Illuminating political clarity in culturally relevant science instruction

Abstract

Failure to improve achievement in K-12 science for racially minoritized students and students living in poverty continues to challenge the inclusionary rhetoric of science for all. Science education researchers, teacher educators, and educators must consider the racialized and classed inequalities that continue to limit students’ opportunities to learn. To achieve this, we must be able to conceptualize sociopolitical pedagogical approaches and learn from empirical examples of science teachers who consciously attend to their students’ realities in empowering rather than deficit-oriented ways. We argue for the importance of utilizing culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and attending to and theorizing an educator’s sociopolitical consciousness and enactments of political clarity in science instruction. Our analysis highlights how an African American male science teacher responds to his middle school students’ realities and identities as African American youth and children growing up contexts with limited economic resources. Through classroom observations and interviews with the teacher, we nuance our understanding of sociopolitical consciousness, the third tenet of CRP, as reliant upon a teacher’s political clarity and examine how, through instruction, science teachers can position students and their realities as consonant with knowing and doing science and being scientists.

1 |. INTRODUCTION

For some time, many scholars have challenged the science for all rhetoric to live up to its inclusionary, empowering potential (Bang & Medin, 2010; Barton, 1998; Barton & Osborne, 2001; Bryan & Atwater, 2002; Mutegi, 2011). These scholars attend to the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of students’ lives, and the interplay between those realities and the social negotiation of scientific ways of knowing, doing, and being in learning environments, such as science classrooms. Racialized and classed power dynamics in science classrooms and schools continue to be ever-present; researchers and science teachers must attend to these dynamics, and to the teaching practices that might mitigate them, when (re)designing learning environments with science for all in mind (Hand, Penuel, & Gutiérrez, 2012; Tolbert, Schindel, & Rodríguez, 2018). In so doing, minoritized students may have more opportunities to engage in robust science learning and expand the possible interconnections they see between science, themselves, and their teachers (Bang, Brown, Barton, Rosebery, & Warren, 2017; Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, & Lee, 2006; Windschitl & Barton, 2016).

Despite this rhetorical recognition of racialized and classed dynamics in science education, there are significant, ongoing inequities across in and out-of-school science learning environments (Dawson, 2017; Penuel, 2017). Ladson-Billings’ (1995, 2006, 2009) framework, culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), provides one promising pathway for addressing racial and economic inequalities in science education, including how students are perceived in relation to science disciplines and how they are positioned as capable learners and achievers. This framework recognizes that systemic inequities affect which students have access to rigorous instruction that is relevant to their lives and experiences, and how race has been a key determinant of this historically (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Madkins & Nasir, in press; Nasir & Hand, 2006; Oakes, Welner, Yonezawa, & Allen, 2005). Relative to science teaching and learning, CRP remains underexplored and conceptually underdeveloped, despite its success in other content areas and its potential within science education. When minoritized students engage in culturally relevant science learning activities, they can make connections to science and their everyday lives, become more affectively engaged in science learning, and develop their agency toward using science for social change (Madkins & Nasir, in press; Nasir et al., 2006; National Research Council, 2012; Tzou & Bell, 2010). Ultimately, culturally relevant approaches to science teaching and learning can support students’ understanding of domain-specific knowledge and engagement and interest in science.

A growing body of scholarship examines how preservice and inservice science teachers learn to and/or enact culturally relevant pedagogies (e.g., Adams & Laughter, 2012; Boutte, Kelly-Jackson, & Johnson, 2010; Brown, 2017; Brown & Crippen, 2016; Laughter & Adams, 2012; Madkins & Nasir, I Press; Mensah, 2011, 2013; see Aronson & Laughter, 2016 or Brown, 2017 for reviews). Within this literature, there are limited empirical examples that illustrate how inservice science teachers enact CRP with attention to the intersections of race and class and science content and practices. Moreover, there are few empirical examples in science education that explicitly attend to the theoretical and pedagogical complexities inherent to the third tenet of CRP, sociopolitical consciousness. Engaging in this line of research contributes to the field’s understanding of how science teachers can productively expand the valued repertoires of knowing and doing in science classrooms and support students in feeling connected to science (Bang et al., 2017; Tan & Barton, 2012).

In the United States, issues of race, racism, and power dynamics are deeply intertwined and cannot be ignored within science education. Race is a concept that refers to different types of bodies (Omi & Winant, 1993) and indexes notions of (in)humanity, power, and privilege that are socially, politically, legislatively, and historically constructed and reproduced (Milner, 2006). For example, tropes and stereotypes fail to reflect the nuances of how race is lived and performed yet are assumed to be deterministic of individual or groups’ ability levels and ways of knowing and being (Bliss, 2012; Nasir, 2012; Nasir, Snyder, Shah, & Ross, 2012). The construct of poverty similarly works to confer low status based on income generation or some presumed moral failing when, in fact, it is “based on particular characteristics and situations people find themselves in because of the amount of money and related material capital that they have or do not have” (Milner, 2013, p. 9). Like race, American notions of poverty are rife with deterministic presumptions about the intelligence, capacity, and practices of individuals or groups.

The “sociopolitical salience of scientific racial thought” in both historic and contemporary time periods has guided how many scientists view, research, and take up issues of race across science disciplines (Bliss, 2012, p. 3). These views and practices have influenced not only who has been considered human and treated humanely, but also who has been able to engage in science and be recognized for their contributions and success in science. For example, when racially minoritized persons have taken up and excelled in Western science in the United States, they have been excluded from scientific careers and communities based on racist and/or classist presumptions of their intellectual capacity (Dean, 2007; Graves, 2019). Others have demonstrated how science has also been used to summarily harm racially and economically minoritized persons and communities (e.g., Henrietta Lacks, the Tuskegee Experiment) in the name of public or scientific good (Roberts, 2011; Skloot, 2017; Washington, 2006). For example, Black communities rarely benefit financially, physically, or otherwise from scientific innovations—despite their numerous contributions. These communities have been exploited physically and economically by scientific research (Boutte et al., 2010; Skloot, 2017; Washington, 2006).

Within the science education community, the historical, cultural, and sociopolitical construction of science in the United States has also been questioned as a Western notion that summarily ignores or devalues Indigenous and other racial, ethnic, and global traditions of and contributions to science (Lee & Buxton, 2008; Medin & Bang, 2014). These different traditions reflect distinct epistemological and axiological commitments to the idea of “truth” and the construction of scientific forms of knowledge and practice. Consequently, there are long-lasting tensions in how the intersections of race, racism, classism, and science influence our society and educational contexts (Bliss, 2012; Hodson, 1999; Sheth, 2019), making these issues especially relevant to science teaching and learning. This includes racist and classist notions being communicated through the hidden curriculum of schooling and the positioning of students within science classrooms in ways that affect students’ self-perceptions and beliefs about who can engage and achieve success in science (Bliss, 2012; Nasir, 2012; Nasir et al., 2012).

Given this deep connection between race, power, and science, research in K-12 science classrooms must pay greater attention to how these dynamics influence perspectives around science content and knowledge as well as teaching practices. Research is needed that further our understanding of how science teachers’ pedagogies can respond to students’ cultural backgrounds, their racial and local communities’ histories with science, and their racialized and classed realities in ways that positively position students relative to science and to scientific pursuits (including careers, coursework, and higher education). A goal of this paper, then, is to highlight a science educator whose pedagogy attends to power and oppression in the lived realities of his students. We recognize this educator as a culturally relevant teacher who illustrates the necessity of the third tenet of CRP—sociopolitical consciousness—and the importance of science teachers’ political clarity (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 1999).

In alignment with Ladson-Billings’ repeated call for the necessity of all CRP tenets (not just the first two) in pedagogical practice (Ladson-Billings, 2017), we emphasize the pedagogical value and necessity of teaching science with political clarity towards developing the third tenet of sociopolitical consciousness. We focus on the culturally and politically relevant mindset of a science teacher as it is enacted through instruction to argue that this enactment makes clear the teacher’s (a) understandings and critiques of societal inequities and (b) understandings of students’ multiple identities (e.g., as students, science learners, and members of cultural, racial, and socioeconomic groups) as complementary rather than contradictory to the discipline of science (Johnson, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Tsurusaki, Barton, Tan, Koch, & Contento, 2013). Indeed, science educators with political clarity see teaching science as an inherently political endeavor (Sleeter, 2012; Vossoughi & Vakil, 2018).

Using a case study approach (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017, 2018), we analyze how one middle school science teacher positions his students and their sociopolitical realities as consonant with knowing and doing science. In calling attention to how the teacher’s pedagogy is grounded in his political clarity, we highlight how he thinks about and confronts the racialized and classed realities of his students who go to school in—and often live in—underserved areas. First, we review science for all and related school science reform efforts (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989; National Research Council, 2012), as well as the literature related to asset-based approaches to science teaching and learning. Second, we explain the tenets of CRP and the undertheorized nature of sociopolitical consciousness generally, and specifically within science education literature. Finally, we analyze classroom and interview data to illustrate how a science teacher conceives of and enacts his political clarity in ways that promote a culturally relevant approach grounded firmly in his sociopolitical consciousness and understandings of science disciplines, teaching, and learning.

