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Abstract Racial disparities and climatological disasters are complex topics rarely addressed in K-12 curricula. Each topic has long been neglected vis-à-vis a pedagogy that has either lagged behind contemporary issues or has intentionally sidestepped the importance of addressing these themes through legal and policy mechanisms that limit educators’ ability to discuss each topic. When it comes to students and communities of color in the U.S. who are unequally vulnerable to and affected by the impacts of climate change, it is a significant disservice not to provide fundamental learning opportunities that allow students to engage and contribute to the discourse surrounding these pressing issues. This project was intended to support educators and administrators in implementing pedagogy around these topics conducive to curriculum standards and explicitly developed content for students in grades 8-12. The research question was, “How can the racial inequalities of disaster vulnerability and recovery be addressed in the classroom effectively to build a comprehensive knowledge base, to educate and empower a generation of students who will experience considerably more climatological disasters in the future?
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Case Study Pedagogy in Disaster Education: Integrating Knowledge While Cultivating Epistemic Reflexivity
Abstract Research in cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS) has demonstrated that environmental disasters are not only techno-scientifically and socio-politically complex but also epistemically complex -- involving perspectival diversity; multiple, often conflicting forms of evidence; data gaps and disinformation; and role transitions and confusions. Disasters, this research has demonstrated, are highly fraught knowledge problems that nevertheless call for pragmatic response. In this article, we describe an approach to disaster education that stems from this premise, mobilizing an Environmental Injustice Case Study Framework that draws out multiple dimensions of disaster, foregrounding the need for interdisciplinarity while immersing students in the challenges and paradoxes of disaster knowledge production. We offer both an instructional approach and a theoretical perspective on what case study pedagogy in disaster education accomplishes, and can contribute to science education writ large. Our argument is that critical approaches to case study pedagogy can scaffold many kinds of learning in both disaster and science education, helping students integrate diverse kinds of data, analysis, interpretation, and judgment, while building metacognition and epistemic reflexivity.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2214051
- PAR ID:
- 10566760
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science & Education
- Volume:
- 34
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0926-7220
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1067-1086
- Size(s):
- p. 1067-1086
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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