dialogues.

Data Sources
Data were co-generated through field notes, video/audio observations, mothers’ photovoice and storytelling, youth artifacts, and interviews. Analysis involved multiple stages of coding based on constant comparison procedures.

Findings
Findings interrogate how co-design activity structures amplified minoritized youth and familial voices by:
● Disrupting dominant boundaries and hierarchies, creating counterspaces for intergenerational knowledge exchange and political solidarity rooted in environmental justice;
● Challenging STEM norms, centering family epistemologies around climate justice, community resilience, and equity-driven engineering;
● Reconfiguring power relations enabling more just and relational modes of participation between families, educators, and students.

For instance one mother shared memories of climbing a fig tree in Yemen with her family (revered in the Quran) and offering its fruit to loved ones. Her story positioned trees as symbols of faith, care, and resilience. Co-design drew upon these narratives to challenge dominant STEM frameworks, helping students understand trees not only as carbon mitigators, but as cultural and political connectors. Co-designed moments surfaced community knowledge and framed environmental vulnerability alongside cultural strength, dimensions Ms. H had previously found difficult to address alone.

Significance
This study highlights the significance of youth and family co-design in STEM, emphasizing how voices are valued and how they shape learning. Youth expertise inspired new community-centered activities and their interconnectedness across the unit. It demonstrates how co-design disrupts power structures, creating ethical, inclusive systems that promote more equitable, collaborative learning environments.

Authors

• Angela Calabrese, University of Michigan

• Wisam Sedawi, University of Michigan

• Batoul Abdallah, University of Michigan