Illuminating political clarity in culturally relevant science instruction

Abstract

Failure to improve achievement in K‐12 science for racially minoritized students and students living in poverty continues to challenge the inclusionary rhetoric of science for all. Science education researchers, teacher educators, and educators must consider the racialized and classed inequalities that continue to limit students’ opportunities to learn. To achieve this, we must be able to conceptualize sociopolitical pedagogical approaches and learn from empirical examples of science teachers who consciously attend to their students’ realities in empowering rather than deficit‐oriented ways. We argue for the importance of utilizing culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and attending to and theorizing an educator's sociopolitical consciousness and enactments of political clarity in science instruction. Our analysis highlights how an African American male science teacher responds to his middle school students’ realities and identities as African American youth and children growing up contexts with limited economic resources. Through classroom observations and interviews with the teacher, we nuance our understanding of sociopolitical consciousness, the third tenet of CRP, as reliant upon a teacher's political clarity and examine how, through instruction, science teachers can position students and their realities as consonant with knowing and doing science and being scientists.

“I’m a Teacher, I’m Gonna Always Protect You”: Understanding Black Educators’ Protection of Black Children

“…For example, at MWA, a food pantry regularly distributed food to students and families. MWA, like other schools in our study, had a health clinic with full-time staff for students and their families, offering dental, vision, mental health, and medical services as part of its full-service community school (FSCS) model 9 (see McKinney de Royston & Madkins, 2019, for a review of FSCSs in our study) that operated in collaboration with other service-oriented agencies.…”

Culturally relevant pedagogies in science education as a response to global migration

“…An examination of existing knowledge base illustrates that there are currently no studies at the intersection of CRP and religious diversity, which is currently highly relevant especially in the context of Europe (Avraamidou, 2020;Brown, 2017). This is problematic because religion can serve a barrier to participation or recognition in science education, where teachers often perceive certain students as prone to success or failure (Madkins and McKinney de Royston 2019). Especially in the case of Muslims, religion can serve as barrier since an Islamic religious identity has been associated with negative stereotypes and especially for women (Avraamidou 2020).…”

Reviving the Orchard: Visions of reclaiming science education for Nicaragua

“…Other interviewees with frameworks critical of science curriculum articulated concerns about how teachers were trained to use the curriculum. Specifically, Ivania called attention to ineffective professional development facilitated by outsiders with minimal community context, which resulted in introducing culturally irrelevant instructional strategies and content (Madkins & McKinney de Royston, 2019; Wilson, 2013). In each of these cases, the frameworks were used to explore what had created the gap, rather than how to address it.…”

“…Furthermore, a few participants surfaced critiques about teacher training programs and suggested science educators need guidance on how to incorporate CSRPs into their classrooms. More work needs to be done to explore how to best support teachers in taking up CSRPs-including guiding science teachers through the challenging process of developing sociopolitical consciousness and expanding their perceptions of scientific ways of knowing, doing, and being (Madkins & McKinney de Royston, 2019).…”