I received an email from Nate Carnes, President of the Southeast Association for Science Teacher Education (SASTE) announcing the SASTE’s annual conference entitled: Social Justice and High Quality Science Education for All which will take place at the University of South Carolina, Columbia on October 10 & 11. Follow this link for details for the conference. Papers and poster sessions are invited.
The conference conveners are seeking papers from science educators in the southeastern region of the nation that focus on the theme of social justice. Some of the presentations will take place as interactive poster sessions, while others will be papers presented to small groups of participants.
I thought it might be interesting describe a paper on social justice and science education; perhaps the type of paper that would be presented at the conference. A good example is this paper: Working for Social Justice in Rural Schools: A Model for Science Education by Mary John O’Hair & Ulrich C. Reitzug, published in December, 2006 in INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC JOURNAL FOR LEADERSHIP IN LEARNING.
According to the authors, the purpose of their article is to call attention to a neglected dimension of social justice—social justice for rural schools and, particularly, for the education of the students who attend these schools and the professional development of the educators who serve in them. They do this by describing the kindergarten through graduate education (K20) Oklahoma Science Initiative for Rural Schools, a program within the K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal at the University of Oklahoma. The authors point out that:
Rural America, representing one-third of all U.S. schoolchildren, is much poorer than urban America, with 59 of the 66 poorest counties located in rural areas. Rural schools are at a disadvantage when competing for resources for professional development and attracting qualified teachers, with one in four rural science teachers lacking in academic preparation or certification.
- deepens the content knowledge and comfort with inquiry-based teaching of rural secondary science teachers through authentic research experiences;
- transfers and sustains teachers’ authentic research experiences into classroom practice through lesson study; and
- creates professional learning communities that provide meaningful learning experiences for teachers and students.
K20 SCIENCE advances social justice in rural schools through new conceptions of teacher professional development that enhances learning and prepares citizens for democratic participation.
- Science Learning in Urban Settings, Angela Calabrese Barton (Handbook of Research in Science Teaching, 2007). Barton reviews the research on science teaching in urban areas. One of the points she makes is that the science education climate is marked by our “propensity” for high-stakes exams and outcome-based learning. She is concerned that policies related to standards-based education will not provide the kind of science education that is needed in urban settings.
- Rural Science Education Research and the Frameworks that Give it Form, J. Steve Oliver (Rural Educator, The, Spring 2007). A very good personal account of the nature of rural education, and some of the problems faced by researchers and rural educators.
- Science Education and Student Diversity: Race/Ethnicity, Language, Culture, and Socioeconomic Status by Okhee Lee and Aurolyn Luykx (Published in the Handbook of Research on Science Teaching, 2007)
- The Association for Science Teacher Education
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