The predominant conceptualization of scientific literacy occurs on the micro scale of an individual person. However, scientific literacy can also be exhibited at the meso scale by groups of people in communities of place, practice, or interest. What comprises this community level scientific literacy (CSL) is both understudied and undertheorized.…

Early childhood is an opportune time to begin teaching STEM, and preschool education provides the opportunity. How children experience and respond to STEM in community-based preschools is our focus. Using the CIRCLE classroom observation system, we examined how frequently and in what contexts preschool teachers provided STEM learning…

Educators involved in the improvement of science instruction need to explore how science education could better align with the needs and interests of specific communities, especially in areas of Central America where local knowledge has been expunged from schools. In this paper, I draw upon Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies to…

Maintaining a commitment to social justice teaching can be especially challenging when navigating the bureaucratic systems and ever-spiraling responsibilities of the education system. To better understand how social-justice-oriented educators navigate these tensions, this paper uses qualitative methods to investigate the social justice problems of…

Lack of access to STEMM mentors has been identified as a critical barrier to biomedical research careers, leading to a lack of diversity in this field. To address such a barrier, the National Institutes of Health invested funds to support institutions in developing research immersion programs to provide "underrepresented" students with…

School-based citizen science offers a way for students and teachers to collaborate with scientists and take part in multiple facets of research such as data collection and analysis, and sometimes research initiation, co-design, and reporting of findings. However, most citizen science projects offered to schools are of the contributory type, often…

This essay centers on the voices of leading scholars in science and STEM education on how equity can and should be centered in reviewing proposals for granting organizations. As the decisions made as a result of the reviewing process significantly impact the future directions of the field, we recognize the urgency in considering how equity is…

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…

In this study, we explored how science teacher candidates construct ideas about science teaching and learning in the context of partnerships with urban community-based organizations. We used a case study design focusing on a group of 10 preservice teachers' participation in educational programming that focused on environmental racism and connected…

The purpose of this study was to uncover determinants of Black families' access to STEM enrichment, specifically focusing on I AM STEM--a community-based program. Our research examined the association between class membership and how families learned about I AM STEM, to provide a more nuanced understanding about how family dynamics influence Black…

Few studies have examined how professional learning communities (PLCs) engage in collaborative inquiry over multiple years. This longitudinal study explored how a team of high school science teachers collaborated with researchers and district-based coaches in a PLC over 4 years. We examined (1) how the PLC, which was situated in a culturally and…

We explored how various contextual resources accumulated over multiple years operated together to facilitate a team of high school teachers' sustained and agentive learning after a 4-year research-practice partnership (RPP) grant concluded. Specifically, we examined constellations of resources that promoted the co-evolution of the teachers'…

This study examined how high school students' attitudes toward advanced physics were predicted by their sense of school belonging, and how gender moderated this relationship. The Trends in International Math and Science (TIMSS) 2015 Advanced data, consisting of responses from 12th grade students enrolled in advanced physics courses among nine…

Promoting critical science agency (CSA) may be one way to promote educational justice. CSA is using science with other powerful forms of knowledge to address issues of injustice. However, the process of enacting CSA is always embedded within a sociopolitical context, which positions some students with more power than others. Drawing upon a social…

We explore how physical science doctoral students navigate their role identities throughout their graduate programme. Physical science doctoral students take on many academic roles in addition to the role of scientist, including researcher, educator, and student. When social expectations of roles become internalized, they become role identities.…