Equity for Students Requires Equity for Teachers: The Inextricable Link between Teacher Professionalization and Equity-Centered Science Classrooms

ABSTRACT

There is an urgent call for science and STEM teachers to incorporate practices for equity-centered environments, social justice-orientations, criticality and other practices that promote system change. Yet this demand occurs against the backdrop marginalization of teachers’ from having a say in the planning, teaching, and assessments in their own classrooms as teachers are stripped of agency, authority, and autonomy. We argue that these two simultaneous trends in science and STEM education—the drive for equity-centered environments and the systemic devaluation of teachers’ expertise—are incompatible. Realizing the goal of science classrooms that support equity-centered and social justice-oriented learning requires that teachers have equal voice in important decisions on matters that impact their day-to-day actions, which includes the power to determine goals and practices. This means dismantling some of the power structures in the educational system that disenfranchise teachers’ from making decisions based on their own knowledge, and their own goals for learning, particularly goals for social-justice and equity. In this article we describe pedagogical frameworks for making transformational change in science classrooms and in wider society and show how each framework is dependent on equity for teachers. We end with implications for this shift—moving toward a system where teachers have equal power—that is an essential part of creating science classrooms as sites of equity, social justice and science learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Culturally relevant science teaching
• resource pedagogies
• responsive teaching practices
• social justice in STEM
• teacher empowerment
• teacher professionalization

With political polarization around science, racist and xenophobic uprisings, the killing of unarmed Black people by law enforcement, and corporate threat to sovereign Indigenous lands and communities, there is renewed urgency for educational spaces to be sites for equity and social justice (Keefe & Cochran-Smith, 2022; The Politics of Learning Writing Collective, 2017; Tzou et al., 2021). Science is politicized, and citizens need to develop critical skills and socio-political consciousness toward social justice action as part of scientific understanding (Mensah, 2013). The research field urges science and STEM classrooms to respond to this call (Atwater et al., 2014; Brown & Livstrom, 2020; Rodriguez, 2015).

Science and STEM teachers are essential in this effort. Teachers are uniquely positioned to disrupt the historical norms and implicit, biased understandings endemic to the science discipline, such as exclusion, racism, heteronormativity (Vakil, 2018), and uses for science such as for economic instead of humanitarian outcomes (e.g., neoliberalism, materialism, and militarism) (Harari, 2014; West, 2017). They are able to develop science classroom communities that value each member, lead critical discussions about science and its role in society, and position students as valuable imaginaries (Taylor, 2002). In these ways, STEM teachers can guide learning toward goals of empathy, advocacy, and social justice, forging connections between science and justice. Each of these practices, when undertaken by STEM teachers, disrupt local manifestations of unjust historical and institutional factors (Brown, 2021; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Rodriguez & Shim, 2020). Educational change toward social justice “hinges on leveraging, extending, and sharing the expert knowledge of teachers” (Bell, 2019. p. 681). Thus, we argue that the research community (often implicitly) positions teachers as capable of, and having the responsibility to, create equity-centered classroom environments that drive systemic change.

However, efforts at transforming science education are occurring against a backdrop of de-professionalization of teachers (Carter Andrews et al., 2016; Daly, 2018; Eichelberger, 2020). Consider recent responses to the national teacher shortage (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017; Martin & Mulvihill, 2017) and covid-driven sick-leave, in which individuals without training or expertise are becoming teachers, and students are told to attend study halls to learn from their texts rather than via interactions with a teacher. These responses convey the message that the work of teaching does not require special knowledge and might even be conducted by inanimate objects. Additionally, messages devaluing science teaching are amplified by educational policies that lead elementary schools to prioritize literacy and math over science (Bartlett & García, 2011; Icel, 2018). Even when there is adequate time for science, there is an industrial complex for STEM curriculum development, which supports teachers with scripts, videos, and downloadable prerecorded lessons, as well as algorithmic, memorized procedures for science practices, and pacing guides that teachers are expected to follow with fidelity (Berland et al., 2019; Falls et al., 2020). Assessments developed for measuring student learning have outsized importance—they are often used to determine content science teachers should teach in classrooms rather than for informing their relationships and interactions with the students (Biesta et al., 2017; Braaten et al., 2017).

