Designing and leading justice‐centered informal STEM education: A framework for core equitable practices

Abstract

We explore how experienced informal educators worked towards equitable and consequential opportunities for learning in informal STEM settings through pedagogical practice. Drawing from a justice‐centered social practice stance we argue that pedagogical practice that promotes social transformation towards more just futures must confront and respond to, in integrated fashion, how unequal power dynamics, connected to systemic, structural oppressions, impact individual and collective learning. We refer to this focus on the entanglements between justice and responsibility as the ethical and relational dimensions of teaching and learning. In a research‐practice partnership, we drew upon participatory ethnography to explore how practice partners operationalized these “big justice ideas” in their practice. Using two detailed vignettes of practice we illustrate five interconnected patterns of practice: Recognizing, authority sharing, shifting narratives, co‐designing, and embracing humanity. We illustrate how these practices, and their variations, took shape in‐the‐moment, and worked in transformational ways. Last we discuss how these practices are consequentially directed towards shifting power—who has the power to name and legitimize what and who matters in informal STEM learning (ISL), how, and why—and about how youths and educators alike engaged each other towards affecting their lives, social relations, and possibilities. Findings can help informal educators refine and expand their mental models of youth, what matters to them, how and why, and what this could mean for their futures.