MnSTA
Newsletter
Volume 57 No. 4 A Quarterly Publication of the Minnesota Science Teachers Association Inc. Summer 2020
Social Justice–Centered Science Teaching and Learning
Some cultures have historically been privileged in particular times and places, and as a result, some ways of knowing and doing science have had more social standing. We work from the stance that scientific ways of knowing and science education are fundamentally cultural and inherently political. All students have a right and a responsibility to learn how science has been implicated in creating many social inequities over time and how diverse scientific knowledges and practices can promote justice. For example, the ice floe knowledge of Arctic Indig enous peoples was not initially brought into the larger scientific conversation on global climate science until sustained relationship building and deep listening between Indigenous and Euro-Westerntrained scientists occurred. This knowledge held within Indigenous communities allowed for refinement of global climate modeling. Tribes and Indigenous peoples are engaged in hundreds of such efforts to understand and respond to climate change. Teachers can foster such cultural bridging in ways that help students recognize their agency to engage in social justice projects in ways informed by the sciences. Specifically, justice-oriented science educators should engage in culturally-based pedagogies that identify and leverage the knowledge and practice resources of students and their communities. Science education can be used to support more just, sustainable, and culturally thriving futures—especially for those who have historically been and continue to be disenfranchised from science (Bang et al. 2017). To do this, we need to teach students that: 1. Making sense of the world has been, and continues to be, universal across diverse cultures throughout
human history and thus people bring diverse experiences and sense-making repertoires to their science learning 2. Decisions made using scientific knowledge are tied to specific values and ideologies, some of which are more powerful in our social decision-making (e.g., giant corporate farms growing hybridized monocrops are more economical than small locally-owned farms that sustainably grow genetically diverse crops, but diverse crops are more resilient to climatic changes than the monocrops); 3. It’s important to know how to develop and apply a wide range of knowledges and practices of science and engineering (along with other knowledge) in ways that support broad social justice movements (e.g., disrupting racial disparities in health and mitigating climate impacts for communities impacted by poverty); and 4. Equally important are how the means and ends of learning and teaching are focused on commitments of human dignity, as well as fostering respect for and responsibility to other living organisms The approaches described in this issue’s articles highlight these dimensions of centering diverse sensemaking, supporting critical social analysis, positioning students to work toward justice, and focusing education on just, sustainable, and thriving futures for people and all living beings. We look forward to your examples and thoughts about how to further this work. Phil Bell and Deb Morrison, NSTA Next Gen Navigator Guest Editor NSTA/Blog/Social Justice in the Science Classroom For links to other resources to explore go to: https://www.nsta.org/blog/social-justice-science-classroom