Transformative Science Teaching: A Catalyst for Justice and Sustainability

A call to action championing equity and social justice in K-12 science curriculum.

Transformative Science Teaching reveals Daniel Morales-Doyle’s vision for science education that supports meaningful learning in the sciences. In this sensible and sensitive assessment of science instruction in the United States, Morales-Doyle outlines both what science education is and what it could be. He suggests that a judicious shift in the field’s goals and methods--for example, incorporating practice-based teacher education, justice-centered science pedagogy, and youth participatory science--could give all students, not just those preparing for STEM careers, opportunities to be engaged with the sciences, with their communities, and in the world.

Challenging science teachers to think differently about instructional priorities, Morales-Doyle draws on more than a decade’s worth of teaching experience in high school science classrooms as well as recent studies in science curricula and instruction. He offers advice for middle and high school teachers on ways to center social justice science issues (SJSIs) within the context of Next Generation Science Standards and bring forward urgent topics, such as racial and environmental justice, that are relevant to students’ lives. The book features lesson plans, instructional materials, activities, and questions to help STEM educators develop their pedagogy.

This thought-provoking work promotes science instruction as a venue to fuel students’ imaginations, complex thinking, and commitments to sustainability while also cultivating their sense of wonder about the world.

Daniel Morales-Doyle is an associate professor of science education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty at UIC, he was a high school teacher in the Chicago Public Schools for just over a decade.