2 |. LITERATURE REVIEW

School science is typically defined as “the traditional natural sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and (more recently) earth, space, and environmental sciences” in the United States (National Research Council, 2012, p. 11). The main goal of science for all in the United States has been to develop students’ scientific literacy, including supporting students in scientific reasoning, engaging in scientific inquiry, and developing scientific habits of mind (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989; National Research Council, 2012). Some science for all initiatives and policies (e.g., PCAST, Project 2061, Rising Above the Gathering Storm) have emphasized fostering domain-specific literacies and improving student outcomes in science (e.g., achievement, advanced course completion). For example, in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, policymakers recommended offering incentives (e.g., a 50% rebate for test costs) to students who receive a passing score on Advanced Placement (AP) exams to increase the number of secondary students taking AP science courses (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine, 2011).

Some researchers have focused on addressing disparate science achievement outcomes based on racial, ethnic, or linguistic subgroups to achieve science for all (e.g., Curran & Kellogg, 2016; Gonzalez & Kuenzi, 2012; Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2016; Parker, Abel, & Denisova, 2015). Others have offered solutions that take up specific equity outcomes, such as increasing access to high-quality K-12 science instruction, highly qualified science teachers, resources, and/or inclusive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) high schools (Lynch et al., 2018; Means, Wang, Young, Peters, & Lynch, 2016; National Research Council, 2011, 2012).

Additionally, numerous broadening participation efforts (e.g., National Science Foundation [NSF] Broadening Participation Working Group, NSF Historically Black Colleges, and Universities Undergraduate Program) have been implemented since 2007 (National Science Foundation, 2008). The aim of these collective efforts is to increase the number of students, especially women and students from racially and classed minoritized groups, in the United States entering and graduating from the science pipeline (Malcolm & Malcolm, 2011; National Science Foundation, 2017, 2019; Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield, 2011). Such efforts reiterate the importance of fostering diversity and inclusion within science-related professions and fields by addressing racial, gender, class, and other inequities to achieve science for all (National Academies Press, 2011; National Science Foundation, 2017, 2019). Yet, these broadening participation efforts have been critiqued for narrowly focusing on increasing the number of individuals pursuing science and/or STEM-related professions to enhance America’s positioning in global competition, financial prosperity, and military power rather than meeting individuals’ or communities’ interests or needs (Secada, 1989; Tuck & Yang, 2018; Vossoughi & Vakil, 2018).

While access and achievement are important steps toward addressing racial, class, and gender disparities, this “dominant axis” of equity (Gutiérrez, 2007, p. 39) does not necessarily facilitate awareness about the sociohistorical and sociopolitical factors that marginalize and exclude minoritized students from engaging in science learning and fields (Bryan & Atwater, 2002; Madkins, 2016; Rodriguez, 2015; Skloot, 2017; Valoyes-Chavez & Martin, 2016). Furthermore, broadening participation approaches do not address growing concerns that our frame on who learners are expected to be in science classrooms is narrowly aligned with white middle-class norms. In other words, minoritized students are often expected to engage in science teaching and learning experiences that are assimilation-oriented and do not value their existing scientific forms of knowledge or scientific practices (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Bang, Warren, Rosebery, & Medin, 2012; Morales-Doyle, 2017; Mutegi, 2011; Windschitl & Barton, 2016). Some scholars assert that such approaches to science teaching and learning are undergirded by deficit-model thinking (Licona, 2013; Morales-Doyle, 2017; Nasir, 2012; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001; Zeidler, 2016). Others point out that while access to high-quality instruction can increase students’ opportunities to learn, increasing access does not ensure that teachers, peers, and others will support minoritized students to engage in rigorous science learning (Nasir, 2012; Ortiz & Capraro, 2016; Russell, 2014; Varelas, Martin, & Kane, 2012).

The recent adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), with its focus on the interconnectedness of science practices and knowledge (NGSS Lead States, 2013; National Research Council, 2012), presents both opportunities and challenges for science teachers and researchers. Teachers can deepen their use of asset-based approaches, like CRP, to reframe notions of students’ abilities, linguistic repertoires, and measures of student success while researchers can conduct research that aims to understand these issues and related teaching practices. Relatedly, the National Research Council’s (2012) Framework and NGSS identify eight science practices that are essential—and we view as useful—for all students to learn. For example, the first science practice is asking questions. This practice encourages teachers to support students in clarifying and describing how nature and the designed world works, and to examine these questions within the scope of the available resources of one’s classroom or the surrounding environment. This inclusive notion about what resources are needed to do and understand science is critical for contexts where students grapple with sociopolitical realities and inequities in and out of schools. Furthermore, this focus on science practices requires teachers to make connections to “students’ community-based sensemaking repertoires…to create a culturally expansive space of science learning” (Bang et al., 2017, p. 46). In the hands of competent teachers who engage CRP, this framing has the potential to reclaim science as the provenance of any inquisitive student despite stereotypes or resources.

NGSS builds upon the National Research Council’s (2012) recommendations for school science instruction, which includes an emphasis on the importance of students understanding science as a way of knowing, a human endeavor, and a field concerned about the world. The NGSS (2013) and Framework (National Research Council, 2012) each take up ideas of making connections between science disciplines and community contexts, as well as issues of diversity and equity, but do so in superficial or tangential ways. For example, the National Research Council’s (2012) Framework acknowledges the importance of teachers being more responsive to the needs of diverse student populations and related approaches (e.g., culturally responsive teaching). This occurs, however, in a separate chapter entitled “Equity and Diversity in Science and Engineering Education” rather than being taken up directly within teaching standards or practice (National Research Council, 2012). Moreover, both of these reform documents lack a political stance or address the structural inequities that minoritized communities continue to face and that have historically contributed to their disparate access to rigorous science learning opportunities (Philip & Azevedo, 2017; Rodriguez, 2015; Varelas et al., 2018). While there is specific attention to disparities in academic performance and access in science by racial, ethnic, gender, and other subgroups, there are not corollary reforms that explicitly address inequities and the continued resistance to—whether intentional or unintentional—encouraging teachers to shift their pedagogical dispositions and practices relative to minoritized students’ potential and success (Rodriguez, 2015).

The development of NGSS could have been an opportunity to place culturally, socially, and politically relevant ways of knowing and teaching at the center of reforms. Instead, teacher educators and teachers are left to connect the conceptual and pedagogical dots between asset-based theoretical approaches, teaching practices, and science practices within science education (e.g., CRP), which are some of the gray areas of reform we address in this paper. Still missing are clear pedagogical examples that make real on science for all claims (Gutiérrez & Barton, 2015; Johnson, 2011; Varelas et al., 2018). For researchers, such examples offer an opportunity to study how science teachers implement CRP in their classrooms and to identify effective strategies for utilizing CRP in science (Kelly-Jackson & Jackson, 2011; Mensah, 2013; Parsons & Carlone, 2013). Without question, this study requires an understanding of schools as complex, culturally dynamic and fluid sites (Nasir & Hand, 2006) wherein teachers are cultural and political workers whose CRP mindsets often get “negotiated in the context of social interactions” (Ye, Varelas, & Guajardo, 2011, p. 873). We thus also need more nuanced conceptual and methodological tools that capture the varied ways teachers enact antideficit model thinking and their sociopolitical consciousness through their practice, such as examining how teachers position students relative to science disciplines and related careers.

2.1 |. Culturally relevant pedagogy

CRP is a strategy to address the education debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006), including disparities in learning outcomes, through promoting equitable and humanizing instruction for students from minoritized groups in and beyond the domain of science (see Aronson & Laughter, 2016 for a full review of CRP across disciplines). CRP has been identified to be an effective strategy for teaching students from racially, ethnically, and linguistically minoritized groups (Gay, 2000; Howard, 2001, 2010; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2017). It is based upon a teacher’s deliberate and explicit acknowledgment that all students in the classroom are valued, capable, and can excel; this acknowledgment is rooted in a teacher’s beliefs and ideologies about the nature of teaching and learning as relational, cultural, communal, collaborative, and political (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

From this ideological foundation, CRP as a pedagogical approach is often distilled into three broad tenets: (a) all students are capable of and need to have academic success (both achievement and learning), so teachers must have high expectations for all students; (b) teachers support students’ development and maintenance of cultural competence by utilizing students’ culture for learning and helping them develop cultural capital to succeed in the dominant culture; and (c) teachers plan and implement learning experiences that allow students to develop sociopolitical consciousness (i.e., the recognition and desire to act upon societal inequities), allowing students to see themselves as change agents who can challenge the status quo and inequities in schools, communities, and society (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2006).

While the precise enactment of CRP will vary across classrooms and teachers (Abt-Perkins, 2010; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2017), a commonality is how the teacher thinks about his/her students and consciously uses CRP to prepare students to think critically and be “competent” to deal with inequities in our world (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 30). CRP pedagogues show their students that they care deeply for them (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2006; McKinney de Royston et al., 2017; Warren, 2018), reject deficit-model thinking about minoritized students (Howard, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 2006a), and view their students’ cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) as a resource for learning (Howard, 2012; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2017).

