From the Soil to the Soul: Humanizing Science Education for a Healthier Future

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Poster Session: Orienting to Affect, Culture, and Language in Science Teaching and Learning

Abstract

This conceptual paper reimagines science education as a liberatory, healing, and community-rooted practice. It argues for the preparation of preservice teachers to teach science through culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical health literacy, critical pedagogy, and pedagogies of love and hope. Drawing from theoretical scholarship, interdisciplinary insights, and reflective practitioner research, the paper offers a framework for teaching topics such as metabolism and chronic illness in ways that affirm students' cultural identities and health realities. It resists dehumanizing, standardized approaches and centers science education as a vehicle for belonging, critical consciousness, and equity. Ultimately, it calls for science classrooms that nurture agency, affirm lived experience, and cultivate a vision of health and science rooted in justice and humanity.

Author

• Miriam M. Ortiz, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley