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Taking Stock of Science Standards Implementation Proceedings of a Virtual Summit (2022) / Chapter Skim
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5 Centering Student Experience in Science
Pages 29-36

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From page 29...
... . The Framework report states that a major goal for science education is to allow students to "systematically investigate issues related to their personal and community priorities." By centering instruction on students' lived experiences, said Duncan, science education can be coherent across lessons, units, and grades.
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From page 30...
... The five panelists were as follows: • Edna Tan: professor at University of North Carolina at Greens boro; focuses on equitable and consequential science learning for historically underrepresented minority youth • Rabiah Harris: eighth-grade science teacher and team lead at Ida B Wells Middle School; 17 years experience in teaching • Lauren Kaupp: educational specialist for science and STEM at the Hawaii Department of Education; experience in curriculum design, professional development, and standards implementation • Maria Olivares: research assistant professor at Boston University; works in partnership to develop learning environments that sup port expansive and creative inquiry in STEM • Enrique Suárez: assistant professor at University of Massachu setts, Amherst; designs learning environments that support young, emerging, multilingual students in leveraging their conceptual re sources and trans-languaging practices for learning science STUDENT PERSPECTIVES What are you hearing from students about their experiences in science classrooms?
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From page 31...
... When considering how to center student experiences, said Tan, it is productive to frame the work against a backdrop of historical and systematic injustices and oppressions that have been visited on the bodies of particular groups of students disproportionately. "The past is carried in our bodies, in our ideologies, in our framings, in our positionings," and the past impacts how individuals perform in the here and now.
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From page 32...
... Tan added that centering student experiences is a paradigm shift that requires teachers to be nimble and requires administrators and staff to foster an environment of support for teachers and students. Harris gave an example of how students' lives and experiences can be brought into the science classroom.
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From page 33...
... He said that an equitable approach • centers student experiences and acknowledges, mitigates, and re dresses the sociohistorical and sociopolitical oppressions of the past and the present; • creates opportunities for self-determination and group delibera tion, instead of using students' experiences only as steppingstones toward dominant knowledge and ways of knowing; and • recognizes the value of diversity and acknowledges that "we are doing ourselves a disservice" by excluding certain people and dif ferent ways of knowing. If we coordinate multiple ways of understanding and multiple ways of relating to the natural world, we create better knowledge.
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From page 34...
... Tan said that equity and centering student experiences are systemic issues, and that an ecosystem lens is necessary to understand and address these issues across space and time. Tan encouraged a zoom in/zoom out approach, in which stakeholders can zoom out to see the historical and contextual nature of inequities and can zoom in to address these issues in the classroom day-to-day.
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From page 35...
... Students interviewed stakeholders, parents, and students, and identified problems such as low morale, stress, and bullying. One particular issue was bullying in the bathroom, and the students found that the small size of the stall doors was causing girls to have to contort their bodies to stay safe, or to avoid going to the bathroom altogether.
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Key Terms

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  • science education
  • student experience
  • olivares added
  • science learning

  • professional development
  • standards implementation
  • science class
  • science classrooms
  • center student

  • duncan shared
  • learning environments
  • dominant culture
  • calabrese barton
  • student learning

  • science classroom
  • consequential science
  • centers student
  • science unit
  • move science

  • support student
  • connect science
  • rigorous science
  • tering student
  • doing science

  • support classroom
  • centering racial
  • students found
  • multilingual students
  • students disproportionately


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