2.2 |. CRP in science

Research suggests that when teachers implement asset-based approaches like CRP when teaching science, it is critical for teachers to guide students in making explicit connections between science and domain-specific content, classroom investigations, and students’ communities and personal lives (Grimberg & Gummer, 2013; Licona, 2013). This requires recognizing that students enter science classrooms with prior knowledge, linguistic repertoires, and experiences from in and outside of schools that can serve as resources for science learning (Garza & Arreguín-Anderson, 2018; Rosebery, Warren, & Conant, 1992; Upadhyay, 2006; Windschitl & Barton, 2016). For example, in Licona’s (2013) ethnographic study, Mexican and Mexican American youth in a Mexico/United States border town were given opportunities to bring herbs and other plants from their homes to school. Students sharing their understandings of how to use the plants to make medicines to treat commonplace illnesses “would be a perfect point [for teachers] to affirm students’ prior knowledge and engage them during botany studies or soil science” (Licona, 2013, p. 869). In linking their science learning goals (e.g., student development of domain-specific knowledge) to what students already know, teachers may improve students’ academic performance and attitudes toward science (Atwater, 1994; Barton & Tan, 2009; Bianchini & Brenner, 2010; Kern, Howard, Brasch, Fiedler, & Cadwell, 2015; Upadhyay, Maruyama, & Albrecht, 2017).

Science teachers who embrace CRP can facilitate more equitable learning opportunities (Boutte et al., 2010; Grimberg & Gummer, 2013; Kelly-Jackson, 2007; Rodriguez, 2015, 2017). The growing empirical evidence for the use of CRP in science classrooms suggests that student learning improves when science teachers value students’ funds of knowledge and out-of-school realities while developing relationships with their students (Goldston & Nichols, 2009; Licona, 2013; Patchen & Cox-Petersen, 2008; Tsurusaki et al., 2013). The competent use of CRP in science is more than a sporadic addition to an existing curriculum (Milner, 2011; Sutherland & Swayze, 2013); it involves drawing upon relational and antideficit orientations to enact culturally relevant, science content-related learning goals that simultaneously develop students’ self-confidence, affinity, and their awareness of their contributions to and capacity to do science.

Although the extant literature suggests that CRP is and can be applied to science instruction (Goldston & Nichols, 2009; Johnson, 2011; Mendoza, 2009; Moore Mensah, 2011; Rodriguez, 2017; Upadhyay et al., 2017), there is limited work on CRP in science in elementary and middle school classrooms. Research suggests that this void exists because some K-8 teachers have difficulty envisioning the use of CRP in science instruction (Moore Mensah, 2013; Underwood & Moore Mensah, 2018; Young, 2010) and few researchers have examined how K-8 teachers implement CRP in science classrooms (e.g., Johnson, 2011; Laughter & Adams, 2012; Milner, 2011). Another reason for this void is that science education researchers have not (yet) studied the micro- and macro-level challenges teachers encounter as they attempt to do this study effectively within K-8 science classrooms to the extent that researchers of literacy, social studies, or bilingual education have (e.g., Aquino-Sterling & Rodríguez-Valls, 2016; Esposito & Swain, 2009; Irizarry & Antrop-González, 2007).

2.3 |. Theoretical framework

Over two decades ago, Ladson-Billings (1995) articulated a vision of teaching that encouraged educators to be aware of and challenge the intersections of culture and teaching at the level of the classroom and of society. These challenges include the types of social relations, knowledge, and identities that are valued, produced, and cultivated within a learning space (Howard, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Laughter & Adams, 2012). More recently, scholars have argued that in practice the sociopolitical impetus and vision of CRP have been ignored or diluted and that the criteria could benefit from greater precision (Fasching-Varner & Seriki, 2011; Paris, 2012; Young, 2010). In part, what is at question is the third tenet—developing students’ sociopolitical consciousness—which is an oft-overlooked aspect of CRP and can present the greatest difficulties for teachers to interpret and implement (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Morrison, Robbins, & Rose, 2008; Sleeter, 2012; Tsurusaki et al., 2013; Young, 2010).

Within the CRP in science education literature (see Brown, 2017 for a full review), sociopolitical consciousness has been largely absent and there are few examples of how science teachers engage this aspect of culturally relevant teaching. To highlight this third tenet and elaborate the nature of political clarity (Bartolome, 1994; Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 1999) that can characterize a teacher’s thoughts and actions, we draw attention to how developing students’ sociopolitical consciousness relies upon the clarity of science teachers as enacted through instruction. This clarity represents a teacher’s deep understanding of how schools and society operate to reproduce inequalities and are structured to differentially privilege certain experiences and forms of knowledge over others, such as those of the white, middle class over those of racially and economically minoritized students. Student success or lack thereof is thus understood in relation to institutional (rather than just individual) factors, the nature of oppression, and students’ experiences in and out of schools. A teacher with political clarity can recognize the ways in which students’ forms of knowledge and ways of being are positioned in society, schools, science classrooms, and the domains of science, as well as students’ interests and resources for achieving in those domains and related career pathways. These understandings shape how sociopolitically conscious teachers protect, care, and advocate for their students in and beyond their classrooms, and how they verbally and interactionally position their students as capable learners and engineers or scientists (McKinney de Royston et al., 2017; McKinney de Royston, Madkins, Givens, & Nasir, Under Review).

Sleeter (2012) points out two difficulties teachers experience in conceptualizing and implementing the third tenet of CRP. First, for teachers to develop the sociopolitical consciousness of their students they must have their own. Part of the issue here is that many teachers develop their sociopolitical consciousness or political clarity over time. If a teacher’s own political clarity is nascent, the teacher may not engage in robustly developing that of their students or may develop it in superficial or problematic ways. Thus, a teacher must have a well-developed political clarity in order for it to be infused into their pedagogical thoughts and actions and to support the development of such consciousness in students. In sum, CRP teachers’ consciousness must be robust enough to weave it into the daily fabric of their teaching; it must constitute their pedagogical approach rather than being an add-on.

Second, the task of incorporating political clarity into the everyday practice of teaching may seem overwhelming, particularly for novice teachers or teachers for whom this clarity is novel or emerging. Some teachers may facilitate periodic or as needed science learning activities (e.g., movies, Black History Month programming, community speakers) that address sociopolitical issues or perspectives or have social justice-oriented classroom artifacts (e.g., posters, books). Although students may benefit from these, this is not the same as a pedagogy that is grounded in a political clarity and related commitments to developing students’ sociopolitical consciousness. It would be impossible to expect that each lesson, task, or text would be designed to deeply support students’ consciousness; such an expectation does not mirror the adaptive, varied nature of teaching and learning. Yet, developing students’ critical perspectives about inequities in our world is a necessary—but often overlooked—component of engaging CRP in science teaching, learning, and research. Developing students’ sociopolitical consciousness requires an array of methods for consistently breaking down what is being learned and why it is being learned to allow students’ intellectual growth and perspective to go beyond that which is merely a replication of the status quo or that of an individual teacher (Milner, 2011).

These constraints related to implementing the last tenet of CRP are especially evident in science education. Research has shown that science teachers often view enacting a political clarity and developing their students’ sociopolitical consciousness as hard to implement (Johnson, 2011; Rivera Maulucci, 2013; Young, 2010). This can be because teachers do not share their students’ racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds and/or do not have prior experiences with systemic or institutional inequities, although teachers who do may also struggle (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2011; Rivera Maulucci, 2013). Research has also shown that some teachers feel elementary or middle school students are too young to engage in conversations about -isms (e.g., classism, racism, sexism) or structural inequities (Freire & Valdez, 2017; Young, 2010). Others have found that some teachers believe these discussion topics to be beyond the purview of STEM classrooms, especially elementary or middle school science classrooms (Bang et al., 2017; Castaneda & Mejia, 2018; Godfrey & Parker, 2010; Nasir, 2016).

Finally, science educators may overlook the consciousness tenet of CRP if their school contexts are wrought with pressures to increase students’ test scores or achieve grade-level content standards (Rivera Maulucci, 2013). This may be the case in school communities that grapple with high rates of teacher turnover and/or serve as the training grounds for new teachers, phenomena that disproportionately affect schools with historically marginalized populations of students (Bristol, 2018; Johnson, 2011). In such cases, science teachers may focus on a narrow conception of science and related content and thinking rather than developing students’ critical consciousness around what is taught (Rivera Maulucci, 2013).

