Grappling with racism as foundational practice of science teaching

Abstract

While current science teacher education frameworks designed to support high-quality teaching have the potential to promote equitable science learning, they do not substantively engage with how racism organizes science teaching and learning. In this critical qualitative inquiry grounded in critical race theory and sociopolitical perspectives on teaching and learning, I analyzed the contradictions that emerged in science teaching practices that were both intended to support Student of Color science learning and engaged science-specific colorblind ideologies. The critical race theory analysis demonstrated how science teaching practices such as connecting to students' experiences, creating interests in science, representing scientists as role models, and scaffolding doing science maintain unequal racialized power relations between students and science when historical and contemporary legacies of racism are not directly confronted. I also propose a science teaching practice of "grappling with racism" as a possible transformative solution to disrupt racism in and through science teaching.

What do core practices offer in preparing novice science teachers for equitable instruction?

“…A White woman—who quit a well‐paid job and decided to become a teacher to make a difference through education—could not keep her sanity day‐to‐day while experiencing shocking events inside and outside her classroom. Brenda tried unsuccessfully to enact "participatory equity" (Sheth, ) by providing more one‐on‐one attention or individual scaffolding. On one hand, the various circumstances that Brenda encountered at her school were deeply troublesome.…”

“…It is legitimate to ask if the chosen core practices fully address equity concerns, such as helping novice teachers to attend to the ways in which historicized injustice manifests in the system of power which plays out in classroom practices, beyond improving individual students' access and opportunity. Sheth () argues that "current conceptions of good science teaching, such as AST, have much to offer in terms of promoting participatory equity goals. They, however, remain colorblind by not critically addressing racism embedded in science and science teaching" (p. 5).…”

Truth, success, and faith: Novice teachers’ perceptions of what's at risk in responsive teaching in science

“…In making our argument here and earlier in the paper, we take the position that dominant narrations of Western science—the science endorsed by the U.S. system of schooling—as objective and “final form” (Duschl, 1990) mask the “arbitrariness on which [Western science is] based” (Bourdieu, 2003, p. 164) and so maintain and reproduce systems of power that center some and marginalize others. Western science embeds (among other things) white, masculine values and is largely credited to individual, great White men (Bang et al, 2012; Harding, 1991; Sheth, 2018). Western science is also powerful, both as a system and as a story.…”

Using Culturally Relevant Pedagogy to Reconsider the Genetics Canon

“…Finally, culturally relevant pedagogues develop a sociopolitical consciousness in which they recognize the roles that race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities play in social inequity (6). This requires teachers to acknowledge racial dimensions of the content we teach, instead of neutralizing the role of race in the subject (22). Furthermore, Utt and Tochluk identify six areas of self-work necessary for White educators to establish anti-racist White racial identities (23).…”