Latinx students embodying justice‐centered science

Agency through imagining via the performing arts

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21392864
AutoresRebecca Kotler (0000-0001-5569-4028, Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Illinois Chicago Chicago Illinois USA, autor correspondente), Maria Rosário (Chicago Public Schools Chicago Illinois USA), Maria Varelas (0000-0001-8212-2674, Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Illinois Chicago Chicago Illinois USA), Nathan C Phillips (0000-0003-1571-5503, Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Illinois Chicago Chicago Illinois USA), Rachelle P Tsachor (0000-0002-9640-2770, School of Theatre and Music University of Illinois Chicago Chicago Illinois USA), Rebecca Woodard (0000-0003-2397-3211, Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Illinois Chicago Chicago Illinois USA)
Ano2024
Volume108
Fascículo3
Páginas851-889
Data de publicação2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoScience Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sce.21859
OpenAlexW4391608430
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas84

Children are often denied science education that engages their emotions and multiple identities. This study focused on ways in which embodied arts‐based experiences offer opportunities for such engagement in pedagogical efforts associated with justice‐centered science. The conceptual framework that informed the study considers the body as a site of learning, embraces social justice in science education and engages with the dialectical relationship between various structures and children's agency, and frames the transdisciplinarity of imagination. The instrumental case study centered on a fifth‐grade class of Latinx students in an urban public school, as they grappled with lead contamination and peoples' rights to clean water through an embodied, arts‐based pedagogy in their science class. Analysis of video clips, student work, and other artifacts pointed to three findings on how children engaged with justice‐centered science learning via arts‐based embodied activities. Through perspective‐taking in the dramatizing, children engaged with science ideas intertwined with sociopolitical understandings. Through centering emotions that drama afforded, children experienced empathy and solidarity with others affected by environmental injustices. Through imagined and enacted participation in struggles that the embodiments necessitated, children engaged in actions to resist injustices. These findings suggest that exploring children's arts‐based embodied meaning making in science is a robust area of inquiry. Furthermore, the findings compel researchers and practitioners to consider emotions in performing arts, and how they can deepen engagement in, and exploration of, justice‐centered science. Recommendations emerged for practitioners poised to explore justice‐centered science with children through the arts

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Pedagogy · Science education · Social science · Sociology · The arts · Visual arts · Art Education and Development · Early Childhood Education and Development · Educational Environments and Student Outcomes · Psychology