Importantly, CRP in science, particularly the third tenet, is based upon a teacher’s political clarity that: (a) scientific ways of knowing and being are not neutral, culture-free, or objective but are situated within sociohistorical dynamics of power and distinct—not universal—epistemologies; and (b) these dynamics play out through interactions and have implications for how science is perceived and taught across science learning environments; and (c) scientific practices, activities, projects, as well as scientists themselves, are not politically neutral but are similarly embedded in histories and dynamics of power (Bang & Medin, 2010; Barton, 2003; Johnson, 2011; Kane & Varelas, 2016; Tsurusaki et al., 2013; Varelas et al., 2012; Vossoughi, Hooper, & Escudé, 2016). Critical sociocultural and sociopolitical scholarship draws our attention to the pedagogical value of political clarity in science relative to issues of power and identity in science writ large and to how that gets instantiated within teacher–student and student–student interactions and curriculum within science classrooms. These scholars also offer insights into the political clarity necessary for science teachers to attend to which kinds of knowledge is being counted as scientific and how students are positioned relative to these ideas and to science education standards, as well as how students are positioned in relation to who scientists and engineers are and what they do.

This focus on the third tenet of CRP is a move both to emphasize the collective importance of all three tenets of CRP and to recalibrate CRP back to its political origins. This involves recognizing the political clarity of teachers not as an in-the-head phenomenon, but as enacted through instruction. These enactments demonstrate how science teachers’ sociopolitical understandings and critiques can reframe students’ multiple identities (e.g., as students, science learners, members of cultural, racial, and socioeconomic groups, etc.) as complementary rather than contradictory to science (Johnson, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Tsurusaki et al., 2013). To be clear, CRP in science instruction is not an instrumentalist or best practices approach to pedagogy and we want to avoid essentializing it in those ways (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Instruction may vary widely across teachers based on personality, background, pedagogical style, and/or teacher education and teaching experiences; thus, every teacher will have a personalized version of how CRP is enacted (Abt-Perkins, 2010).

Science teachers guided by a political clarity support the development of students who are intellectually engaged, think critically, and have agency and are equipped to challenge societal inequities in and through science. In the following sections of this paper, we analyze how Mr. Coles’ political clarity guides his pedagogical thoughts and actions toward developing his students’ sociopolitical consciousness. We pay particular attention to how Mr. Coles positions his Black students and their structural realities as legitimate to the endeavor of science.

3 |. METHODS

The data presented in this paper are from a larger study situated in a Northern California city that has grappled with inequities in schooling experiences and outcomes for African American students and other students from racialized, classed, and linguistically minoritized communities. Our team of researchers sought to examine how district reform initiatives were being taken up within schools. On the basis of the recommendations from key stakeholders (parents, teachers, community members, and district officials), we focused on seven schools (two elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools) that were recognized as successful or as a site where positive change was underway relative to African American students. We defined success by normative academic measures (e.g., Academic Performance Indicator scores), a positive, inclusive school climate for African Americans, or both. Drawing upon data from one middle school in this study, we address the following research question: How does a middle school science teacher attend to students’ racialized and classed realities and position them relative to science?

3.1 |. Study context

This paper focuses on data from North Pineville Middle School (NPMS), a predominantly African American school with <250 students. NPMS is located in a lower income, majority minority neighborhood and was part of the district’s initiative to create corridors of STEM-focused middle and high schools in underserved areas, one focal point of the city’s larger political project of urban renewal and the rebranding of urban schools as “good” schools (Bullock, 2017). The STEM corridor schools were framed as a way to increase the number of minoritized students from the district entering STEM educational pathways and careers. This effort brought some resources to the school that increased students’ and teachers’ access to technology (e.g., a computer lab, SMART boards, and laptops), but other enhancements or supports to improve the quality of STEM education were limited at the time of data collection (e.g., instructional coaches, professional development funds). After several observations at NPMS within the shared spaces of the school (e.g., hallways, playground, etc.) and within classrooms, we were intrigued by one of the science teachers, Mr. Coles. He consistently enacted all three tenets of CRP in science instruction, especially the third tenet—sociopolitical consciousness—which is rarely examined theoretically or empirically within science education.

3.2 |. Study design

Mr. Coles’ stood out as a singularly illuminating (Yin, 2009) and intense case (Patton, 2002) of CRP in science where the racialized and classed discourses and realities of students’ lives were highly visible. Several Black and non-Black teachers at NPMS, and at other sites in the larger study, were conscious about their lives as teachers and as individuals in ways that blur the boundaries between the phenomenon of study—their pedagogy—and the context in which their pedagogy occurs (Yin, 2009). Mr. Coles’ political clarity was both uniquely explicit to the sociopolitical lives and realities of Black students and attentive to the science content he taught. As a former science teacher, he often positioned students relative to science to validate who students were because of the content and context of what they were being taught. We also chose to study Mr. Coles because of the explicit and multimodal presentation of his political clarity and how it was infused into his instruction and the science content. This approach was distinct from what we observed in other NPMS science classrooms and at other schools.

A close analysis of Mr. Coles’ pedagogical approach offers a rich description of CRP in science, of which there are few empirical examples, especially in elementary and middle school classrooms. This close analysis allows us to examine an underdeveloped and understudied tenet of CRP (sociopolitical consciousness) that we view as necessary to any enactment of CRP in teaching science. Mr. Coles’ instruction brings to light the nuanced ways the political clarity that facilitates his science content and practice-oriented form of CRP. Thus, he represents an intense case (Patton, 2002) of a teacher’s political clarity through which we can expand our understanding of this less-implemented and less-studied third tenet of CRP in science and of CRP more broadly. Following these points of inquiry (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017, 2018), this study’s research question began to take shape: How does a science teacher attend to students’ racialized and classed realities and position them relative to science?

3.3 |. Participant

At the time of data collection, Kendric Coles, an African American man in his 30s, was a former science teacher at NPMS and in a nearby school district. He was in his first year as vice principal at NPMS and had recently been charged with being the substitute teacher for the science and engineering teacher who was on leave. In addition to other science courses, that teacher’s course load included a 50-min Engineering Academy class, a course all 7th and 8th graders took as part of the school’s efforts to revise their STEM curricula and course offerings. As part of his substituting duties, Mr. Coles taught the Engineering Academy class.

Mr. Coles grew up in a working-class neighborhood across town from NPMS and attended high school with many of his students’ parents. His physique belied his athletic past as a professional football player—which students and parents were often surprised to learn—and Mr. Coles had a humorous yet serious personality. His pedagogical style consisted of informal lectures that encompassed the day’s science learning goals and related tasks, broader life skills, as well as social commentary and spontaneous impersonations.

3.4 |. Data sources

Sensitive to the district’s and NPMS educators’ desire for our observations to be minimally invasive to instructional time, our research team worked with NPMS administrators to develop a timeline for data collection. Because educators were concerned about our presence during testing and assessment periods during the academic year, we negotiated a timeline for data collection during the spring semester of 2013–2014. While our engagement at NPMS continued for the next two academic years, and our broader analyses are informed by that prolonged engagement, here our focus and data sources rely upon that first intense period of observation.

Three researchers were dedicated to data collection at NPMS in 2013–2014: an African American female graduate student (first author) and an African American female postdoctoral researcher (second author), and an Asian American female graduate student. Our data sources at NPMS include participant observations of classrooms (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011; Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) and semistructured interviews (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Dearnley, 2005; Krauss et al., 2009) with teachers (N = 6), administrators (N = 2), and students and families (N = 3). The interviews lasted approximately 45–60 min and were later transcribed by undergraduate research assistants. Interview questions for parents and students focused on better understanding parents’ and students’ experiences and perspectives on the school’s relative success. When interviewing teachers, school staff, and administrators, we asked questions about their pedagogical practices, understandings and implementation of the district’s reforms, and the ways they viewed the school as successful. Individual interviews were also conducted at NPMS to limit the burden of travel and loss of work time for educators and instructional time for students.

Researchers also observed classrooms, informal interactions between students, teachers, parents, and other school personnel (e.g., before/after school, hallways in between classes, cafeteria), and school events (e.g., the annual science fair, graduation rehearsal) weekly for a total of 22 sets of ethnographic fieldnotes (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011; Emerson et al., 1995; Jurow, 2014). Respectful of the wishes of educators and broader NPMS community, our research team collected observational data (i.e., ethnographic fieldnotes) rather than audio and/or video recordings of classroom observations. During classroom observations at NPMS, researchers paid particular attention to pedagogical practices, such as the discourse or interactions related to student positioning and identity, discipline practices, teacher–student and student–student relationships, and the quality of the academic content being taught. Due to our timeline overlapping with a few school events (e.g., 8th grade graduation, annual science fair), our team of researchers adjusted our planned classroom observations, resulting in fewer observations of classroom instruction, and additional observations of school activities and events.

NPMS followed a cohort model where groups of students followed a similar schedule and rotated together from teacher to teacher. As participant observers (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011; Emerson et al., 1995) we made this rotation alongside students. Our fieldnotes reflect how this cohort model made the teacher–student dynamics for each classroom particularly visible. Students’ engagement—as determined by on-task behavior, outward signs of interest and focus on the teacher or task, and willingness to follow teacher instructions and engage in class activity—shifted depending on who the teacher was. Students in the 7th grade cohorts were more engaged in Mr. Coles’ class, which led to our observations of Mr. Coles’ 7th grade Engineering Academy class three times a week for 4 weeks (fieldnotes N = 12). At the end of the semester following classroom observations at NPMS, the first author interviewed Mr. Coles. In this paper, we heavily draw upon this interview, which focused on Mr. Coles’ background as an educator and administrator, his perspectives on working with African American students, his experiences at the school, and the various reforms the district encouraged school sites to implement.

