Incorporating Social Justice Into Science Teacher Education Courses

Introduction

We open our chapter with a response from a student discussion in a graduate level preservice science teacher class. Preservice teachers (PSTs) in this course were asked to read articles about culturally responsive teaching in the science classroom and answer discussion prompts. Author 1 provided articles about the social Nature of Science (NOS) that includes equity and diversity in science. When race was discussed in the readings, students seemed to fall into two categories: 1) uncomfortable and avoid any deeper discussion or 2) deny and invalidate the discussion. After many similar experiences with students, Author 1 reached out to Author 2 for support. Back in 2011, both authors met at a weeklong science education graduate student fellowship program. Throughout the years, we, both authors, kept in touch as friends and also as a source of support as women of color becoming new faculty members at separate Universities. Author 1 was working at a Predominantly White University (PWI) and both authors taught classes that were a majority of White students. We chose this powerful quote because it pushed both authors to question why some PSTs resist acknowledging the systemic inequities that exist in schools and institutions and the need to do work around social justice. We asked ourselves, “ Why are we hearing what we are hearing? How do we as teacher educators address the gaps, the silences, and the ‘unsayables’? How does writing about what is deemed difficult reveal what is invisible? And how can we, through this book chapter and our autoethnographic work, render the ‘unsayables’ sayable and the ‘difficult conversations’ heard? We needed to reexamine our teacher education programs to better understand what was happening.

Most teacher education programs are predominantly White in terms of faculty and PSTs (Ball and Tyson, 2013; Sleeter, 2013). In our case, we are not White and most of our students are White, so discussing race with our students tends to be more complex. However challenging these discussions may be, they need to take place in order for PSTs to be adequately prepared to teach in U.S. schools where the changing demographic is not predominantly White. Avoiding these discussions with our students leads to educational inequities. By not having these discussions we inadvertently reinforce the message to our White students that Whiteness is the norm and that they do not need to be race and culture conscious. This continues to recreate Whiteness as socially dominant. For instance, Author 1 uses the book, The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick in her history and philosophy of science course. The book does a good job of describing the history and foundation of science but it is limited to who is always represented in science, older White males. This contributes to the idea that the foundation of knowledge is based on Whiteness while knowledge from other cultures is less valued (Cabrera, 2012). As a pre-tenured faculty member of color, Author 1 did not want to have confrontations in her class with students. This paired with students always having enjoyed the book, Author 1 decided to keep the book in the course. However, by not challenging these norms and not engaging in the discourse, the deficit perspective is not challenged.