Stories-To-Live-By: Growing Teacher Literacies Amidst Polycrisis

• In Event: Frameworks for STEM Equity in a Time of Polycrisis: Navigating Tensions in Theory, Practice, and Policy

Abstract

Teachers outside traditional STEM fields have consistently positioned themselves also on the outside of teaching socioecological and climate issues (Hunter & Jordan, 2019). Yet, climate crisis, and related socioecological injustices, are recognized as ‘wicked’ problems that know no disciplinary bounds (Corbett, 2022). Further, in addition to solutions found within and across STEM fields, the climate crisis itself has come to be understood as a challenge of the imagination, in which storytelling might create possible futures we have yet to consider (Oziewicz, 2024). The presentation team began a multidisciplinary teacher network across the state of Florida to contend with the crisis of imagination needed to integrate meaningful socioecological education into classrooms. Specifically here we explore the question: how do teachers grow the socioecological literacies practices necessary to navigate polycrisis?

We investigate socioecological literacies by drawing upon theoretical frameworks in ecojustice education, built from Indigenous, decolonizing, and feminist perspectives, that argue for interrogating assumptions around educational purpose (Martusewicz, 2014; Perkins, 2024). Particularly we question epistemic violence that has come from standardized/functional literacy priorities. Instead we prioritize the plurality of ways of being (literacies) across local and global scales (Perry, 2023). We frame our work through critical place-based inquiry (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) where knowledge and being are positioned as embodied-storied practices of place.

This presentation focuses on a state-wide teacher network of 12 educators blending research methodologies including socially just participatory inquiry (Rogers, 2018) and mediated discourse analysis (Wohlwend, 2020). Data includes interviews; monthly virtual meetings; in-person workshops; 100+ participant artifacts, (place-based, multimodal, reflective compositions; member-checking; informal communications). We used key moment analysis (Kuby, 2013) to examine affective patterns in the data and mediated discourse analysis for closer analysis of polycrisis to consider how teachers collective sensemaking (interaction order), place and composing intersections (discourses in place), and histories of participation (historical bodies) to speak to socioecological literacies practices mobilized over the course of the project.

Our analysis identified several findings. 1) We came to recognize that polycrisis for educators in the study were centralized in three ways: a) socioeducational crisis (political censorship, scripted curricula, removal of resources); b) socioecological crisis (living through hurricanes, heat, land development, migration); c) sociopolitical crisis (personal safety, ICE raids, politicization of issues). 2) Teachers' socioecological literacies in the form of collective sensemaking, multimodal composing, and prioritization of place-based practices created space and visibility for imagining integration opportunities for teaching and learning with students related to climate issues. 3) The storytelling teachers engaged in reflected the ethnic, linguistic, racial, economic and geographic diversity of their communities: when teachers taught in diverse or frontline communities, the ways they imagined integrating climate issues were consistently more nuanced, complex, and reflective of the injustice experienced during climate crisis. However, shared sensemaking meant that teachers without the resources of diversity or frontline experience gained exposure and new perspectives.

The significance of these findings point to the power of supporting all teachers in imagining their lives as educators as integrally connected to socioecological realities amidst polycrisis by engaging with approaches and networks beyond and across disciplines.

Authors

• Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida

• Kristin Valle Geren, University of South Florida

• Jarod Roselló, University of South Florida

• Mieke Valk, Polk County Schools