Of the 12 observations we have in Mr. Coles’ classroom, the vignette presented in the results section (lines 1–81) is a demonstration of his version of CRP in science. Mr. Coles informal lecture style reflects what Johnson et al. (2013) call speeches. Connecting speeches to CRP, Johnson et al. (2013) explain that speeches are “characterized by cultural modes of interaction and speech patterns common to the Black community” (p. 2) and represent a break from “typical” instruction linguistic patterns and interactions to orient students’ to be metacognitive about their behavior or learning. We see these patterns and functions in Mr. Coles’ speeches and argue that his speeches frequently modeled various ways of scientific thinking and served to positively position students. Speeches were a common occurrence in Mr. Coles instructional pattern, with some speeches being shorter or longer. Depending on the participation structures and length of a given lesson, Mr. Coles speeches offered more or fewer opportunities for him to “package” the social messages—about his students as Black people, as scientists or engineers, as learners—that he wanted to convey.

3.5 |. Focal vignette

We chose the focal vignette because the positioning of students and the treatment of the content in this speech are distinct from other STEM classrooms, particularly science classes, observed at NPMS or other sites as part of the larger study. The 6-week unit we observed was part of a full-year middle school science curriculum that focused on concepts in physical science and engineering design challenges. The content of the unit relied on engineering as defined by NGSS guidelines, such as engaging in systematic, iterative engineering design processes (NGSS Lead States, 2013; National Research Council, 2012). Within NGSS, engineering is integrated as an essential element of science education; engineering design, like scientific inquiry, is seen as a systematic practice that is instrumental to addressing society’s most fundamental societal and environmental issues. Engineering is not reducible to applied science but has many commonalities with science practices, such as defining problems, specifying criteria and constraints for acceptable solutions, or generating and evaluating multiple solutions.

3.6 |. Data analysis

During data collection, the research team met weekly to report out on that week’s data collection efforts, discuss emerging themes, and confirm the data collection plan for the following week. To examine and capture emerging themes, each researcher read through a set of fieldnotes, and later interview transcripts, and employed open and in-vivo coding (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). As part of the iterative process of analyzing fieldnotes and interview transcripts (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011), our research team first identified broad thematic areas and refined those themes into specific codes and subcodes (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Miles et al., 2014; Saldaña, 2016; Saldaña & Omasta, 2018). This analysis process was facilitated by the Dedoose^® software package, which allowed researchers to independently open code, share their coding with one another, and iteratively refine codes and subcodes. At meetings involving the entire research team, emerging themes were discussed, codes and subcodes were refined, and similarities and differences in patterns within and across school sites and levels of schooling were examined. Specifically, the larger study identified the resources, practices, and structures that were characteristic of each site and supported that site’s academic success or successful school climate for African American students (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2018).

Through this weekly analysis process, it became clear that Mr. Coles, like other educators in the larger study, brought into his instruction what he understood about his students and the context in which they lived and learned. Mr. Coles shared a racial and class background with his students and had grown up and lived in the same city, albeit in a different part. Thus, he was both an insider and outsider to the communities the school served. Like other teachers at NPMS and other sites, Mr. Coles leveraged that insider status to relate to students. At the same time, he engaged in numerous conversations with students, parents, and other youth because he was an outsider to the specific communities surrounding NPMS. Mr. Coles was not of the same generation as his students but tried to stay current on students’ individual and cultural interests.

4 |. RESULTS

4.1 |. Science instruction guided by a teacher’s political clarity in action

Below we present a vignette of Mr. Coles’ class that best represents that day in his class as we experienced it. In the section following the vignette, we unpack how the vignette evidence Mr. Coles’ political clarity and his approach to CRP in science instruction, as well as additional examples of his instructional approach. By presenting a vignette of our observations, we seek to bring “readers into the scene” to create an experience of their own (Ellis, 2004, p. 142). This presentation also preserves the contextual richness of Mr. Coles’ class and reveals the nuances and architecture of his political clarity and politically relevant science approach. We also present this vignette to demonstrate the normal streams of activity that exist in Mr. Coles’ classroom and how participants respond interactionally to Mr. Coles’ speeches (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Rather than present interview data about Mr. Coles’ intentions or students’ uptake, also subjective posthoc interpretations even if by participants, we offer an interactional perspective on a classroom scene. An interactional perspective (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) focuses not on what participants say about their activity or interactions, but how activity or interactions unfold.

The vignette presented draws on a perspective of human interaction as a social accomplishment that is negotiated between participants through verbal and nonverbal communication (Erickson, 1976, 2004). In a social accomplishment, meaning making among people is understood to be a coconstructed, jointly negotiated and produced activity rather than an individual process. The interactional smoothness (Erickson & Mohatt, 1982) or lack of disruption (verbal or nonverbal) to Mr. Coles’ speech reflects how participants, or in this case students, take up (or at least do not resist) Mr. Coles’ expectations or positionings. On the basis of the students’ interactional responses—like agreeable laughter, facial expressions, putting on a hoodie and putting one’s head on a desk, related or unrelated questions or comments—we can make claims about whether an interaction was “smooth,” stable, or if something was resisted or contested.

Noteworthy during this speech is that most of the students were actively listening and positively responded to Mr. Coles’ requests and pedagogical moves. On the basis of our observations of this cohort of students with other teachers, these students did not exhibit similar degrees of engagement—even when the pedagogical approach did not consist of speeches but required more collaboration or group work among students. The vignette of Mr. Coles’ class on this day reflects how CRP in science teaching manifests in his classroom and represents a social accomplishment or production. Finally, this observation was simultaneously conducted by the authors who were members of the research team; the vignette presented is thus a composite of their fieldnotes and is particularly rich and detailed.

Line numbers adjacent to the narrative provide a referencing format we utilize in the section following the vignette. The vignette begins with Mr. Coles introducing the class’ next design task before they split into their work groups for the remainder of the class. The task is to create a gravity resistance box for an egg drop competition. Students in grades 3–12 often engage in the egg drop competition as an NGSS-aligned activity that leverages the engineering design process (Corbett & Coriell, 2013). In so doing, students engage in generating and testing hypotheses, creating protocols for the iterative and systematic process of observation and testing, and progressive refinement of hypotheses (National Research Council, 2012). The task’s complexity varies across grade levels, but the aim is to create a container that can protect a raw egg from cracking when it is dropped (Northeastern University STEM Center, 2013; Tretter, 2005). When introducing this task, a teacher may discuss which materials students can use to simulate a parachute or other device to resist the force of gravity. It is usually assumed that students will buy or gather these materials and complete the construction of the box at home. Through this task students engage in the following science practices: asking questions; define a problem; planning and carrying out investigations; and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information (National Research Council, 2012). For example, students are asked to define a problem (how to protect an egg from cracking) and to plan and carry out an investigation to manage this problem (create a gravity resistance box). Students design the box and later test their solution by dropping it from the top of a ladder.

4.2 |. Vignette: Mr. Coles’ 7th grade engineering class

1. We walk into class right after the bell rings. Mr. Coles teaches in a standard issue, school

2. science laboratory marked by student work stations with built-in sinks. Students are

3. crammed around the stations, others have chairs pulled up to the countertops and office

4. tables that line the perimeter of the classroom. Mr. Coles is seated in front of the

5. class at the demonstration table where even more students are also seated. Class has just

6. started, yet the look he shoots us as we enter gives the impression that he is on a roll. He

7. comments that students expect “credit for stuff you’re supposed to do” and says he

8. doesn’t want to see papers that “have been through some things” or—as he fakes

9. rummaging through a backpack—come out of the “depths of [your] backpacks.” Rather

10. than being ashamed, students giggle in response. He remarks sarcastically, “God forbid

11. if you’re not 100% stereotypical” and “take pride in your work.” He makes the analogy

12. that if somebody had a dirty car, the students would say “you nasty,” yet they are not

13. concerned about the condition of the work they submit.

14. Mr. Coles warns students that, “you [as African Americans] will be judged on anything

15. you do” because “everyone doesn’t see everybody the same.” Mr. Coles states that he

16. will not accept anything “raggedy” and mimics a student formally and carefully handing

17. in work to a teacher because they realize that their schoolwork should be treated like

18. “important business documents.” He models how he would open his notebook and create

19. this document by stating aloud his name, the date, the class title, and class period on

20. separate lines. He marks taking pride in your work and its presentation as a skill they

21. will “need for the rest of your life.” Interspersed throughout are asides like, “Y’all just

22. don’t know” or “I feel like I’m in church.”

