Re-emphasizing the Roles of “Social” and “Cultural” in Science Education
Research at Alder Research Informing Our Work Home The Black Teacher Archive At the 2024 NARST International Conference, Dr. David Steele engaged workshop participants in exploring avenues of science teaching and learning through a sociocultural perspective, particularly we examined ways in which science teacher educators and science teachers could do so by engaging students through two distinct, but slightly overlapping frameworks: justice-centered science pedagogy and socio-scientific issues. These frameworks explicitly require teachers and students to recognize schools as sociocultural institutions for democracy, yet susceptible to reinscribing societal inequities, acting more as agents of social replication than of mobility. Meanwhile, research shows that emphasizing embedding cultural perspectives in classrooms can transform learning experiences to make them more conducive to social mobility and empowerment. Related to science teaching and learning, the National Research Council Framework underscores that science learning can be understood as a cultural accomplishment. Unfortunately, students from non-dominant communities often face opportunity gaps in their science education experience due to pervasive deficit orientations in both educators and policymakers. To counter this, we want to expand upon contemporary and future approaches that position sociocultural factors and epistemological beliefs about science as powerful and inextricable tools that engage students in socioscientific learning, provide students with opportunities to build literacies necessary for seeing and solving complex, wicked problems. This workshop, therefore, serves as a reminder that science education best serves our students and communities when educators re-emphasize the social and cultural factors that impact the doing and learning of science. These inclusive approaches reposition youth as necessary agents in science learning, and center the social and cultural assets they bring to learning environments and communities. Link to Workshop Presentation
The Black Teacher Archive
Research at Alder Research Informing Our Work Home The Black Teacher Archive This review highlights The Black Teacher Archive from Harvard Graduate School of Education. This review highlights an important free resource that teacher educators, educational researchers, and historians, may consider exploring to understand Black teachers’ experiences in the classroom across the United States. The review highlights how this tool can be useful to engage with historical collections to better situate pedagogical practices and learning in the classroom and educational societies led by Black teachers and educators. The Black Teacher Archive
Engaging Teachers and Students with the Asian American Education Project’s Primary Sources and Multimedia Lesson Plans
Research at Alder Research Informing Our Work Home Engaging Teachers and Students with the Asian American Education Project’s Primary Sources and Multimedia Lesson Plans This brief article highlights how Dr. Pun engages with Alder MA Pathway students by focusing on Asian American curriculum resources. The Asian American Education Project is a free multimedia teaching resource that helps educators utilize primary sources focusing on Asian American experiences, and how to engage with K-12 students in learning about the diverse, rich, and history of Asian American communities. The article explains how this multimedia teaching resource can support Alder MA Pathway students and their work, and teachers in general in developing curriculums and lesson plans focusing on Asian American experiences. Engaging Teachers and Students with the Asian American Education Project’s Primary Sources and Multimedia Lesson Plans
Toward an Integrated Practice: Facilitating Peer Interactions to Support Language Development in Science
Research at Alder Research Informing Our Work Home Toward an Integrated Practice: Facilitating Peer Interactions to Support Language Development in Science. Dialogic, sense-making interactions are critical venues for language development and science learning, particularly for emergent multilingual students. Designing and facilitating such learning opportunities is pedagogically complex work and often requires significant shifts in practice. We report on a design study in which we partnered with 5th grade teachers to pilot inquiry-based science units designed for linguistically diverse classrooms. Through our analysis of classroom videos and teacher interviews, we surfaced ways teachers used the curriculum to create affordances for emergent multilingual students’ language use and development, as well as tensions and recurrent “missed affordances” that emerged in their practice.