In this article, we argue that these two simultaneous trends in science and STEM education—the drive for social justice and equity-centered environments and the devaluation of teachers’ expertise—are incompatible. As the most knowledgeable about the students in their classrooms and the local community, teachers need to share equal voice in important decisions in matters that impact their day-to-day actions, goals, and practices with the administrators, curriculum designers, and politicians who create the assessment system (Darling-Hammond & Hyler, 2013). In short, realizing the goal of science classrooms that support equity-centered and social justice-oriented environments requires that teachers be treated as professionals and be recognized as experts with the epistemic agency (Charney et al., 2021; Fricker, 2007) to make decisions about the content and ways in which they teach. This agency enables teachers to adapt lessons and units in response to the ideas and experiences that their unique students bring to the classroom and lead (often spontaneous) discussions related to equity, science ethics, racial justice, and social change, (Barbosa, 2006; Freire, 2021; Gutiérrez, 2008; Luft et al., 2019; Madeloni & Gorlewski, 2013; McLaren & Kincheloe, 2007; Mensah, 2022; Peterson, 2021; Uetricht, 2014). Thus, equity goals in STEM can only be realized by giving teachers a stronger voice as they are recognized as expert designers of classroom learning opportunities, goals for learning, and assessments.

To unpack the inextricable connection between equity-centered learning environments and teachers’ positions in the classroom, school, district, and society, we begin by characterizing equity and social justice-centered science and STEM classrooms. We then describe why it is necessary for teachers to be positioned as epistemic agents to make progress toward creating those spaces (Charney et al., 2021). This is followed by a focus on three teaching approaches that support equity-centered and social justice-oriented science learning. Through examples of each framework, we make apparent the need to empower teachers as professionals with agency to work toward goals of learning that respond to students in the contexts of their classrooms and communities, support criticality toward science as implicit in the reproduction of inequality and injustice, and engage in action to create change. Finally, we conclude this position paper by proposing shifts needed to recognize teachers as professionals. We offer some outcomes we believe are important when “equity” for teachers is prioritized as an essential part of creating science classrooms as sites of equity, social justice, and science learning.

Equity-centered and social-justice orientated science and STEM classrooms and teacher positionality

In this position paper, we define equitable and social justice-oriented science and STEM classrooms as places that continually strive to enact locally situated practices that explicitly attend to historic and systemic-level factors (i.e., race, ethnicity, language) and that resist and dismantle power structures that devalue the experiences and knowledges of marginalized groups (Fricker, 2007; Kishimoto, 2022; Mensah & Chen, 2022; Rodriguez, 2004). Thus, classroom communities that reflect equity and social justice-oriented values will strive to broaden the social and epistemic resources in the science learning community, including epistemic and linguistic resources, knowledges, identities, and ways of belonging (Agarwal & Sengupta-Irving, 2019; Gutiérrez, 2008; Ladson-Billings, 1995a). In classrooms that are moving toward this vision, teachers respond to students in dynamic and flexible ways, modify and critique social and epistemic norms, and expand learning objectives. Further, science teachers elevate the goals and discourses of the communities who have experienced barriers to participating in, and benefitting by, science in the society and work to alleviate those barriers. They engage in criticality and action to dismantle the effects of science as an institution with historical roots in white supremacy and meritocracy (Lac, 2021), and current relationships with neoliberalism, materialism, and militarism (Harari, 2016; Klein, 2015; Klein & Smith, 2008; Reeve, 2009; West, 2017). Such science classrooms work to develop a mutual understanding of equity and social justice-oriented goals and practices between community members over time (Paris, 2012) by investing in the co-creation of science practices and ways of knowing that can help explain natural phenomena and solve pressing societal problems (Barajas-López & Bang, 2018; Champion et al., 2020; Nasir & Hand, 2006). Ultimately, equity and social justice-orientations in science and STEM mean that assessment practices and coordinated teacher evaluation protocols must move away from emphasis on standardized tests where data determine instruction and practices (Biesta, 2017), toward assessments that incorporate teachers’ goals for equity and social justice, are performance-based, and are authentically embedded in the work the students are doing (Darling Hammond, 1995).

