CAREER: Designing Teacher Professional Development to Leverage the Brilliance of Learners of Color

Students of color must have access to robust and meaningful opportunities to learn science in classrooms that center their assets and humanity. This CAREER award aims to cultivate such spaces through designing and studying teacher professional learning focused on pedagogical practices that engage students of color meaningfully in science learning. These practices leverage students’ assets to foster growth in science and scientific habits of mind. This project will support pre-service and practicing teachers in developing tools for practice and reflection that focus on equity and highlighting the assets of students of color in secondary science. The project will also support graduate students in science education research as well as sharing findings with partner school districts as part of the educational integration plan.

This project is a 5-year research-practice partnership, collaborating with a school district that serves a 75% minoritized student body. The researcher will design and iterate on a secondary science teacher professional development that is focused on fostering Equity Schemas, which are schemata of interpretation that center students’ assets and pedagogical moves that advance equity through meaningful participation in science. Using design-based research this project will examine fundamental questions about teacher learning and development around equity in science, and how it contributes to shifts in equity-oriented schemas and practices in the teaching of science.  The project will investigate how teacher schemas and practices raise the rigor of science teaching and help to promote interest, engagement and learning of science for students of color.