23. Mr. Coles tells students their next task is to create a gravity resistance box for an egg

24. drop competition, prompting a chorus of “Oohs!” He makes a point to note that it is okay

25. if “mama”—the students’ mothers—do not have all the materials they think they

26. need. Instead, he encourages them to improvise with different materials that they do have

27. on hand, remarking, “Let’s talk about hood skills—let’s get a lil’ ghetto.” Using a box

28. that he already has, he shows them how they might cut, fold, or in other ways modify

29. their materials to make a box. He repeatedly draws attention to a diagram he’s drawn on

30. the board of the gravity resistance box that has its dimensions. Students are asked to

31. copy the diagram into their science notebooks. Throughout his explanation, Mr. Coles

32. consistently stops and checks for student understanding by asking, “Did I lose you?”

33. “Are y’all with me?!,” and stopping to answer students’ clarifying questions.

34. Engaging in role play again, Mr. Coles tells students that he wants to take them “to the

35. Coles’ household” where we were “broke.” He moves across the front of the room as if

36. he is rummaging around a house for materials. He periodically calls out to his mama to

37. inquire about specific materials, to which she responds, “No!” He rummages some more,

38. mimics grabbing a stool—noting verbally that he’s short and needs a stool (students

39. laugh)—and begins acting like he is opening cabinets and pulling things out. While he is

40. doing that, he’s still in communication with his mama.

41. “Mama, do we have napkins?” (“No!”)

42. “Mama, do we have cotton balls?” (“No!”)

43. “Mama, do we have Styrofoam? (“No!”)

44. “Mama, do we have newspaper? Do we have toilet paper?”

45. He remarks, “I know my resources is [sic] limited, I have to use what I have,” and paces

46. around as if he is thinking about what other materials they might have around the

47. house. He demonstrates that you could roll newspaper into balls, or use anything as long as

48. the egg is seated in a 4 × 3 × 2.5 inch box. Mr. Coles says that there are three ways that

49. students are going to take up this project. The first is someone who will take this project

50. as a way to develop their own idea, the second is someone who will find out about an

51. existing idea and use that, the third is someone who will do whatever and not really put

52. any effort in. He goes on to say that you can “get billions for your ideas,” and that being

53. creative and getting paid for your ideas and creativity is “what engineers do.” There are

54. some people that have patented their ideas and made lots of money—some even own

55. their own islands. Presents this as “balling” and “winning” the game.

56. Mr. Coles encourages students to “be creative, use your imaginations” and qualifies that

57. this is “all engineering is.” He reminds students that as engineers, “You must explain,”

58. and engages students in a discussion about how to manage their time to complete the

59. project and to have time “put their ideas on paper” to “explain to the class what

60. you did” the following day. He challenges students to walk into class tomorrow with their

61. completed work and that there will be “no excuses” tolerated for incomplete

62. assignments. Referencing a popular hip hop song and bouncing about, Mr. Coles says

63. students should walk into class with their boxes “like, ‘I know you see it!,’” to which

64. students laugh and act embarrassed by his behavior by saying “Really, Mr. Coles?” or

65. remarking to one another, “I can’t believe he just did that!”

66. Quickly switching to the serious demeanor of a news reporter, Mr. Coles states in a deep

67. voice, “Ladies and gentleman, your country needs you.” He connects the gravity

68. resistance box to NASA’s emergency release pods and to “full-fledged armored tanks”

69. and cars that are dropped out of airplanes. By doing this study students are going to “help

70. save the eggs…which is important work.” Students laugh, some shake their heads.

71. Before encouraging them to work in pairs or small groups to share their ideas with each

72. other and draw designs, Mr. Coles tells students that “Engineering and science are fun,

73. but you have to put in work.” He likens it to his experience as an athlete where he

74. “Loved football, but didn’t like running, practice, the heat.” Shaking his head he cautions

75. students that “Everything you love has something about it you don’t like, has good things

76. about it. Can’t be good at it without practice.” As students begin to move around the

77. room, Mr. Coles encourages them to work with one another and reach out to him if they

78. help getting things done and to not “be afraid to bring around your work, to ask

79. questions.” Stealing a hook from Chaka Khan’s song to emphasize his point, he starts

80. singing, “Tell me something good….” Students laugh and joke with him saying,

81. “Mr. Coles, please don’t.”

4.3 |. Unpacking Mr. Coles’ political clarity and culturally relevant approach to science

The above vignette demonstrates the theoretical nuance of Mr. Coles’ political clarity and how he enacted it through culturally relevant science instruction with the aim of developing his students’ sociopolitical consciousness. We also triangulate our analysis of this vignette with excerpts from other instructional examples and from an interview with Mr. Coles to further validate the theoretical distinctions of his political clarity. Although we primarily offer a deeper conceptualization of the third tenet of CRP, we also demonstrate how Mr. Coles engaged with other aspects of CRP, academic success and cultural competence.

The vignette is peppered with examples of how Mr. Coles used his complementary tools of seriousness and humor to position students as capable of academic success. It also includes examples of how he specifically positions students and their realities as consonant with knowing and doing science and being scientists. For example, in line 7, Mr. Coles communicated his high expectations for his students’ academic success when he remonstrated that students “expect ‘credit for stuff you’re supposed to do.’” In lines 8–9 Mr. Coles comically clarified his expectations by remarking upon the physical quality of student work (i.e., “papers that ‘have been through some things’”) students submitted and by mimicking the nonchalance with which students retrieved and handled their work. During his interview, Mr. Coles expressed his concern about a pervasive culture of low expectations for African American students in schools:

…what I’ve noticed is that what we, people are impressed with stuff that I feel like should be regular…we’re [he and other teachers at his school] not giving you credit for things that we think you’re supposed to do. The expectation around us has fallen, to where we’re just happy with [African American] kids doing something…People are just happy with the bare minimum…..we don’t, I don’t wanna hear it.

By contrast, Mr. Coles indicated that he holds a higher bar for his students:

…no matter what was going on around [us]…when you step in Mr. Coles’ class, you knew. Period. Point. Blank. I don’t care who you are. Where you’re from. What you did. You knew that when you stepped in class, it was about business. And if you were having a bad day then maybe we need to work something else out, we need to pull you to the side. We need to figure it out, but what won’t be happening is you not learning.

These high expectations for academic success are rooted in his political clarity about (a) who his students are as African Americans, (b) the negative stereotypes they may experience because of their racialized social position (line 11), and (c) the stereotypes that exist about African Americans’ ineducability and inferiority that are rooted in and perpetuated through Western science. His high expectations for students are reinforced in multiple moments over time in routine classroom practice. Mr. Coles’ explicit communication about high expectations is a critical component of culturally relevant science instruction, given students’ potential exposure to stereotypes about who can(not) do science, be a scientist, as well as students’ past experiences where they may have not experienced or been recognized for their success in science.

Mr. Coles’ political clarity was evident as he deepened his initial criticism in line 8 to include a racial dimension mocking “stereotypical” deficit-thinking perspectives about African American students and positions his students as racialized individuals who will be judged because they are African Americans. For example, he stated, “God forbid if you’re not 100% stereotypical” (lines 10–11) and “you [as African Americans] will be judged on anything you do” (lines 14–15). These discursive moves support students’ critical consciousness in science by presenting an opportunity in their science classroom for them to recognize existing power dynamics in and beyond the domains of science as social constructs they can resist. The juxtaposition of unkempt work as stereotypical marks students’ pride in their work as an act of resistance and repositions students as having the agency to engage in such resistance in their science class.

Similarly, Mr. Coles challenges students to disrupt this stereotype by walking into class tomorrow with their completed work and reminds them that there will be “no excuses” tolerated for an incomplete assignment. While in other contexts “no excuses” can refer to zero tolerance disciplinary policies that disproportionately penalize Black students, in Mr. Coles’ classroom this term is meant to convey his high expectations for the timely submission of a high-quality science assignment. In our observations, this high expectation was facilitated by offering students in-class supports and resources to meet those expectations, such as peer and teacher tutoring or time during class to work on assignments that would be completed at home.

Mr. Coles backed up his claim of “what won’t be happening is you not learning” by communicating high expectations to students and modeling science practices, and positioning students to take up those expectations and engage science practices. Consider how Mr. Coles has a panel of 8th graders share their experience with 6th and 7th graders about how to create their annual science portfolios:

Mr. Coles calls on an African American girl (8th grader), “What did you do?” The student explains that she made glow in the dark bubbles. He asks, “How did it go?” The student begins to explain that she opened some glow sticks, but Mr. Coles interrupts. “No, I mean how did it go, not what you did.” Mr. Coles then models the behavior that he doesn’t want to see. “When people ask, how was your presentation… you saw the kids right? They said, good. What did you do? Science.” Mr. Coles and the class laugh at these other students.

Picking up on Mr. Coles’ expectation, a young chubby boy in the audience raises his hand and shares his experience last night of having someone from a local program ask him a question that really challenged him. Mr. Coles says, “Oh yeah, those some sharp brothers. What did he ask you?” The boy says that he was doing an experiment on glow in the dark bubbles too and the person asked him what would happen if he had used nonfat milk instead. Mr. Coles prods on, “And what did you say?” A lighter skinned African American girl on the panel jumps in, “It wouldn’t work. You need fat.” She explains that the chemical in your dishwashing liquid needs fat to work…The students in the class respond with an “Oooo” to acknowledge that she just dropped some knowledge (fieldnotes, May 29, 2014).

