Approach to Equity 3:

Expanding What Counts as Science

Goals: We need to recognize the brilliance of all the children in our classrooms, hearing and seeing the science in what they say and do, from a range of backgrounds and identities. We need to value multiple ways of sensemaking in science

Historical Background

Many groups have been excluded from being able to engage in the professional work of science or have had their contributions stolen, misrepresented, or ignored within the space of dominant science. Science and engineering have also been used as tools to subjugate people of color. This is true historically—the Tuskegee syphilis study provides just one example—but also currently, when research shows that doctors may dismiss symptoms of patients of color, such as Black women in childbirth, and artificial intelligence facial recognition tools can reinforce biological essentialism, leading to racist conclusions about individuals and groups.

Furthermore, schools often have been and continue to be hostile and dangerous places for children who are queer, gender non-conforming, and/or trans*. Gender and sexuality are typically presented within cisheteronormative contexts in content and curriculum materials, limiting the range of what youth see and understand as part of the natural world.

Collectively these experiences and realities have led to mistrust of science, a disconnect between science and the communities of students of color or from other communities that have been marginalized, and the missed opportunity for benefiting from the diverse ways of knowing and being that students in communities that have been marginalized could bring to science professions.

Knowledge & Frames

Reminders about systemic issues

Science in school should build on the knowledge and practices that children bring from their families and communities.
Science in school should draw on contributions from a range of people, perspectives, and ways of thinking.

Moves

What could I try to do?

(Here are some examples and elaborations of these moves.)

Invite a broad range of ideas and prior experiences from students from a wide range of identities across gender, race, ethnicity, and linguistic backgrounds.
Go beyond real-world applications to connect science to the practices, knowledges, and goals of the children’s families and communities.
Set up meaningful, expansive student roles for small group work for investigations as a way to acknowledge competence in science, to support multiple ways of being knowledge generators and doers of science.
Ask children to write, draw, demonstrate, graph, or verbalize their ideas (to broaden the perspective on “science doer” and acknowledge their competence). Recognize and value multiple ways of knowing.
Have students take pictures of or otherwise document how they see science in their lives.
Draw on other ways of scientific communication and sensemaking, like storytelling, playful analogies, or improvisational speech, or emphasizing relationality and reciprocity or care. Many of these ways of scientific knowing come from Indigenous, feminist, Black, and Latine traditions.
Ask clarifying questions to understand children’s ideas and the connections they make to science knowledge and practices.
In life science, share examples of non-cis/heteronormative organisms or organisms with a broader range of 'gender' roles to help children see ‘difference’ as a norm.
Support multispecies care as a way of helping children to decenter humans as they consider the natural world.

Advocacy & Reflection

Questions to ask myself

What do the students already know about the concept or phenomenon (rather than what do they not know)?
How can I “hear the science” in what my students are saying and recognize their ideas as reasonable?
What are families and communities already doing that is science? What does science mean to my students, families, communities?
How am I attending to whose ideas and work in science are taken up, validated, valued, and made public?
How am I challenging myself to expand my own understanding of science?

Support

Tools, frameworks, and activities that can help me

The Learning in Places (learninginplaces.org) is one open-source science curriculum that takes an expansive perspective of science and makes meaningful and deep connections to families and communities.
The NSTA position statement on gender equity is a resource for thinking about this in your classroom.
NSTA has resources for strategies that support children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
We helped write this Science and Children paper (DOI or PDF for U-M) on expanding what counts as science. If you don't have access to the paper, please email Betsy directly.
This post provides pointers to a few LGBTQ+ inclusive children's books with science or STEM themes.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has a helpful list of community science opportunities.

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