Given this understanding of equity and social justice-oriented classrooms, we argue that missing in the call for equity in science and STEM classrooms is a call for educational system change that positions teachers and their knowledge and experiences as equal to those of the building and district leadership (Konkol & Ramirez-Alonzo, 2020; Quan et al., 2019), curriculum designers and politicians (Keefe & Cochran-Smith, 2022). In other words, we argue that realizing the vision of equity-centered and social justice-oriented classrooms requires that teachers have authority and agency and are positioned to shape their classroom practices, activities, learning goals, evaluations and assessments. As such, “teacher equity” within their institutional system should be a central goal of education research and policy work focused on equity and social justice.

Equity for teachers

By arguing for the interconnections between supporting more equitable and social justice-oriented classrooms and teachers’ positioning in their school and district, we are defining “equity for teachers” not in terms of macro systems of inequity such as racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and other forms of systemic oppression. Although these aspects of one’s identity clearly impact a teacher’s role in the classroom, school, and district, we are purposefully focusing on the meso-level of the school system. In this meso-level system, teachers are often positioned as “cogs in a machine” that must implement and fulfill the expectations of others (Fornauf et al., 2020; LaBarre, 2020). We are positioning “equity for teachers” in contrast to this more typical portrayal of teachers and their role. In this way, equity for teachers is related to the disruption of these hierarchical systems of power. This requires: That teachers are positioned with “epistemic agency” (Fricker, 2007; Luft et al., 2019) such that they have an equal voice in decision making in comparison to their administrators, curriculum designers and policy makers. This equal voice should be central to all aspects of their teaching including how they are evaluated, the identification of learning goals, and the selection and design of curriculum and assessments (McLaren & Kincheloe, 2007; Peterson, 2021). Thus, epistemic agency requires that teachers be entrusted to self-govern as they make decisions to adapt lessons and units and lead discussions related to equity, science ethics, racial justice, and social change (Barbosa, 2006; Freire, 2021; Gutiérrez, 2008; Mensah, 2022; Uetricht, 2014).

Self-governing and acting with agency requires that teachers have time to engage in collaborative reflective practices of evaluation and assessment to inform practice (Darling-Hammond, 2000). That is, epistemic agency requires that one is afforded the space to be critical of, shape, and transform, the very practices in which one is engaging (Stroupe et al., 2018; Taylor & Hall, 2013). Thus, teachers need time to develop criteria of their own evaluation and situated assessments to inform and reflect on their practice (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Miller & Shelton, 2021). Additionally, teachers need time for critical reflection (Gorski & Dalton, 2020) that examines the impact of teaching on teachers’ and students’ justice orientations and actions (Liu, 2015). This critical reflection time could take the place of time currently allotted for technical and procedural matters (Beyer & Zeichner, 2018).

Finally, teacher equity and uptake of epistemic agency requires that teachers have support structures that enable them to take the risks necessary to enact critical discourse and transformative social-justice education, as a path to more equitable STEM classrooms and communities.

Why pedagogies that support equity and social justice require equity for teachers

In the following section, we demonstrate the connection between the teachers’ role in their classroom, district, and community and pedagogical approaches that can support more equitable and social justice-oriented classrooms. For this argument, we focus on three unique pedagogical approaches: resource pedagogies, critical pedagogies, and social justice orientations. We focus on these broad categories of pedagogical approaches because they help capture the themes found in literature that focuses on supporting equity and social justice as an educational aim in science classrooms, while also laying bare the importance of equity for teachers for achieving these pedagogical aims. Thus, by highlighting the teachers’ role as pivotal in each of these approaches, we call for awareness for the field to reconsider what teachers need to participate in equity work as capable and knowledgeable partners, and to learn, create, and thrive, when enacting more equitable approaches to science instruction.

Resource pedagogies

Resource pedagogies (Paris, 2012) describe a philosophy toward teaching that centers students’ cultural and linguistic knowledges, background, and experiences to inform how learning is constructed, and goals for teaching are conceptualized. One resource pedagogy, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP; Ladson-Billings, 1995a) outlines the philosophical underpinnings of the pedagogy of teachers who are highly successful with Black students. CRP is based on high expectations for students, a critical stance toward societal structures, and cultural competency (Ladson-Billings, 1995b).

