Transforming Communities: Re-Imagining the Possibilities Through Equitable Science Teaching

Abstract

We live geographically in one world, but politically in multiple worlds where we are facing “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973), not only as a country but also as a global community. Butler (2022a) in her most recent book, What World Is This?, speaks of pandemic worlds during which the rage of persons demanded the right to subvert health mandates, oppressed more vulnerable populations by the conviction of their right to spread suffering and deaths unto others, and re-inscribed xenophobia toward the “other,” where an unwelcome entity such as the virus is said to have come from a foreign place to threaten “our” very existence. As such, the pandemic created social, political, and ecological conditions that continued to brew a fear of foreign entities and perpetuate social, economic, and environmental inequalities. We see these fears manifested across different geo-political contexts, such as Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine for resources (Masters, 2023), or the unchecked clearing of vast areas of rainforest in Brazil for new farmlands (Project MapBiomas, 2022; Silvério et al., 2015). All the while, we see these prevailing conditions increase the mistrust and misinformation of science and its practices, emboldening the actions of anti-vaxxers and anti-climate changers; exacerbating environmental degradation that leads to the loss of biodiversity; and increasing poverty, health disparities, and global inequalities that continue to disproportionately impact marginalized and oppressed populations. These issues could ultimately endanger democracy and democratic ideals on which science and its practices are founded. We see science as a tool to disrupt social and legal violence on women, sexual minorities (Butler, 2022b), and Indigenous groups. The missing link in many science education contexts is what kind of relationships we seek to build with the biodiversity of the world. How do we prepare our science teachers and science teacher educators to stretch the ideas of science to reframe their worldview; reenvisioning “unlivable conditions of poverty, incarceration, or destitution or social and sexual violence, including homophobic, transphobic, racist violence, and violence against women” (Butler, 2022b, p. 18) as predominant concerns of classroom science. We believe in a transformative science education that puts more onus on teachers and curriculum to engage students in critically examining why they possess an agency “[t]o make a demand for a livable life is to demand that a life has the power to live” (Butler, 2022b, p. 18). We wonder how do we, as science teachers and science teacher educators, recognize the agency that all living beings inherently possess. Therefore, we assert that all aspects of doing