CAREER: Developing a Participatory Model for Elementary Science for Community Change

Elementary students need opportunities to see science as meaningful and relevant to their lives. One way to increase this relevance is with learning experiences that are grounded in community-based questions and inquiries that students identify and carry out themselves. An important contribution of this project is investigating how culturally relevant and community-based science curriculum helps to affirm and develop Black students’ science identities in an urban, elementary classroom. This project will partner with third, fourth and fifth-grade elementary teachers to create and to investigate such learning experiences. The planned partner for the collaboration is a public, charter school in Detroit. The research will document how teachers and students identify and explore science questions that are drawn from their local community context and use the results of their inquiries to enact local community change. The project will develop resources to help teachers create similar experiences for elementary students in their own communities.

The goal of this project is to design equitable, culturally relevant and community-centered science learning with Black elementary-aged youth and to understand how the learning experience influences their multiple identities, specifically their disposition toward science. This work uses the youth participatory science model to engage students and teachers in the cycle of community-based scientific inquiry. The youth participatory science model engages students in identifying community-based issues, using scientific inquiry to analyze and understand those issues, and then sharing their findings with the broader community. A significant contribution of the project is the adaptation of this model from secondary science classrooms to elementary school. This research will address the following research questions. First, how does a justice and community-centered science curriculum impact the racial, science, and academic identities of Black elementary students within an urban school? Second, through engaging in identity-affirming science instruction, how do Black elementary students view themselves as active participants within the scientific community? The research will include a range of qualitative data to document the design of the curriculum and the experiences of students and teachers. The project includes a partnership with an elementary school and the Black Male Educator Alliance, a community organization based in Detroit, to develop and share the resulting science curriculum.