Equitable Sense-Making: Toward Equity as a Scientific Practice

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Classroom Practices for Social and Environmental Change

Abstract

The practices needed to learn science in collaborative groups require that students get more facile at sensemaking-- that is the discursive activity of making use of collaborative resources to build knowledge. Yet, at the same time students are developing expertise at negotiating the distribution of epistemic and social “goods”. Equitable sensemaking is the leveraging and yielding valued intellectual and social goods for the purpose of achieving more equity during collaboration. The STEM community, steeped in hierarchical structures, may not be positioned to prescribe a route toward equitable practices. Elementary students in diverse public schools show us that the practice of equity in STEM is continually and interactionally negotiated and locally constructed. Equitable practices means fluid access to valued goods.

Author

• Emily Miller, University of Wisconsin - Madison