Secondary Science Resources

The study of water as a K–12 science idea often divorces its properties from its deeply politicized history as a resource that has been limited, compromised, and intentionally withheld from nondominant communities. This article explores a justice-oriented science pedagogy both conceptually and through a 2-year ethnographic project that investigated Black student agency in a school with a place-based design.

This special issue of the Journal of Science Teacher Education offers one possible step toward encouraging science educators, researchers, teachers, and administrators to consider this urgent plea for self-reflection and for reimagining science education. It seeks to instigate critical conversations by purposely amplifying the voices of young and emergent Scholars of Color.

Mensah discusses the culturally relevant teaching and culturally responsive teaching. The two frameworks have been used extensively across multiple fields and subject areas, including science education, preservice education, teacher professional development, curriculum development, and student learning. The two frameworks come from different philosophical orientations, while they also share common goals. Thus, it is worth laying some foundational knowledge of them while giving attention that both are focused on culture, race, equity, and the success of students traditionally marginalized in the educational system.

Justice-centered science pedagogy is introduced as a theoretical framework built on the traditions of critical pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy to address these inequities as components of larger oppressive systems. This study examines how a justice-centered advanced chemistry class in an urban neighborhood high school supported students to succeed academically while taking up urgent issues of social and environmental justice identified by their communities.

Abolition Science is an abolitionist project that envisions a science and math delinked from racial capitalism, imperialism, and oppression - a science and math that serves all people. Abolition Science Radio is a podcast series exploring science and math from an anticolonial stance.