Engaging Cultural and Sociopolitical Perspectives in Responsive Science Teaching

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Critical and Cultural Approaches Investigating Science Learning

Abstract

Science teaching that is responsive to the disciplinary beginnings in learners’ thinking can afford generative sensemaking opportunities. However, it is not clear whether a focus on disciplinary connections can realize a vision for socially just and equitable science instruction. To achieve such a vision, it is critical to re-envision aspects of responsive science teaching in more culturally, historically, and socio-politically engaged ways. Drawing on culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies, we bring these bodies of literature together through a thought experiment using an episode from a 4th-grade science classroom. We envision what a teacher might attend and respond to within students’ contributions, including from cultural, disciplinary, and socio-political perspectives, and consider affordances, overlaps, and tensions in foregrounding these various perspectives.

Authors

• Lama Ziad Jaber, Florida State University

• Emily Miller, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Sara Dozier, California State University - Long Beach

• Leema G. Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Allison Bradford, University of California - Berkeley

• Jennifer Richards, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy Learning Sciences