Physical Society Colloquium

Designing for Social Justice in Science Teaching and Learning: Working towards Rightful Presence

Angela Calabrese Barton

Marsal Family School of Education
University of Michigan

Current discourses of equity in teaching and learning are framed around calls for inclusion, grounded in the extension of a set of static rights for high-quality learning opportunities for all students. In this seminar we provide an overview of Rightful Presence, a guiding framework for social justice science teaching, developed on-the-ground with partner teachers in Research Practice Partnerships. This framework highlights the limitations of equity as inclusion, which does not adequately address the ways in which systemic injustices manifest in local classroom practice. Rightful presence centers youth having legitimate membership in their science learning community because of who they are and not who they should be. Rightful presence draws on the ingenuity, knowledge and practice youth bring to learning and doing science. Rightful presence orients the field towards new forms of teaching that restructure learning opportunities such that the lives of all youth are made visible and integral to science, especially those lives made invisible in STEM through a history of systemic racism and heteropatriarchy. Three tenets for guiding the use of this framework in teaching and learning are offered. Case studies from partner teacher classrooms across settings will be used to illuminate key points.

Resource readings

• Calabrese Barton, A. & Tan, E. (2020). Beyond Equity as Inclusion: A Framework of ‘Rightful Presence’ for Guiding Justice-oriented Studies in Teaching and Learning. Educational Researcher.
• Calabrese Barton, A., Tan, E. & Birmingham, D. (2020). Rethinking High Leverage Practices in Justice-oriented Ways. Journal of Teacher Education.
• Calabrese Barton, A. & Tan, E. (2019). Designing for rightful presence in STEM: Community ethnography as pedagogy as an equity-oriented design approach. Journal of the Learning Sciences. DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2019.1591411.
• Schenkel, K., Bliesener, S., Calabrese Barton, A., & Tan, E. (2020). Community Ethnography Teacher's Toolkit. Science Scope