CRP describes the teacher’s pedagogical stance, and has the potential to impact all aspects of the classroom, including planning and reflection. Other resource pedagogies, such as Funds of Knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and Multiculturalism (Brown & Livstrom, 2020), often focus on instantiation at the lesson or unit level, such that teachers tweak existing curriculum or recreate lessons and units to elevate students’ racial identity, language practices, lived experiences, ethnicity or local and urban community (Barton & Tan, 2010; Cun, 2021; González et al., 2006; Schenkel et al., 2021). Resource pedagogies are based on constructivist principles (Villegas & Lucas, 2002) and emphasize marginalized students as capable of doing science, as long as teachers generally view their ethnicity, race and SES, identities, discourses, and social and intellectual resources as a feature in that success (Moll et al., 1992). When enacting resource pedagogies, teachers adhere to practices of joint creation of science ideas and goals for learning that are relevant to students, and they nurture relationships among students while maintaining rigorous expectations for learning (Lane & Id-Deen, 2020).

“Funds of Knowledge” (Moll et al., 1992)—the “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household and individual functioning and well-being” (pp. 133)—is one approach toward shifting deficit views toward the under-identified and under-utilized resources one might draw on in a resource pedagogy. A focus on valuing these resources as intellectually based counters common deficit narratives that some family systems (i.e., Latine families in Moll) are disorganized and intellectually barren, and instead, consistent with CRP, demonstrates and utilizes their power for sensemaking. Moll and colleagues worked with a team of elementary teachers to create a unit centered on making the Mexican candy, pipitoriato, as a way to connect to traditional school math assessment goals. Another example of resource pedagogies comes from Lee’s (2001; 2006) Cultural Modeling Project in which they use Hip Hop culture and discourse practices to engage students in analyses of canonical texts. In middle school science classrooms, examples of resource pedagogies include researchers and teachers partnering to incorporate discussions about Black history, style of dress and hairstyles, and hip-hop, into the curriculum to connect with Black students in ways that bridge interest in STEM with cultural resources (Coleman & Davis, 2020; Cummings et al., 2019; Flennaugh, 2017).

Place-based teaching is another variation on resource pedagogies. It views the students’ local context as a resource upon which the curriculum and student learning can build. For example, Wright et al. (2021) studied topic-specific urban wildlife ecology by examining photos taken by hidden cameras of wildlife in the school’s green spaces. Hernandez et al. (2022) worked with teachers to use students’ knowledge of place to connect to high school physics. In the unit, they built on local water issues and energy use in their community to understand climate change. In Lee and Miller (2018), the students investigated the spiny water flea, a local invasive species, to understand ecosystem dynamics, in a classroom near one of the great lakes.

In each of these resource pedagogies, educators redesigned the expected/standardized learning trajectories that are based on generalized assumptions about students. Thus, these approaches call into question dominant measures of expertise in subject content and carve out a way for students to present themselves (i.e., recognize themselves and be recognized by others) as culturally competent, as well as competent toward addressing dominant measures of success (i.e., academic standards).

Resource pedagogies move toward equity centered and social justice orientations, but they can also enable science learning environments that sidestep activist mentality and real systemic change. That is, it is possible to enact resource pedagogies in ways that do not call for radical transformation of institutional systems of education or disrupting the position of the teacher as subservient to curriculum, administrators, or politicians. As such, resource pedagogies are often embraced by mainstream curriculum, administrators, and standards documents (NGSS, Lead States, e.g., National Research Council, 2012, 2013) possibly because they do not necessarily call for systems change, but rather accentuate difference as a celebration of cultural traditions. In this way, they can remain noncommittal about the dehumanization of racism, militarism, neoliberalism, poverty and materialism (Harari, 2016; Klein, 2015; Klein & Smith, 2008; Reeve, 2009; Sharma & Buxton, 2018; West, 2017). For these reasons, resource pedagogies are sometimes associated (misassociated: see, Ladson-Billings & Dixson, 2021) as politically conciliatory (Paris & Alim, 2014) with respect to enacting the social justice and equity agendas that teachers themselves may espouse. Even so, resource pedagogies leverage transformative resources such as translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014), authentic communication of collaboration (Reigh, 2021; Reigh & Miller, 2020), resistance (Pacheco, 2012), and discursive identities of Black students (Brown et al., 2005).