Mr. Coles sets up the context to support student learning by bringing in slightly more knowledgeable and experienced peers into the class. He prompted students to engage in science practices, such as communicating information (e.g., their thinking and findings from their science projects; National Research Council, 2012). Taken together, these excerpts show Mr. Coles values academic success and science learning, which is rooted in his political clarity about how his students may be viewed in the world and how they may have internalized negative messages about themselves in relation to science. Through his speeches, Mr. Coles conveys this clarity when he tells students they are expected to meet his high standards, positions them as capable of doing so, and provides opportunities for them to demonstrate their skills and reinforce these expectations.

Another demonstration of Mr. Coles’ political clarity exists in how his conversations around achievement in his class are explicitly or implicitly tied to culture, race, and/or social class. This clarity can be seen in how he creates an analogy between raggedy schoolwork and a dirty car in lines 12–13 of the vignette. He demonstrates his cultural competency in the Black community by building upon an African American cultural reference to cleanliness, especially as it relates to one’s possessions or external appearance. This reference links to a sociohistorical stereotype of African American as “dirty” or “uncivilized” and African Americans’ attempts to demonstrate their humanity and morality through fastidious attention to cleanliness despite inhumane social and material conditions (Higginbotham, 1993).

While Mr. Coles’ clarity here is linked to the politics of respectability, a position not without critique, in this instance his deployment of this politics is not in the service of dehumanizing students or putting down their lived experiences. Rather, it is a way to reflect his membership within students’ racial and cultural communities and to mark practices that students may already have regarding presentation as also having a valence relative to school, science, and future careers. Throughout this segment of the class, Mr. Coles repeatedly supports students’ maintenance of cultural competence by utilizing phrases like, “Y’all just don’t know!” or “going to church” (lines 21–22) that index experiences and understandings that connect to his and his Black students’ lives (Barrett, 2010; Martin & Martin, 1978; Peele-Eady, 2011).

This connection to students’ everyday cultural and social lives was a consistent part of Mr. Coles’ instructional practice and was also connected to how he modeled science practices, tasks, and dispositions for students. In the instance that follows (fieldnotes, May 20, 2014), Mr. Coles shared one of his own scientific products, a racing car. In the discussion that ensued, Mr. Coles demonstrated his political clarity in how he made subtle references to race and social class while expressing and modeling scientific enthusiasm.

Mr. Coles goes into one of the cabinets near the front of the room and brings out what looks like four CDs attached as wheels to a mousetrap sitting at the center. Mr. Coles puts it on the teacher lab table at the front of the room. He says as he puts it down with a smile, “It’s ugly, but this is Mr. Coles’—it’s a champion. 20 inch rims!” An African American student behind the front student lab table says, “Frederica beat you.” And Mr. Coles laughs and says, “And it wasn’t pretty either.” He talks about how other students came with all these pretty cars and the ones that won were ugly. “Frederica put hers down and it took off.” Then, Mr. Coles explains that they can get supplies from Legoland or the dollar store and that it’s a competition for how far the car can go (rather than what it looks like).

Mr. Coles’ references to culture, race, and social class were subtle and intentional. For example, he stated his car had “20-inch rims,” a specific kind of car rims that were popular in the neighborhood. He made an implicit statement at the end of this excerpt about the acquisition of materials at “the dollar store”—a store that students have access to in their neighborhood—as a legitimate way to engage in the design challenge to create a car that can travel a distance quickly (i.e., a criterion of the challenge). This move not only emphasized the ways in which his students could engage in the challenge, but also highlighted the importance of meeting the challenge criteria rather than focusing purely on esthetic features.

These comments were a facet of Mr. Coles’ pedagogy, as he described it in an interview:

Everything, everything from what you put up on your wall to guest speakers that you bring in to your [sic] one-on-one pull out. All of those are opportunities …We’re all having these conversations about who you are, where, what you are, who you are, and where you come from. Like we’re always talking about knowing, you know, your history. Every teachable moment you can, teachers will stop a lesson to just have the conversation. I know I’m REAL good for that…..I relate everything that’s in the book to who you are. We’re talking about science, and we’re talking about atoms.. we’re talking about hereditary… I’m somehow, some way, blending it [emphasis added].

Mr. Coles pointed to the importance of verbal and nonverbal messages and images in the classroom to support inclusion. He demonstrated his political clarity about why this was a necessary component in his teaching by explaining how he explicitly engaged culture and history during teachable moments . The word “blending” is noteworthy because it captures the fluidity with which cultural, racialized, and class-based references were woven into his instruction.

Lines 1–22 also reflect Mr. Coles’ political clarity about the racial power dynamics that exist in teaching African American students. When asked about how race was talked about at NPMS, he emphasized the importance of a teacher’s political clarity and the need for a race-conscious pedagogical perspective:

It’s—we’re always talking about it….We’re always talking about how even a statement like, “Life ain’t fair.”… it’s [racism] just embedded in the system, it’s just the system….It has to be recognized. For a teacher to say…“I see everyone the same,” you mean to tell me you don’t see color? That’s a problem. ‘Cause everyone’s not the same….and you need to address that.

For Mr. Coles, teachers’ political clarity was reflected in everything they did from “what you put up on your wall to guest speakers that you bring in to your one on one pull outs.” Mr. Coles’ political clarity connected directly to his work as a science and engineering teacher and his attempts “to relate everything that’s in the book to who you [the student] are…we’re talking about science…man…I’m somehow, some way blending it.” This orientation can be seen in lines 24–35 when Mr. Coles connects his awareness about the racialized, classed realities of his students more explicitly to demands of science content and the science classroom. Considering the potentially limited resources students may have access to, he noted that it is okay if “mama”—the students’ mothers or caretakers—do not have all the materials the students think they need to engage in science. This move debunks this barrier to science engagement, makes science an endeavor of innovation and creativity, and aligns him with this reality by sharing that “the Coles’ household” was “broke.” The referencing of “mama” is another instantiation of Mr. Coles’ culturally relevant style, humor, and political clarity about the social and interpersonal dynamics of his students’ out of school lives and contexts as related to science.

In lines 27–29, Mr. Coles employed his cultural relevance and humor to show his students different ways to make a gravity resistance box rather than focus on the material constraints for the task. He reframed the day’s task as one of scientific innovation and improvisation and positions these science practices as similar to the “hood skills” of working with what one has access to for task completion. This is an example of how he deliberately made explicit that students’ existing cultural wealth and lived realities are applicable to any part of the repertoires of practice for engaging in science and engineering. Here, Mr. Coles explicitly messaged to his students that such classed realities do not preclude students from being scientists or engineers.

Mr. Coles enacted his political clarity through his energetic form of culturally relevant science pedagogy that shows how students’ everyday practices are aligned with science practices and norms that hold status (e.g., creativity, innovation, and documentation and communication of scientific thinking with others). In lines 40–48, Mr. Coles mentioned each material he considered using for the design challenge (i.e., napkins, cotton balls, etc.). Here, he modeled the habits of mind that demonstrate how scientific inquiry is a human endeavor shaped by the resources and materials to which one has access to and by one’s observational, testing, and problem-solving skills. Similarly, he positioned his limited resources—for example, “I have to use what I have”—as an opportunity to rethink design challenge components and innovate with a variety of materials.

Mr. Coles linked these nature of science concepts with students’ identity and learning by repeatedly positioning his students as “engineers” and intentional explanations of the discipline. In lines 48–57, Mr. Coles articulated that there are different ways to engage in scientific inquiry, “The first is someone who will take this project…the second is someone who will find out about an existing idea and use that…” Here, he referenced ways of knowing and doing science that may hold high status or be beneficial monetarily and professionally. These quotes show how Mr. Coles made public the practices that constitute ways of doing science and positioned students as learners and doers of science. He reminded students that as engineers, “[they] must explain” and “put their ideas on paper” because it is necessary to document their “creative” processes when engaging in engineering design challenges. Mr. Coles not only positioned students as engineers, but also shared how part of their work was to explain their creative processes and provide a rationale for why their inventions were unique and probable—an NGSS-aligned practice.

Finally, in saying “Ladies and Gentleman, your country needs you,” Mr. Coles supported students’ sociopolitical consciousness that African Americans are needed in the sciences and broader world. He pointed out the real-world implications of their gravity resistance box project and linked what students did as part of a realm of scientific endeavors and innovation. He encouraged students to document their ideas and process, work together, and seek help from one another and himself, which highlights that scientific endeavors are not done alone and need to be shared and revised (NGSS, 2013). Thus, Mr. Coles reinforces students’ identities as scientists and as engaging in the practices of science. He introduced his high expectations for and the logistics of the project as a way to make explicit what science is and how one engages in science disciplines. This also decodes what “engineering is” (line 57) as a scientific endeavor and develops students’ awareness and positions them within the community of scientific doers and learners. His style of CRP reflects his political clarity and commitment to creating science learning experiences that encourage students to develop a critical consciousness about how, as Black youth and science learners and doers, they can challenge the status quo through their dispositions, thinking, and engagements with science. Throughout his lesson he builds upon students’ cultural knowledge and practices to connect with them personally and connect their structural, lived realities as consonant with productively learning and doing science.

