How place-based science education strategies can support equity for students, teachers, and communities

What Is The Issue?

Authors:

BY SARAH COLEMAN, PAULINE CHINN, DEB MORRISON & LAUREN KAUPP | MARCH 2019

Things to Consider

• Center multiple relations to place: Phenomena and problems should be selected to connect to local places and to the multiple ways in which people relate to that place. These connections are influenced by the diversity of communities interacting with each other over time to develop a sense of place and to share ways of knowing about the nature of the place as it changes (e.g., urban).
• Relate places to cultural lifeworlds. Place-based education can be part of a comprehensive culturally responsive pedagogy to reach all students. This requires rethinking the way schools use resources, going beyond textbook teaching, and fostering connections and relationships with students and community in relation to place.
• Engage in participatory curriculum development. When developing phenomenon-centered curriculum, community participants need to be authentically involved to bring local knowledge and practices into science learning. Teachers need to work in collaboration with each other and community partners in participatory ways to integrate local learning contexts and resources into classroom-based learning. Invite stakeholders into collaborative curriculum development in ways that reshape power dynamics related to gender, language, culture, and place to open space for marginalized communities and center a focus on justice. Making community connections take time and supportive structures as they involve trust-based relationships and new ways of sharing power during design.
  
• Get learners networked to relevant efforts. Youth conferences and Science and Engineering forums, and community-based service learning can serve to connect students with each other and community partners to develop their sense of place, to share their learnings, to identify community needs, and to develop community science literacy (Also see STT#39 and STT#45).
  
• Relate Indigenous and Western science knowledges. Cultural practitioners and honored community leaders, such as Kūpuna (elders) in Hawai‘i, can help to connect local and Indigenous knowledge to standards-based science teaching and learning. Culturally sustaining relationships between communities and scientists can provide contexts for place-based learning for students.

Attending to Equity

• Acknowledge that science has historically been taught through a Western lens and honor cultural ways of knowing and communicating.
• Attend to connections of language, place, and history in learning and cultural bridging. Indigenous languages often record environmental knowledge in organism and place names, sayings, and stories.

Recommended Actions You Can Take

• Before starting with students, build your knowledge or place-based STEM learning: conduct community asset mapping to identify community resources, scientists involved in the place, and speak to elders.
• Recognize that long-term community engagement develops through participatory research around shared, use-oriented STEM research projects (see Kūlana Noi‘i the research standards).
• Engage students in collaborative outdoor learning, including stewardship and citizen science, by working with local scientists and cultural practitioners.
• Honor the written and orally recorded knowledge of the local place by involving students in culturally appropriate interviews, collaborative design thinking, self-documentation, and the study of historical records.
• Use locally meaningful student-generated questions and phenomena and engage students in engineering design projects with community partners.

ALSO SEE STEM TEACHING TOOLS

• #11 Indigenous STEM Ed
• #20 Outdoor Science Ed
• C Culture-based Pedagogy