To create spaces in which students’ linguistic, community and culturally based resources are recognized and utilized—in a way that doesn’t assume and essentialize cultural knowledge—teachers must move away from enacting curriculum as written, toward creating their own lessons and potentially their own learning progressions based on the resources of the students in front of them. This may mean that teachers must resist following mandates from administrators regarding curriculum that demands fidelity in their planning and their practice, such as committing to the pursuit of students’ idiosyncratic coherence seeking (Berland et al., 2016; Sikorski & Hammer, 2017). Further, resource pedagogies may include students engaging in practices that are not typically sanctioned in science classes such as hip-hop, slam poetry, and spending time in uncertain spaces where students are seeking knowledge and expertise that may have been forcibly erased (Sabzalian et al., 2021). Thus, resource pedagogies require the teacher to act with epistemic agency and autonomy, and to have time for reflection about addressing their own goals for learning (Luft et al., 2019) so that they can stray from lessons in ways that meaningfully connect to the resources students bring into their classrooms. In these ways, resource pedagogies require teacher equity within the school institution in that the teachers must be treated as epistemic agents with valued expertise to guide decision making about what knowledge will be emphasized, what teaching practices they will enact, and how student understandings will be communicated.

Criticality, critical race theory, anti-racist education

Madkins and McKinney de Royston (2019) argue that socio-political discourse is essential to achieving equity in science classrooms stating that

the racialized and classed realities that many students and communities negotiate each day in and out of schools [have] to be part of the discourse in science classrooms … Indeed, this is required to actualize the idea of science for all as a political ambition to reduce inequities in access to science, achievement in science, and mobility in science trajectories and careers. (p. 21)

Such discourses are essential and should form the backbone of STEM education classes and preservice teacher methods courses. Thus, critical pedagogical frameworks focus on learning opportunities that: 1.) support students in participating in sensemaking discussions related to power, privilege, human-rights, inequities, oppression, anti-sexism, anti-ableism, and anti-racism (Bliss, 2012; Free & Križ, 2022; Lopez, 2022; Nasir & Bang, 2012 and/or 2.) question settled expectations for what counts as valuable in science and science learning (Biesta, 2017; Correal, 2019; Sharma & Buxton, 2018) creating opportunities for students to negotiate their epistemological approaches to making sense of the natural world (M. Bang et al., 2012; Kimmerer, 2013; Raven, 2014). That is, in critical approaches to pedagogy, teachers emphasize the exploration of oppression through uncovering the perniciousness of oppressive systems, such as racism (Bliss, 2012; Ridgeway, 2019), and deconstructing whiteness (Mensah & Jackson, 2018). In these ways, teachers can make apparent and disrupt how whiteness has served as a gatekeeper for determining the science agenda and ownership and participation in the field (Le & Matias, 2018; Mensah & Jackson, 2018).

In an example of teaching toward the critical pedagogical goal of making racism, and other systemic forms of oppression (e.g., classism, ableism, sexism, homophobia), visible teachers might focus on America’s history and how this history is rooted in systemic structures of institutions and disciplines that continue to subordinate people of color. This approach would similarly interrogate America’s foundational ideals as inextricably intertwined with a white supremacist regime (Dixson & Rousseau, 2016). As such, critical pedagogical frameworks extend to teaching about social justice, socioscientific issues, and their impact in STEM contexts (e.g., climate change and the disproportionate impact on black and brown communities; Wiggan et al., 2020).

Examples of criticality as the underpinning of pedagogy, and what they require of science teachers, can be found at both the elementary and middle school levels. Dr. Muhammad (2020) uses criticality in Cultivating Black Genius, which forwards historicity and culturally responsive practices (Love & Muhammad, 2020; Sullivan, 2016). She describes a science upper grade unit on heredity where students use Punnett squares to analyze data on inheritance. Students discuss racist disparities in research and resource allocation. By empowering students with knowledge of how genetic differences contribute to expression of different variations of similar traits (phenotypes), students learn to utilize Punnett Squares to holistically consider how something as small as a different variation of an alle can contribute to different life circumstances. While concurrently meeting the genetic content goals, the unit aims to enlist students in “learn(ing) the barriers that inhibit people from overcoming adversity and reaching their life’s goals” (p. 80).

The second aspect of science classrooms enacting critical pedagogies—the expansion of what and who counts as valuable in science sensemaking—asserts that

this viewpoint is distinct from equity efforts organized by access paradigms that position the disciplines themselves as settled and exempt from reproach or historicity. In short, greater access to settled forms of disciplinary knowledge is not only insufficient, but functions as the newest form of assimilation and domestication into Western supremacy, perhaps more insidiously through a veneer of liberal inclusion (Warren et al., 2020, p. 278).

