Science education has a key role to play in supporting a just transition to the climate crisis. Participants will learn about 20 priority areas associated with climate and environmental justice—and explore educational approaches, resources, and groups related to these areas.

TAKEAWAYS:
Working towards climate justice involves a multifaceted set of issues and priorities. Teachers will identify which priority areas relate to their goals and context and learn about related resources. A climate justice framework will help teachers learn about different dimensions of climate justice.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler, Nancy Price

Racism is prevalent in our society. Participants will examine resources for engaging students in respectful and productive activity that contrast the social construct of race with scientific understandings of genetics. Examples of how science education can be a form of social justice will be shared.

TAKEAWAYS:
Anti-racism work in science education is difficult. Resources to support teachers in engaging in controversial topics will be examined and used by participants to rehearse effective pedagogical moves in engaging in classroom discussions of racism and science. Curricular resources will be shared.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler, Michal Robinson, Jeanne Chowning

Talk is fundamental to learning. This workshop engages participants in a variety of talk strategies specifically designed for improving classroom equity while engaging in STEM learning experiences. Many supporting resources are shared that teachers can learn from and directly use with students.

TAKEAWAYS:
The goal of this session is to support teachers in understanding how best to meet the needs of all learners by starting from where students are at and drawing on their intuitive ideas and real world experiences to inform instruction. All strategies are framed as equitable 3D formative assessment.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler

We show how instructional materials can be adapted for local contexts—and how to elevate issues of climate justice and ethical responses to the climate crisis. Participants will learn about how a high school physics unit from OpenSciEd was adapted to attend to Indigenous land rights and sovereignty.

TAKEAWAYS:
In relation to science and engineering projects in society (e.g., associated with the energy transition, ecological restoration, urban development), teachers will learn how to engage students in exploring moral and ethical dimensions of trade-offs in project approaches.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Kelsie Fowler

Climate change is here. Come explore ways to teach about this that intersect with issues of justice and provide action for the future. This workshop will support educators in all grades and contexts, including those who can’t even say “climate change”!

TAKEAWAYS:
Strategies for engaging in climate change and climate justice learning appropriate to grade band NGSS standards, climate and energy literacy standards, and for both school and community based learning contexts.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler

All students have the right to develop a deep understanding of how the world works in ways that support their personal goals and the interests of their community. Come explore how instruction can more equitably support science learning that is consequential to your students and their communities.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will develop an understanding of an equity project framework for science education for supporting professional learning and implementation projects. They will learn how open education resources (http://stemteachingtools.org/) can help them develop equitable approaches to science teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Michal Robinson

Learn about the Justice-Centered Ambitious Science Teaching framework and practices teachers have developed to be responsive to students' cultures and communities, recognize and build upon expansive forms of student meaning-making, and committed to naming and disrupting injustice in society.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about teaching practices aimed at building a welcoming, joyful, and critical community, planning that is meaningful for youth and advocates for justice, elicits local stories and uses interpretive power, and nurtures revisions of scientific thinking with diverse and local expertise.

SPEAKERS:
April Luehmann, Molly Wilson, Priya Pugh, Todd Campbell, Katrina Robinson, James Kostka, Christina Riccardo

Come explore teaching strategies and instructional supports for helping youth learn about climate justice-centered phenomena and issues. Youth are seeking out this type of socio-ecological learning opportunity! Help them learn how to engage in collective action!

TAKEAWAYS:
Our climate tools contain rich examples of climate justice instruction, strategies for engaging youth, and to support climate change learning and communication among educators. These open education resources (OER) include video overviews, valuable guidance, and tons of background resources!

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler

This session highlights cultural dimensions of meaningful science learning. It showcases a powerful instructional technique for formative assessment called “self-documentation”—where students collect information related to a particular theme or topic in their everyday lives.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers learn how to promote equity by focusing on learning and teaching as an inherently cultural process. They develop a shared understanding of how cultural formative assessment can reveal the interests, experiences, and identities of students.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Tiffany Neill, Ximena Gallegos Gutierrez

How can science learning experiences help students develop ecological caring approaches to the living world? Come explore educational approaches to multispecies justice with us! Expanding how students connect to and care for the living world around them is vital at this time of climate crisis.

TAKEAWAYS:
People’s relationships to nature are culturally and historically rooted and are embedded in approaches to science teaching and learning. Science can be used to guide ecological caring responses and support the thriving of species.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Nancy Price, Kelsie Fowler

Students bring amazing intellectual resources to make sense of science phenomena based on their personal and community experiences—including language, perspectives, gestures, and knowledge, interests, and values. Come learn how to notice and leverage those intellectual gifts in your teaching!

TAKEAWAYS:
Culturally responsive education supports student sensemaking and learning in science. Inclusive science strategies help teachers learn to see and leverage students’ diverse sense-making resources. These methods help us create and adapt curriculum that is equitable and centered on justice.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Nancy Price

Students bring a range of intellectual resources—based on their unique life experiences—into the classroom as they learn science. These resources can be considered different “facets” of thinking. Teachers explore a protocol for identifying and attending to facets through formative assessments.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will help participants: analyze cognitive formative assessment responses to surface the range of student thinking about science topics and concepts, guide instruction based on that diversity of student ideas, and design formative assessment tasks to support equitable 3D instruction.

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, Tiffany Neill

Guiding instruction based on the assessment of student’s developing proficiencies is a key feature of powerful learning experiences. This session focuses how to design assessments that gauge student understanding of justice-related phenomena and topics that are deeply consequential.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn about a detailed 9-step process for conceiving, developing, testing, refining, and using 3D science assessments focused on social justice phenomena and topics. Open education resources that support this assessment development process will also be shared. #NSFfunded

SPEAKERS:
Philip Bell, William Penuel