COS 81-6 - Centering Social Justice in K-12 Place-Based Education for Science Classrooms

Abstract: As American schools are becoming increasingly diverse, the cultural and economic divide between teachers and students is becoming more evident. In 2020, nearly 54% of public school students were non-white and expected to continue increasing in number, while public school teachers have remained predominantly middle-class and white. Despite the rapidly shifting student demographics, the achievement gap between white students and students of color, particularly in STEM fields, has not been well addressed by school systems. Moreover, while teachers are increasingly expected to act as ‘agents of change’ to promote social justice in the classroom, how justice is defined is not uniform. In science classrooms this ambiguity can be particularly salient as teachers try to meet national and regional academic standards but are not prepared to appropriately consider the inequitable experience or difference in socio-cultural values of their students in regards to environmental issues. Teachers need support and guidance to center social justice in their lessons. Addressing place attachment and emphasizing citizen engagement, the use of Place Based Education (PBE) can help teachers develop curriculum to meet academic standards while empowering students to draw on their own funds of knowledge and become engaged citizens. In our exploratory study, we examined a semester-long course that paired in-service and pre-service K12 science or integrated STEM teachers and was designed to model how PBE lessons can center social justice in the STEM classroom. Participants (n=12) engaged in lessons on locally relevant socio-scientific issues before designing their own. Using our integrated PBE model and published PLACE frameworks, we examined several course artifacts to identify how (a) social justice and (b) aspects of the frameworks were integrated (or not) in participant-developed PBE lessons. Our results indicate that teachers incorporated many crucial components but underdeveloped a focus on students’ cultural funds of knowledge, interdisciplinary activities, and promotion of students’ civic engagement. We determined that teachers need sustained support through a greater emphasis on peer review, more locally-relevant resources, and increased opportunities for the exploration of more nuanced and complex views of place-based socio-scientific issues (e.g., climate change) and diverse stakeholders (e.g., ranchers, city park users). Our findings are poised to inform future professional development efforts aimed at supporting teachers in developing environmental science curriculum to meet academic standards while centering social justice and empowering students to draw on their own funds of socio-ecological knowledge to become engaged and environmentally literate citizens.