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1. Applying PDP Lessons Learned About Inclusive Teaching and Assessment

   https://doi.org/10.58021/S5X592  

   McConnell, Nicholas J; Casey, Caitlin M; Macho, Jocelyn M; O’Donnell, Christine (January 2022, Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE))

   Seagroves, Scott; Barnes, Austin; Metevier, Anne; Porter, Jason; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)

   Much of the ISEE Professional Development Program (PDP)’s long-term value arises from participants transferring teaching approaches they develop in the course of designing and facilitating a PDP inquiry activity to other contexts throughout their careers. PDP participants encounter frameworks such as the inquiry framework and the equity and inclusion focus areas, and are encouraged explicitly to become informed consumers of further scholarship on teaching and learning. Many participants resonate especially with the PDP’s emphasis on equity and inclusion in STEM teaching, and meld lessons from the PDP with their lived experiences as well as other scholarship on equity-minded or culturally responsive educational practices. Our panel shares four perspectives on extending lessons from the PDP to new contexts: mentoring students and developing interactive lessons in molecular biology, designing astronomy activities from a culturally relevant and culturally responsive standpoint, incorporating inquiry activities into a large astronomy lecture course, and helping academic programs across a university adopt equity-minded practices for assessing learning outcomes. 

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2. Lessons Learned from Teaching Culturally Relevant Engineering Design in K–12 Classrooms and Applying Them to Undergraduate Engineering Courses

   Klemetsrud, BJ; Bowman, FM (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   When confronted with systematic racism, social justice, and equity issues, engineering and STEM education often assumes that these topics will be covered in other courses and are not relevant to STEM. However, engineering as a discipline has one of the greatest effects on society’s well-being. From the raw materials used, products created, and emissions generated, all aspects of engineering have direct and indirect impacts on humanity. Our current engineering education project works with upper elementary and middle school teachers to apply a culturally relevant engineering design (CRED) framework within their classrooms. This framework is adapted from UTeachEngineering and culturally relevant pedagogy from Gay and Billings is embedded within each step of the design process. The North Dakota Native American Essential Understandings are used to frame and inform the culturally relevant pedagogy. Tribal elder’s stories and experiences are centered along with community leaders in each of the school’s communities. Responses from students and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive. Teachers have noticed increased engagement from all students when cultural and community leaders have been invited into the classroom and involved in the engineering design process. Students who normally do not see themselves represented in STEM professions have taken active leadership roles in their group’s engineering design process. Teachers have also recognized that culturally relevant pedagogy can be utilized in all aspects of their curricula. With the success of the project in elementary and middle school classrooms, the question then became, how can we see similar success in our college classrooms? When brainstorming how to incorporate culture and community in our curricula it became apparent that best practices in engineering education have the opportunity to intentionally involve community and cultural leaders. ABET learning outcomes require the “consideration of public health, safety, and welfare” in engineering design and “the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.” When making engineering design decisions, who will be affected if there is an accidental release of chemicals to the environment? Which communities are affected by global warming? Will the public be able to afford the new product that is being produced? Will the new processes or products add value to people’s lives? And how do we train future engineers to consider all community members, not just those who look like them, but those from the most marginalized groups? This talk will introduce our culturally relevant engineering design framework, provide ways to include community and cultural leaders within courses, and how, with the help of Northwestern’s Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion resources, to create homework problems that reflect social justice and equity issues within engineering 

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3. Socioscientific modelling as an approach towards justice-centred science pedagogy

   https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.21.1.30  

   Lesnefsky, Rebecca R; Kirk, Eric A; Yeldell, Jasmyne; Sadler, Troy D; Ke, Li (January 2023, London Review of Education)

   Justice-centred science pedagogy has been suggested as an effective framework for supporting teachers in bringing in culturally relevant pedagogy to their science classrooms; however, limited instructional tools exist that introduce social dimensions of science in ways teachers feel confident navigating. In this article, we add to the justice-centred science pedagogy framework by offering tools to make sense of science and social factors and introduce socioscientific modelling as an instructional strategy for attending to social dimensions of science in ways that align with justice-centred science pedagogy. Socioscientific modelling offers an inclusive, culturally responsive approach to education in science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics through welcoming students’ diverse repertoires of personal and community knowledge and linking disciplinary knowledge with social dimensions. In this way, students can come to view content knowledge as a tool for making sense of inequitable systems and societal injustices. Using data from an exploratory study conducted in summer 2022, we present emerging evidence of how this type of modelling has shown students to demonstrate profound insight into social justice science issues, construct understandings that are personally meaningful and engage in sophisticated reasoning. We conclude with future considerations for the field. 

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4. Physics teachers integrating social justice with science content

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2022.pr.Huynh  

   Huynh, Tra; Gray, Kara E.; Bauman, Lauren C.; Hernandez, Jessica; Seeley, Lane; Scherr, Rachel E. (September 2022, Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings 2022)

   Frank, B.; Jones, D.; Ryan, Q. (Ed.)

   In this study, we showcase the various ways high school physics teachers make connections between science content and social justice, pushing the boundary of what is counted as science content by bringing social justice engagement to the center of science learning. We analyze lessons submitted by eighteen high school physics teachers who participated in a professional development program that supported the integration of equity into their science teaching. Three themes represent teachers' approach toward integrating social justice in their science lessons: (1) investigating the nature of science in specific science concepts and re-evaluating/redefining science concepts, (2) connecting students' everyday activities with science and global social justice issues, and (3) using science knowledge to engage with and advocate for social justice issues in students' local communities. 

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5. All in the Ohana: A Model to Develop and Sustain Community Partnerships with Teachers and Schools

   Pinner, PC (October 2025, medalliance@meducationalliance.org)

   Science education integrates the study of and practices from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). At the fundamental level, the pedagogy involves teaching and learning that emphasizes the use of scientific inquiry and the engineering design process to develop students’ problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills. Unfortunately, funding and professional development for teachers, which is essential to assure successful implementation of science lessons to increase the potential for student achievement, is lacking. Therefore, this NSF-funded science-education research project explored the development of a model that deepens the existing partnerships among grass-roots, non-profit community education organizations, K-12 public schools, and local university partners. Together, they worked collaboratively to develop systems where teachers could implement high-quality, place-based, NGSS-aligned science learning opportunities that actively engage students. This research project may lead to a future proposal for high-quality professional development for teachers, using the Teacher-to-Teacher professional development model, with the goal of impacting student achievement in science. The goals of this research project were to (1) develop a collaborative model that deepens community, public school, and university partnerships designed to support science educators and their students and (2) explore the current academic and social impact of the Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program as a possible solution for the development and implementation of high-quality, place-based, NGSS-aligned learning experiences for and with students. This presentation will focus on the components used to develop the partnership model with community partners, K-12 teachers and administrators, and university professors. Finally, the Teacher-to-Teacher (T2T) model and its new iteration, the Teacher-Plus-Community Partners T+CP Model will be shared for future development of place-based science learning experiences. 

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