5 |. DISCUSSION

This paper centers on two main arguments. First, we need more empirical examples of science teachers’ culturally relevant enactments. These empirical examples need to show science teachers’ sociopolitical understandings or political clarity about their students’ racialized and classed realities and how they use such clarity to positively position students relative to science and model sociopolitical consciousness in the learning and doing of science. Second, we argue that we need robust conceptual tools that allow us to see, examine, and understand how science teachers’ pedagogies can reflect their clarity about students’ cultural backgrounds, racialized and classed realities, and positioning in the domain of science and careers in science. For this reason, we argue for a more robust theorization of CRP that focuses on the understudied third tenet of CRP—sociopolitical consciousness—which is rooted in teachers’ political clarity and their attempts to develop their students’ sociopolitical consciousness. This political clarity on the part of teachers, and the sociopolitical consciousness that they develop in students, can work to challenge science education to live up to its inclusionary rhetoric. Both arguments push on the oft-cited, but less often enacted, goal of science for all. Many of the constraints to science for all exist at the level of policy and funding resources, which are beyond the scope of individual schools and teachers. At the same time, there is room for science teachers to individually and collectively attend to the sociopolitical realities of students’ lives, including the ways in which those realities and lives intersect with perceptions about scientific ways of knowing, doing, and being.

To further the development of culturally relevant science teachers, we offer conceptual tools for understanding the third tenet of CRP as related to science instruction. Indeed, we need new conceptual lenses that can capture and make sense of the pedagogical nuances of science educators who act as change agents, take up science education standards in inclusionary ways, and attend to sociopolitical inequities and students’ racialized and classed realities. Distilling the domain-specific boundaries and sociopolitical charge of culturally relevant teaching within science, we focus on the ideological awareness and pedagogical richness of educators who use such an approach. There is a timeliness with which we need to develop these types of conceptual tools that can drive instruction and the preparation of teachers. Rather than wait on the next reform in science education, let us hold the NGSS accountable to its articulation of science as a field concerned with the world and a way of knowing—and its embrace of engineering as part of this systematic practice. This expanded construction of science presents new and expanded opportunities for science teaching and learning.

To accomplish our second argument about the need for empirical examples of educators engaged in this study, we emphasize the political clarity necessary to enact CRP in science and examine the commitment and enactments of one science teacher, who views his role in science as a political actor and his science teaching as a political act. In casting Mr. Coles’ pedagogy as culturally relevant science pedagogy, we examine both how Mr. Coles’ talks about his pedagogy are based in an analysis of power and oppression and how he enacts this understanding in his practice of science teaching.

This type of empirical analyses and conceptualizations are needed because there is little research around science teaching and issues of race, class, and power, but also because little is known about how science teachers’ pedagogy may reflect their own racialized and classed realities and their understanding about that of their students. This paper, then, initiates a conversation around how we pedagogically treat issues of race and class in K-12 science education. Indeed, we need additional empirical examples that show how science teachers position the realities of students from nondominant communities as consonant with doing science and pursuing careers in science. When teachers emphasize and utilize students’ lived experiences in the science curriculum, they evidence their political clarity and, more important, create spaces for “powerful science learning” (Tsurusaki et al., 2013, p. 7).

Our study is limited in its focus on the enactments of one very distinct teacher. We do not suggest that every teacher reproduce this model in their classroom, that all African American male teachers teach in this fashion, nor that all African American students need to be taught in this precise way. When we present on Mr. Coles, or other Black teachers, we often hear the concern that other teachers could not do these things and we are often asked, “What can white teachers do?” Indeed, Mr. Coles’ approach is his own and should not be wholesale replicated. Instead, what can be understood from this analysis is that science teachers, of all racial, cultural, and class backgrounds should work to understand the raced and classed lives of their students, to be explicit about how minoritized students have historically and are presently being positioned in science classrooms, and have clarity about how they consistently address such positionings.

In understanding political clarity as fundamental to the implementation of the third tenet of CRP, we are also encouraging a greater focus on teacher’s dispositions and ideologies relative to their students and their discipline. The questions then become, not what individual teachers can do or what white teachers can do, but “How do conceptualize pedagogy? How are teacher’s political clarity understood to intersect with their ability to understand their students’ sociopolitical realities? How can we scaffold, via preservice or in-service training, the development of teacher’s political clarity?” In response, we recommend that teachers’ dispositions and ideologies be taken seriously and that we acknowledge their role in shaping a teacher’s practice and orientation toward their students and the discipline.

This requires that teachers be taught how to engage in relational and critical reflection (Milner, 2006) and employ this as an everyday practice to get to know themselves and their students. Teacher education programs and K-12 schools that are committed to the success of racially and economically minoritized students should provide resources for teachers to develop their political clarity about the students they serve. These programs must also provide training and support to hone their abilities to develop positive relationships with students and to positively position them through their instruction. While this is generally a good idea, it is particularly necessary in science where stereotypes and discrimination are heightened, where some students are presumed to be disposed to succeed or fail, and where the subject matter and related practices provide natural and rigorous opportunities for teachers to demonstrate their political clarity and develop the sociopolitical consciousness of their students.

We also note that Mr. Coles was not only a teacher but also an administrator whose position in the school may have afforded him a wider degree of latitude and concern about evaluation and student achievement than other teachers. Although comments and conversations with others in the NPMS school community suggest that Mr. Coles pedagogical style as a full-time teacher was fairly similar to the approach represented here, we cannot evaluate that. Rather than essentialize Mr. Coles approach to certain types of teachers or students, we hope that by further nuancing our understanding of teacher’s political clarity and how it is enacted through science instruction, we offer some crucial conceptual tools that articulate the importance of a robust vision of CRP in science and its presence in science teacher education and practice. Our presentation and analysis of Mr. Coles—an example of a science teacher’s political clarity as enacted through their instruction—offers insights into what such an approach might look like, and catalyze our own agency to consider the ways in which our teaching could more deliberately attend to racial and class inequalities and the types of conceptual and analytical tools we need to document these forms of teaching.

Some of the aforementioned concerns may have a particular salience in school districts where the majority of students live in poverty or come from traditionally marginalized and underserved communities and their teachers may not reflect these demographics. However, understanding teachers’ political clarity and their enactments of culturally relevant science teaching is also applicable to a broader context of schools and students where educators and communities are concerned with cultivating youth who are critically literate knowers, doers, and evaluators of science and the role and impact of science in the world. However, to do this study, the racialized and classed realities that many students and communities negotiate each day in and out of schools has 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. Likewise, there must be a recognition that these inequalities and sociopolitical realities affect all of us—no matter our real or perceived identities, the histories of our communities, our economic station, our personal or political views, or where we research or teach—principally because they eat away at the science learning opportunities, educational and identity possibilities, and innovative potential of all of our youth and their prospective impacts on our society. This cannot be overlooked or tacitly presumed in our national and academic conversations about how to improve science instruction and achievement.

Even with Ladson-Billings (1995, 2006, 2009, 2017) emphasizing sociopolitical consciousness as fundamental to any enactment of CRP, it is widely acknowledged that this third tenet has been rarely and weakly identified within science instruction. We encourage a greater research focus on teacher dispositions—or political clarity—toward their students’ sociopolitical and lived realities relative to science content and pedagogy. While there is certainly a need to increase the diversity among science teachers so that students can see scientific actors that look like them, it would be an oversimplification to suggest that effective teacher/student relationships or CRP in science comes with shared ethnicity or race. Surface appearances do not predetermine the extent to which a science teacher can engage in political clarity, and while who the individual teacher is may shape what s/he may experience in the world and how s/he views it, more productive questions are: “How can we reconceptualize science pedagogy? How can teachers’ dispositions and ideologies be understood to intersect with their capacity to respond to students’ sociopolitical realities in their science classrooms? How might preservice or in-service science teacher development support the development of political clarity?”

With the historical disenfranchisement from Western science by many populations, we recommend an emphasis upon developing science teacher’s political clarity and ability to acknowledge their role in shaping students’ ideologies around sciences and practices and orientations toward the discipline of science. This necessitates that teachers be taught how to engage in relational and critical reflection (Milner, 2006) and employ this as an everyday practice to strengthen their knowledge and empathy toward themselves and their students. Science teacher education programs and K-12 schools committed to the success of racially and economically minoritized students in science should support science teachers in developing political clarity about the students they serve. This would include providing resources, training, and support to foster positive relationships with students and to favorably position students through science instruction. We argue that such interventions are particularly necessary for science where stereotypes and discrimination are heightened, where certain students are often viewed as predisposed to succeed or fail. Because the subject matter and related practices offer natural and rigorous opportunities for student participation, a science teacher can use the subject matter to incorporate their clarity while developing their students’ sociopolitical conscious.