Tensions Teaching Science for Equity: Lessons Learned From the Case of Ms. Dawson

Abstract

When teachers engage in forms of science teaching that disrupt the status quo of typical school science practices, they often experience dilemmas as problems of practice that are difficult—or even impossible—to solve. This instrumental case study examines one teacher's efforts to teach science for equity across two contexts: a public middle school and a summer program for low‐income students of color. By tracing intersecting tensions experienced when trying to teach science more equitably, we describe how systems of tensions can serve multiple functions: (1) as roadblocks for teachers when knowledge‐production predicaments arise, (2) as dilemmas to be managed by teachers when there is difficulty defining educational disparities, and (3) as potentially productive as teachers and educational researchers wrestle with inherent tensions between models for teaching. Findings afford insight into why teachers experience uneven progress as they work to teach science for equity. Further examination of tensions teaching science for equity reveals deep paradoxes extending beyond the case of a single teacher into pedagogical frameworks underlying expectations for teaching science more equitably in schools.

Priming urban learners' attitudes toward the relevancy of science: A mixed‐methods study testing the importance of context

“…In relation to the virtual reality research field itself, we align most with the typology of technologically enhanced learning environments as being a Simulation Environment : namely, our VR 360 designs provided our students with “[a] modeling environment designed to simulate activities that are unlikely to happen in real life due to danger and expense” (Reisoğlu, Topu, Yılmaz, Yılmaz, & Göktaş, , p. 85). To clarify, we are not arguing that the contexts are “dangerous”; instead, thinking pragmatically about the struggles science teachers have with designing relevant science curriculum for diverse youth (Braaten & Sheth, ; Mensah et al, ), we contend that to take whole classrooms of 30+ children into their local community (while applaudable) is often not possible given economic and organizational resource restraints often lamented about in urban schools.…”

“…This is of particular importance for urban elementary science teachers who struggle to design and embrace responsive pedagogies that both leverage this reform‐minded agenda and adopt a relevant science content application (cf. Braaten & Sheth, ; Mensah et al, ). In this way, we argue, contextually designed learning in science can increase the content relevancy as a “best practice” specifically for diverse elementary learners to develop favorable disciplinary attitudes and interests (Hayes & Deyhle, ), priming a learning experience where urban students can embrace a personally meaningful and situationally interesting type of content relevancy (Priniski, Hecht, & Harackiewicz, ).…”

“…Together, our study, along with those studies in VR more broadly, encourages researchers and teachers to explore the dynamic potential of VR 360 to impact diverse students' learning and sense of connection to the discipline as a function of leveraging these students' local contexts as sites where science can be learned, an affordance emphasized by equity‐focused K‐16 STEM education research more broadly (Calabrese Barton & Tan, ; Garibay, ; Kayumova, McGuire, & Cardello, ; Vakil, ; Vossoughi, Hooper, & Escudé, ). Thus, while aligning curriculum to pursue relevant ways of teaching and learning science continues to be a struggle for science teachers (Braaten & Sheth, ; Mensah et al, ; Rodriguez, ), this struggle, specifically in elementary science, has been shown to be ameliorated by research–practice partnerships where design elements that contextualize science content in students' local contexts and leverage students' identities afford students the chance to embrace a nuanced type of learning, as well as the capacity to apply what they have learned (Buxton, ; Djonko‐Moore, Leonard, Holifield, Bailey, & Almughyirah, ; Upadhyay, Maruyama, & Albrecht, ).…”

Ambitious Teachers’ Design and Use of Classrooms as a Place of Science

“…While ambitious instruction is a relatively new construct in science education, initial research shows that teachers provide opportunities for students to engage in multiple features of disciplinary practices (Windschitl, Thompson, Braaten, & Stroupe, 2012), that teachers and students negotiate the knowledge and practice of a classroom community (Stroupe, 2014) that novice teachers can adapt and innovate tools and pedagogical routines to provide students with science learning opportunities (Thompson, Windschitl, & Braaten, 2013), that teachers use tools and pedagogical routines to press students for deeper and more complex explanations of natural phenomena (Braaten & Windschitl, 2011), and that teachers provide students with rigorous and equitable learning opportunities (Braaten & Sheth, 2016;Stroupe, 2016). Each of these findings suggest that during moment-tomoment interactions with students, teachers enacting ambitious instruction actively shift the expectations of student learning away from information acquisition and recitation, and toward participation in science.…”

Messages in a Bottles: Valuable Insights from and by Researchers

“…Early on in their contribution, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.21254/abstract () raise several emotionally‐loaded labels and descriptions. These include “tension” and “paradox” and “dissonance” and “ambitious” – each adding heat to the basic effort to effectively teach science.…”