On love, becomings, and true generosity for science education: honoring Paulo Freire

Abstract

In this editorial article, we draw on our experiences to create an opening for critical reflection in honor of Paulo Freire's centenary. We start by addressing the need to overcome the productivity logic of the Academy and instead prioritize thinking and being in communion with others. We orient toward Freirean critical hope as an impetus to move beyond the limits of commodified time and engage in the process of collective becoming. We share our struggles and tensions through stories of Freirean becomings, reflecting on those "limited situations" in which our critical hope acted as catalysts for us to embrace our unfinishedness. We draw from our collective experiences and becomings to think more deeply about “the heart” of science education. We believe a heart-centered science education is one that forges solidarity with human and more-than-human others, and exploits pockets of resistance in the name of more socially and ecologically just present futures.

False Generosity and the Out-of-School Children Conundrum in Nigeria: Assessing Media Strategies for Promoting Optimal School Enrolment

“…Being in communion with one another allows us to feel a kind of collective vibration reverberating in other parts of the world across and through our diverse positions and contexts (Aceves et al, 2022).…”

Investigating science teacher educator identity through the politics of domestication and critical positional praxis

“…At the same time, we are wary of how making the “I” more explicit in identity research could become a somewhat futile exercise in navel‐gazing, while we also recognize that critical autoethnographic approaches to positioning oneself within science identity research can be powerful analytic tools (e.g., Frausto Aceves et al, 2022; Mensah, 2012; Morales‐Doyle, 2018; Rivera, 2022; Rodriguez, 1998; Rodriguez, 2019). Therefore, our argument is twofold: (1) identity research in science education and science teacher education needs to meaningfully address the positionality of the researcher, and (2) reflections on identity should create opportunities for transformative action.…”

“…I went on to become a junior high/middle school science and ESOL [English to Speakers of Other Languages] teacher in the South Bronx, NY and later in Atlanta, GA, and spent a few years in between as an environmental educator in Mexico and Guatemala. I have written about these experiences elsewhere, and how they have informed my development as a science educator (Frausto Aceves et al, 2022; Schindel Dimick et al, 2019).…”

“…As such, we reflect on how each of us operationalized CPP in our working contexts. In the spirit of honoring the ways in which we are all in a constant state of "becoming" (Frausto Aceves et al, 2022), we close with some recommendations for how science teacher educators/researchers can become more critically agentic in relation to their identity and positionalities in the context of their (our) work (Tolbert et al, 2018).…”

From False Generosity to True Generosity: Theorizing a Critical Imaginary for Science Education

“…We recently wrote of how we came to see ourselves as working within a larger critical-liberatory paradigm for science education (Frausto Aceves et al, 2022) and as part of a broad and ever-expanding sociopolitical movement in science education (Tolbert & Bazzul, 2017). In this chapter, we aim to take up a provocation that emerged from that article (Frausto Aceves et al, 2022)-differentiating between false versus true generosities, as part of the project of what Freire referred to as building solidarity in and across differences. Paulo Freire's ideology has been characterized as "equal parts Jesus Christ and Karl Marx" (Harvard Divinity School, 2022, n.p.).…”