An official website of the United States government
Urban air pollution has been long understood as a critical threat to human health worldwide. Worsening urban air quality can cause increased rates of asthma, respiratory illnesses, and mortality. Air pollution is also an important environmental justice issue as it disproportionately burdens populations made vulnerable by their socioeconomic and health status. Using spatially continuous fine-scale air quality data for the city of Philadelphia, this study analyzed the relationship between two air pollutants: particulate matter (PM2.5, black carbon (BC), and three dimensions of vulnerability: social (non-White population), economic (poverty), and health outcomes (asthma prevalence). Spatial autoregressive models outperformed Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, indicating the importance of considering spatial autocorrelation in air pollution-related environmental-justice modeling efforts. Positive relationships were observed between PM2.5 concentrations and the socioeconomic variables and asthma prevalence. Percent non-White population was a significant predictor of BC for all models, while percent poverty was shown to not be a significant predictor of BC in the best fitting model. Our findings underscore the presence of distributive environmental injustices, where marginalized communities may bear a disproportionate burden of air pollution within Philadelphia.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on March 17, 2026
STEM Teacher Beliefs about the NASA STELLA Instrument as an Educational Tool for Justice-Centered STEAM Making
In order to promote justice-centered making in STEAM classrooms, the NASA Landsat-based Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment (STELLA) instrument is proposed as an affordable educational tool for students to collect and analyze data pertaining to vegetation health, surface temperature, and air quality. This instrument can be used to investigate justice-centered, community-based problems and promote civic engagement toward policy change for a healthier world. Our study applies the MakerTPICK theoretical framework to a qualitative study to explore changes in teacher beliefs about the STELLA instrument following three justice-centered STEAM-making activities pertaining to urban heat islands, air quality, and vegetation health. The implications of this research can be used to inform professional development and promote justice-centered learning in the STEAM classroom.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2243461
- PAR ID:
- 10609595
- Editor(s):
- Hartshorne, R; Cohen, J
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 978-1-939797-76-6
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Waynesville, NC
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Community science has increased in popularity in communities where residents hope to investigate the relationship between environmental issues and personal health. This study partnered with neighborhoods in the most polluted residential zip code in the US to conduct community science air quality monitoring. We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews after two monitoring deployments to understand participants’ subjective experiences of pollution exposure, their engagement with low-cost air quality monitors, and their data interpretation. We utilize the environmental health concept ‘exposure experience’ to analyze how participants use personal monitors, understand their data, and reinterpret their pollution exposure as a result. We further explore how participants’ understandings are circumscribed by the technological features of low-cost monitors. We find that participants adopt both protective and mitigating behavioral changes based on information gained from personal experiments and hypothesis testing while using the monitors. Of their own accord, 40% of participants in this study adopted mitigation behaviors after identifying sources that impacted their personal air quality. Our analysis reveals that real-time data accessibility through low-cost monitors builds exposure awareness and enables residents of environmental justice communities to test, validate, or invalidate sensory experiences and challenge existing assumptions. These findings point to specific pathways for using low-cost monitors to support individual decision-making and contribute to behavioral change. Findings also identify some limitations of low-cost monitors; designers of low-cost monitors should consider how composite Air Quality Scores may encourage community scientists to equally value scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., PM) with less scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., TVOCs), without additional scientific training and health-related information.more » « less
-
Abstract We propose a conceptual framework for STEM education that is centered around justice for minoritized groups. Justice‐centered STEM education engages all students in multiple STEM subjects, including data science and computer science, to explain and design solutions to societal challenges disproportionately impacting minoritized groups. We articulate the affordances of justice‐centered STEM education for one minoritized student group that has been traditionally denied meaningful STEM learning: multilingual learners (MLs). Justice‐centered STEM education with MLs leverages the assets they bring to STEM learning, including their transnational experiences and knowledge as well as their rich repertoire of meaning‐making resources. In this position paper, we propose our conceptual framework to chart a new research agenda on justice‐centered STEM education to address societal challenges with all students, especially MLs. Our conceptual framework incorporates four interrelated components by leveraging the convergence of multiple STEM disciplines to promote justice‐centered STEM education with MLs: (a) societal challenges in science education, (b) justice‐centered data science education, (c) justice‐centered computer science education, and (d) justice‐centered engineering education. The article illustrates our conceptual framework using the case of the COVID‐19 pandemic, which has presented an unprecedented societal challenge but also an unprecedented opportunity to cultivate MLs' assets toward promoting justice in STEM education. Finally, we describe how our conceptual framework establishes the foundation for a new research agenda that addresses increasingly complex, prevalent, and intractable societal challenges disproportionately impacting minoritized groups. We also consider broader issues pertinent to our conceptual framework, including the social and emotional impacts of societal challenges; the growth of science denial and misinformation; and factors associated with politics, ideology, and religion. Justice‐centered STEM education contributes to solving societal challenges that K‐12 students currently face while preparing them to shape a more just society.more » « less
-
Latinx students embodying justice‐centered science: Agency through imagining via the performing artsChildren are often denied science education that engages their emotions and multiple identities. This study focused on ways in which embodied arts‐based experiences offer opportunities for such engagement in pedagogical efforts associated with justice‐centered science. The conceptual framework that informed the study considers the body as a site of learning, embraces social justice in science education and engages with the dialectical relationship between various structures and children's agency, and frames the transdisciplinarity of imagination. The instrumental case study centered on a fifth‐grade class of Latinx students in an urban public school, as they grappled with lead contamination and peoples' rights to clean water through an embodied, arts‐based pedagogy in their science class. Analysis of video clips, student work, and other artifacts pointed to three findings on how children engaged with justice‐centered science learning via arts‐based embodied activities. Through perspective‐taking in the dramatizing, children engaged with science ideas intertwined with sociopolitical understandings. Through centering emotions that drama afforded, children experienced empathy and solidarity with others affected by environmental injustices. Through imagined and enacted participation in struggles that the embodiments necessitated, children engaged in actions to resist injustices. These findings suggest that exploring children's arts‐based embodied meaning making in science is a robust area of inquiry. Furthermore, the findings compel researchers and practitioners to consider emotions in performing arts, and how they can deepen engagement in, and exploration of, justice‐centered science. Recommendations emerged for practitioners poised to explore justice‐centered science with children through the arts.more » « less
-
Some computing education researchers have shifted focus from broadening participation to justice-centered computing education (JCCE). JCCE teaches computing through its social-political implications, empowering students to create more just futures. While prior research theorizes and explores its classroom application, we know little about the collaborative processes instructors use to design and adapt curricula for such learning. We engaged in a 3-month curriculum co-design project as part of a research-practice partnership between a CS education researcher and an after-school STEAM instructor. Through duo-ethnography, we analyzed our curriculum design process. We highlight key emerging challenges and how we resolved them through the design process. Our findings focus on balancing students' technical proficiency with justice-centered pedagogy, showing that justice-centered curriculum design requires educators' ongoing content learning, reflection on positionality, and adaptability to students' needs, including those with disabilities. These findings bridge the theoretical discussion of justice-centered computing with the practical realities of curriculum design.more » « less
