Transforming Racialized Power Hierarchies: A Sixth-Grade Science Class Community Learning Toward Justice Beyond Their Classroom

• In Event: Let's Ban It: Navigating Polarizing Political Climates and Race Critically

Abstract

This paper examines how a 6th grade class community identified and redressed inequitable and racialized learning opportunities during an ecology science unit, and how that impacted the learning of students positioned with different social statuses. Data was generated using a social design experiment methodology across an ecology unit.

Findings highlight:
1.Interacting in spaces beyond the classroom throughout the ecology unit allowed students to expand roles and shifting racialized power hierarchies.

2.Teachers and students broadening the types of expertise valued in the ecology unit disrupted both who had integral roles throughout the ecology unit.

3.Racialized power hierarchy shifting and expertise expanding transformed the unit goals to align more with the students’ community assets and desires.

Author

• Kathleen Schenkel, San Diego State University