Empowering STEM Teachers: Professional Development on Socioscientific Issues and Social Justice

Centering Equity in STEM Education

Bluebird Ballroom Room 3G, Terrace Level

This study investigates a professional development (PD) program designed to help STEM teachers in integrating socioscientific issues (SSI) and social justice into their classrooms. By analyzing workshop activities, we explored how the PD promoted the four SSI domains: social, scientific, discursive, and social justice. Findings from qualitative analysis of field notes reveal that while the program effectively supported social and justice domains, the discursive domain, particularly reflective skepticism and position elucidation, requires further development. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on SSI education by providing empirical evidence of PD implementation in fostering teachers' capacity to create equitable and engaging STEM learning environments.

Randy Yerrick Kimberly Stillmaker

Explicating Cultural Capital in Engineering for All Undergraduates

In an era where equity and social justice are at the forefront of our national agenda, many current STEM programs embrace the language of increased cultural diversity, particularly in math, science, and engineering. Despite the tacit agreement on long-term goals for expanding diversity, institutions have made only marginal inroads in certain engineering fields. While biological and genetic engineering fields have nearly tripled underrepresented bachelor’s degree graduates, mechanical and computer engineering have remained predominantly white and male for many decades. This article addresses what we, at a state university in central California, did as an institution to apply research and feedback from students to increase the support for underserved students. We conclude that explicating cultural capital, utilizing mentors, and engaging faculty directly can impact student success and reduce attrition from the ranks of undergraduate engineers.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vquzN1Z3T-OFm3G-7EuT6tPzrTukVGFS/view?usp=drive_link

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19OKW9cH20gkd4lsOhtX8xf0tDhsYVrUQ

A Paradox of Conditional Inclusion: Raciolinguistic Hierarchies in U.S. Science Education

Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work Ed-Talks (Stage 1)

The Colorado Convention Center, Floor: Exhibit Hall Level, Exhibit Hall F - Stage 1

Science education scholars have spotlighted two concerns: (1) the exclusionary tracking of minoritized students, and (2) assimilationist norms confronting those who do gain access to advanced coursework. This study theorizes how both problems stem from unexamined histories of segregation. As a raciolinguistic genealogy, it examines archival sources to identify science pedagogies designed for segregated 'Mexican schools' in the U.S. (1912–1947), comparing them against recent equity reforms. The analysis maps shifting techniques training teachers to see and hear some students as potential scientists and others as not-yet-prepared citizens. The study spotlights a paradox of conditional inclusion: in ascribing minoritized students scientific potential, research has often prescribed distinct interventions to bring them closer to cultural and linguistic norms universalized as scientific.

https://tinyurl.com/2yej6arz

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uaQxaobXd2GwTxvPUw_U2DcET_UjnIho

Hierarchies of Curiosity: Historical Paradoxes of Science Education Reforms

Christopher M. Kirchgasler & Kathryn L. Kirchgasler

Excavating the Past, Present, and Future Through Archival Frames That Elevate Black, Indigenous, and Queer Perspectives for Radical Hope

The Colorado Convention Center, Floor: Terrace Level, Bluebird Ballroom Room 3H

Curiosity appears an ideal anti-standard: promising more expansive, equitable, and culturally responsive science teaching that affirms the agency of minoritized students. However, curiosity has a history as a psychological object and pedagogical tool, one inscribing colonial hierarchies of personhood by dividing children based on the amount or kind of curiosity they display. In this historical epistemology, we draw on archival research and literature analysis to examine how hierarchies of curiosity took shape in postwar social science research and science curricular reforms of the Civil Rights era. We find that at the same moment when IQ falls under critique for dividing populations according to racist principles, curiosity escaped scrutiny for its role in dividing children and reauthorizing segregated school science tiers.

https://tinyurl.com/2yjmoe9j