From this perspective a key goal of equity-oriented science instruction is to desettle the typically unquestioned European perspectives and approaches to scientific sensemaking. For example, Megan Bang et al. (2014) worked with Chicago Native community members (from across numerous nations) living in Chicago or Shikaakwa. Together, they created a “community-based science curriculum” focused on outdoor and environmental education. Looking across enactments in both the rural and urban communities, the authors demonstrate how opportunities to negotiate various epistemological stances—from a relational stance that views individuals as part of nature emerging from Native epistemologies to more European approaches that highlight binary differences and position humans as caretakers of nature—supported students in viewing “science as a more inclusive set of practices and orientations that have spaces for native identities” (Bang & Medin, 2010, p . 1019).

By addressing racism and racist structures and prejudice, critical pedagogies are resisting the system from the inside. They are deconstructing and critiquing closely held systemic features that have held sway in the field of science education, such as Whiteness as property (Mensah & Jackson, 2018), counternarratives (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001) the false narrative of meritocracy and “learnification” of education (Au, 2016; Biesta, 2017; Reeve, 2009), logocentrism (Correal, 2019; Llanos, 2018), the scourge of economic inequality (Buras, 2011; West, 2017) and the neoliberal approach to equity (Berry et al., 2022; Sharma et al., 2022). Critical approaches can be commensurate to neoliberal agendas and thus have some foothold in liberal, urban school systems (see, Ladson-Billings, 2021). Even in these environments, teachers who adopt these approaches can be censored for teaching within a critical framework, or for addressing topics that are considered insensitive to race or essentializing race or ethnicity (Giroux, 2021), causing activist teachers to be wary (Maton, 2018). Thus, enacting critical pedagogies requires that teachers have autonomy to navigate criticality toward science as a field, and the outcomes of science in society. That is, teachers need agency in determining what to teach, and how, without fear of repercussions. It is cruel irony that a teacher, in creating a science environment with open communication and full interrogation of all systems, is at risk of losing their job, even if they teach the standards. Critical approaches toward teaching science are highly contentious and politicized (i.e., Muhammad, 2020; Madkins, & McKinney de Royston, 2019). Thus, approaching teaching from this stance requires that school systems support the acts of criticality that might be forwarded by teachers and their students. For example, if critical approaches to science and STEM education do not make their way into evaluation systems for teacher quality, and assessments sanctioned by the state, then teacher success criteria and student outcomes will be misaligned (Biesta, 2017). If teachers were to have equal voice in determining what they teach and how their performance is evaluated, this pedagogy is likely to be utilized. Otherwise, teachers may be unwilling to risk their jobs and livelihoods, regardless of their own visions for their practice and for their students’ learning.

Social justice action in science and STEM

Social justice-oriented teaching and pedagogy creates learning contexts, where students engage in activism as part of learning and understanding science (Rodriguez & Morrison, 2019). Social justice pedagogy is concerned with disrupting inequities in areas of economic, health, socio-scientific, environmental, race, gender, and education inequalities and localized political and socio-cultural injustices (Hodson, 2011). In this approach, learning goals for science become integrated with practices for social justice, and fused with understanding history of struggle, in communities of activism wider than the school. The grain size for achieving wider scale transformation, and the shift away from measurable outcomes (Biesta, 2017) means that often social justice action occurs in informal spaces (Kozan et al., 2017). Identity construction in Making and Maker Spaces is social justice action for students who are marginalized in STEM, and is often included in research about social justice (i.e., Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010, 2020; Yeh et al., 2021). Banks (2013) places social action at the peak of equity-oriented approaches to education because it involves students as the agents of social change.

Social justice action as the framework for science learning means that units become framed around action and doing transformative work, often intersecting with the public about social justice issues (Adah Miller et al., 2022; Hurley et al., 2022; McGowan & Bell, 2022). Mildenhall et al. (2019) provide a unit example of an action-oriented critical approach to science instruction. In this third-grade engineering unit from Australia titled “The Long Walk,” students design a pair of shoes for someone in a refugee camp by repurposing and recycling materials that could be found in a camp. The module begins with stories about the challenges refugees face in acquiring a pair of shoes. Students need to identify possible materials, conduct tests to find the most suitable materials, collaboratively establish criteria for shoe designs and test these through a survey. Using this information, they create and represent a design and then share their designs with peers and a member of the community for feedback. Through this module, students develop empathy, hone science and engineering practices, and see themselves as change agents.

