Engaging Multiple Identities and Ethical Commitments as a Science Education Researcher/Scholar-Activist/Nonleech School-University Partner: A Metalogue

• In Event: 32.075 - Emerging Critical Voices in the Field of Science Education: Sharing Narratives of Hope, Struggle, and Learning

Abstract

We share perspectives grounded in our own identities and experiences as scholars who are invested in working toward social and environmental justice through school science. Our contributions to this symposium primarily address how we (strive to) re/imagine the science classroom as a site for transformation and resistance, and the struggles and challenges we have encountered in this work, as well as how our individual experiences in relation to these efforts are inevitably informed by our different positionalities (two White female scholars who are assistant professors, one Latino male scholar who is full professor). A primary goal of our collaboration on this symposium (and related manuscripts: Authors, in preparation) is to articulate a vision for scholarship-activism in/through science education.
Methods: Through multiple and ongoing dialogues in which we collaboratively reflect on our individual efforts and research projects, we have generated three themes upon which we organize our discussions. To illustrate these themes, we share concrete examples both from our research contexts as well as from our own personal (social/emotional/political) experiences as academics working against the grain in a conservative field.
Theoretical perspectives, findings, and contributions: Drawing from critical, feminist, and decolonial scholarship, we organize examples from our experiences in this justice-oriented approach to science education research in formal school settings around three central themes: (1) Public - responsibilities to the communities in which we work and to the broader public (Fine et al., 2003; Goodson, 1999), (2) Rigor - redefining rigor as a measure of transformative impact (Apple, 2013; Freire, 1971; Lather, 1991); and (3) Positionality - reflecting on our own academic/institutional, social, political, and gendered/classed/racialized roles as we conduct research within predominantly economically oppressed and/or minoritized communities (Sandoval, 2000; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012). We view this symposium as both an opportunity for critical reflection, as well as another stepping stone toward building a more justice-oriented and unified community of scholar-activists in science education who work collectively toward socially transformative science education.

Authors

• Sara E. Tolbert, Te Whare Wangana o Waitaha University of Canterbury

• Alexandra Schindel, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Alberto J. Rodriguez, Purdue University