A growing body of research demonstrates the value of asking students to write about science for authentic purposes. But which purposes--and, just as importantly, whose purposes--count as authentic? In this theoretical article, we review several conceptions of authentic purpose drawn from science education and literacy education and use these to…

In this forum, we discuss the need for multicultural education that is supported by culturally relevant pedagogy to fashion science teaching that intimately connects science content to students' sociocultural and linguistic experiences. In Nepal, teacher education programs and teachers' pedagogical practices view students' multiple cultural and…

In writing this review, I draw on the experience of David Greenwood ("Cult Stud Sci Educ" 10:5-16, 2015) whose ethnographic study sheds light on his growth as a faculty member who has taught in various settings that are quite different from the culture that he grew up with. I extend his thoughts on ecological mindfulness to encompass a…

Professional development on issues of language and culture is often separate from professional development on issues related to STEM education, resulting in linguistic and cultural gaps in K-12 STEM pedagogy and practice. To address this issue, we have designed a model of professional development in which we work with educators to build cultural…

Classrooms across the United States increasingly find immigrant science teachers paired with urban minority students, but few of these teachers are prepared for the challenges such cultural assimilation presents. This is particularly true in secondary science education. Identifying potential prospects for culturally adaptive pedagogy in science…

An urgent goal for science teacher educators is to prepare teachers to teach science in meaningful ways to youth from nondominant backgrounds. This preparation is challenging, for it asks teachers to critically examine how their pedagogical practices might adaptively respond to students and to science. It asks, essentially, for new teachers to…

Culturally responsive science teaching is using knowledge about the culture and life experiences of students to structure learning that is conducive to their needs. Understanding what teachers need to prepare them to be culturally responsive is a matter of continuous debate. As the focus of multicultural education ventures farther away from its…

John Settlage's article--"Counterstories from White Mainstream Preservice Teachers: Resisting the Master Narrative of Deficit by Default"--outlines his endeavour to enable pre-service teachers to develop culturally responsive science teaching identities for resisting the master narrative of deficit thinking when confronted by the culturally…

This article is a response to Randy Yerrick and Joseph Johnson's article "Negotiating White Science in Rural Black America: A Case for Navigating the Landscape of Teacher Knowledge Domains". They write about research conducted by Yerrick in which videos of his teaching practice as a White educator in a predominately Black rural classroom were…

In this forum, we summarize CRT's origins, tenets common to most CRT writings, and CRT's evolution. We discuss Yerrick's article "Negotiating White Science" with respect to certain CRT premises. Specifically, we use the CRT tenet of racism as emphasized in first- and second-generation CRT and CRT elements liberal racial ideology and voices of…

In this response to Konstantinos Alexakos, Jayson K. Jones, and Victor H. Rodriguez's study, I discuss ways attending to student membership in groups can both inform research on equity and diversity in science education and improve the teaching of science to all students. My comments are organized into three sections: how underrepresented…