In other examples of critical and social justice-oriented teaching approaches in STEM students learn by directly interfacing with public institutions. For example, students engage in investigations into district decisions that reflect prejudice and discrimination in a higher-level science class, and then act to raise awareness of this discrimination (Banks, 2013). Further, Ladson-Billings (1995a) provides an example of a teacher fostering social justice by creating a unit which involved students in investigating and developing a plan to clean up an empty lot near the school frequented by drug users and paraphernalia. Mensah (2021) describes a third-grade unit where students make connections between the garbage in their neighborhood, and the garbage on a global scale. The young students pen persuasive letters to an environmental agency to advocate for more green spaces in their community.

As seen in these examples, social justice action pedagogy has extensive reach toward transformative change because it engages students in practices that involve action and resistance as integral to addressing the learning goals. Although similarly politically contentious to critical and anti-racist pedagogies, the pivot from standards and the scientific cannon, often means that these pedagogies are relegated to after school programs, if they appear at all in education settings.

Enacting social justice pedagogies therefore requires that teachers have the authority to determine the learning agenda, and the agency to create and follow learning trajectories that support students in locating activist resources in the community, and enlisting partners (e.g., community activist organizations already adept at activism) outside of the school. Further, teachers must develop the ability to navigate wider circles of systems, and learn to see themselves as capable agents for changing them through organizing and outreach (Barton & Tan, 2010; Bazzul, 2014; Morales-Doyle, 2017). The prospect of allowing teachers to be party to learning objectives and evaluation systems that could include social justice action is alarming to the left and the right political spheres—neither would trust teachers to oversee social action objectively (Duggan, 2022; Hodson, 2011; Matheis et al., 2020; Parker et al., 2022).

The urgency in the call for equity for teachers is critical for social justice pedagogies to be part of students’ learning. Currently, teachers who want to move equity and social action beyond the walls of the classroom are restricted and are often putting their livelihoods in jeopardy (Verma & Apple, 2020). As long as teachers are subjected to prescribed, restrictive hours for students in each discipline and their job performance is tied to meeting the standards, authentically preparing students to develop skills that bring together social activist knowledge and science knowledge will be prohibited. Thus, systemic transformation of the position of teachers in the educational system is required. This is similar to the discussions of tenure for researchers whose search for truth encompasses investigating contentious and politically treacherous topics. The students in Mensah’s (2022) curriculum who wrote to environmental agencies to call for greenspaces were developing writing practices that are essential but not identified and prioritized in the common NGSS standards. Similarly, they were honing the scientific practice of translating science learning to activist discourse, a practice that is not seen in the NGSS (Lead States, 2013). In this way the need for teachers to be positioned as equal with administrators, curriculum designers and politicians/policy makers is non-negotiable for the enactment of these pedagogies.

Discussion

Recent events have made equity initiatives in STEM education more urgent. Teacher and STEM education researchers are responding to crises related to racist, classist, ableist, and xenophobic systems of power that impede STEM participation, and outcomes in classrooms. Science teachers are positioned as having the ability to shift practices in ways that develop equity-centered classrooms, while simultaneously addressing traditional content-related learning goals (Burgess, 2022; Campbell & Lee, 2021; Li et al., 2021; Purzer et al., 2018). As demonstrated in this paper, approaches that create equity and social justice-oriented learning environments—resource pedagogies, criticality, and social justice action—require that teachers have latitude to depart from standard curriculum, as well as agency in shaping evaluation and assessment. Thus, we argue that the current initiatives related to equity and social justice-oriented goals are predicated on affording teachers’ agency and authority for decisions, based on an assumption of teachers’ expertise. Additionally, we note that teachers are faced with the demand of making risky decisions around equity in a politically polarized nation, without assurance that administration and parents will back those decisions. If teachers are going to navigate equity learning in their science classrooms, they need to be able to make “equity and social justice judgements” and be invited to safely reflect on those judgments. All three, expertise, autonomy and agency have been slowly eroded through the de-professionalization process. To restore them, we need to reinstate the underlying enabling conditions for professionalism:

• Trust in, and elevate teacher equity, social justice, and anti-racism advocates’ expertise for planning and goal setting, especially with respect to equity-centered and social justice-oriented learning environments

• Create systems of shared decision making between local classroom and school administration level decision-making

• Envision and support teaching that involves constant reflection, learning and improvement toward teacher-driven professional goals setting

• Allocate adequate time for collaboratively reflecting on their students’ learning and ways in which teachers could improve their instructional practices through assessment of equity and social justice centered learning

• Create envisioning sessions backed by administration but create equal power between teachers, administration, and community members to create classroom spaces with teaching practices for social justice action.

