Research

The Research

The culture of western canonical science, mirrored in western science education, has historically been anchored in white, middle class, heteronormative, patriarchal values.

Essentially taken for granted, this perspective on what counts as scientific and who can do science pervades our science education system as well (Bang et al., 2012; Morales-Doyle, 2019; Tan et al., 2019; Warren et al., 2020). The privileging of dominant culture ontologies (ways of being) and epistemologies (ways of knowing) serves to reproduce and maintain the very same hierarchies of race, gender, and class that produced them (Philip & Azevedo, 2017).

A consequence of this singular onto-epistemic culture is apparent—across science fields and higher level science courses, women and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) remain marginalized and severely underrepresented. Marginalized students often do not see themselves as belonging in science, even when they perform well in classrooms and by normed measures of success (e.g., standardized science tests). Additionally, in school science, such students often experience science as outsiders, finding their cultural funds of knowledge devalued and their epistemic stances ignored (Bang & Medin, 2010).

Employing consequential community-based learning (Tan et al., 2019) by increasing epistemic agency (Miller et al., 2018) and critical science agency (Basu et al., 2009) shows great promise for engaging marginalized youth more fully in science learning. In Bio4Community, we define community (largely) as the students in the school, their peers, and their families. A core aim of consequential community-based learning is to make visible and address locally meaningful injustices in the community that are, invariably, rooted in broader sociopolitical injustices such as racial, gender, and class-based discrimination. Consequential learning provides opportunities for multiple ways of knowing and doing science that deepens engagement with disciplinary science content while also doing the critical work of expanding what counts as science, who can do science, and what are valued outcomes.

Consequential learning provides opportunities for multiple ways of knowing and doing science that deepens engagement with disciplinary science content while also doing the critical work of expanding what counts as science, who can do science, and what are valued outcomes.

Bio4Community design and research is mainly informed by two frameworks: Rightful Presence (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2020) and Critical Science Agency (Basu et al., 2009). The Rightful Presence framework posits that equitable participation entails the right and agency to change the rules and expectations of a learning environment. Rightful presence manifests in an ongoing struggle to make visible and address injustice, and requires political allyship between those with and without power. The Critical Science Agency framework posits that youth enact this agency when they combine science knowledge with other forms of expertise (e.g., community knowledge) to examine injustices in their lives and seek ways to redress them. In our design we employ critical science agency as a means to support students’ rightful presence. Bio4Community curricular materials are designed to target the rules, expectations, and structures that create inequities and injustices in order to develop critical consciousness (Freire, 2018/1970) and political clarity (Madkins & de Royston, 2019).

Stressed Out! Unit Research

Research on the Bio4Community Stressed Out! curricular unit has looked at how the unit:

• engages students in expansive ways to participate in scientific inquiry about the physiology of stress
• supports students’ rightful presence to develop sociopolitical awareness of how systemic racism creates and maintains inequities such as the higher stress burden on marginalized communities
• supports student advocacy for challenging and changing local rules and structures that students identify as causing them stress

This research is centered around studying how the curriculum design that works towards meeting Next Generation Science Standards within the constraints of schools serving marginalized communities supports students’ rightful presence in disrupting what counts as science and what is appropriate engagement with science in science classrooms. Our publications contribute to the research on the design of curricula that center youth voices in the co-design work and push the boundaries of K-12 science in expansive ways that are meaningful and relevant to students and their communities.

References