• Through teacher and administration partnerships, develop teacher evaluation metrics that measure progress toward equity and social justice goals.

We believe that each of the above would help to reverse current teacher attrition trends (Jensen, 2021; Nguyen et al., 2020) bolster confidence in teachers required for teachers to make decisions in polarized times, and allow our classrooms to benefit from the practice-based expertise of teachers who have been striving for equity in education throughout their careers.

A coda: equity for students requires equity for teachers

Science teachers are a key part of the effort to tackle the bias and barriers related to equity in STEM. They can be part of the dismantling of traditional and restrictive structures endemic to science and science social practices. The path to more equitable STEM classrooms and communities is through equity for teachers in the school system. Many teachers are willing to take the new strides in figuring out how to move classrooms toward equitable spaces, and erode white supremacist, materialist, militaristic and hegemonic system incursions into science endeavors and institutions and enable the nation’s students to elevate the benefits of science toward humans and nature. But they cannot move forward because they are hobbled by distrust, walk-through evaluations, scripted curriculum and pacing guides, and outsized, self-important, state assessment systems. Teachers need to have equal footing in decision-making power, without fear of losing their job. Even the most forward-thinking teachers may make mistakes if venturing into the polarized discussions about equity, race, inequities, and science in the marketplace. They need to be able to make in-the-moment decisions without repercussions. They must be granted time to learn, make mistakes, reflect, act reflexively, and fix errors. Uncertainty is a place for sensemaking, growth and change in practice. But only science teachers who have authority, voice, and agency, will be able to change practices and learn. We note that these features of the teacher’s professional environment that would enable them to enact more equitable and socially just teaching practices align with equitable practices at the institutional level. We are asking that teachers be allowed to express thinking with diverse resources to learn and grow in ways that treat them as expert professionals who are equally valuable as others in the education system. These spaces, where thinking with diverse resources, anti-racism, criticality, and social action sensemaking are fostered—these equitable educational spaces for teachers, are a prerequisite for fostering equitable spaces for students.

Additionally, this call for equity for teachers through recognizing the professionalism of their work is a call to recognize the particular skills teachers need in the struggle for voice, agency, and equity in their own right, in their own positions as professionals. To be responsive, leverage resources, model criticality, and orient students to social justice, teachers must be able to move away from the curriculum as written, have voice in evaluations, and craft assessments that matter. They must be able to make consequential decisions around how science is shaped. Teachers must be able to take risks in their teaching. Thus, to foster equity and social-justice oriented science classrooms, research communities must offer respect and alliance to the teachers by acknowledging the treacherous structural inequalities that teachers must navigate. Unfortunately, while the calls for equity and social-justice oriented classrooms implicitly suggest that teachers can and should engage in this work, they are often explicitly the focus of consternation because of deficit thinking: research positions them as ignorant about social change and equity, and recalcitrant, as individuals who balk at moving away from traditional science instruction in favor of maintaining traditional content goals and methods (Campbell et al., 2022; Gray et al., 2021; Mayorga & Picower, 2018; Solic & Riley, 2019).

We implore that the research community support teachers in the work toward equity and justice in STEM and STEM classrooms, by supporting alliances and asking questions about how to navigate and transform educational and institutional systems that devalue teacher expertise and agency. Equity-centered and justice-oriented science learning environments cannot be achieved without advocating for teacher professionalization and equity at the systems level. The research community is called to promote these kinds of system level changes as mutually sustaining endeavors. Without attending to teachers’ voice, decision making, and co-construction of science learning spaces, equity discussion in science may remain theoretical. Together, as an educational community with the shared goal of integrating equity and social justice goals within STEM learning contexts, we can pave the way toward a socially just society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the George Lucas Education Research Foundation.