Teaching STEM in the Context of Social Justice
When you were in high school, did you ever feel like the material you learned was only useful for taking the next test or for getting into college? That almost all of your schoolwork was useless outside of academics? Well, as an aspiring teacher, I want to do everything I can to prevent my students from feeling this way. To actively transform our education system and to give people both a sense of self-efficacy and a feeling that their educations will be applicable to real-world situations, I’m working with the Sampson Research Group at UT and with the Argument Driven Inquiry project.
In traditional teaching styles, students are given a list of processes and formulas for rote memorization. However, these same students are not given adequate instruction to connect the abstract and the theoretical to their lives outside of school. They are fully expected to discover the applicability of these concepts on their own. Math and science are used to effect change throughout various aspects of the world in which we live. So why are we not teaching students how to wield these subjects as tools to effect change? In Argument Driven Inquiry, we use an inquiry-based style of teaching to create lesson plans that do exactly this.
The Argument Driven Inquiry’s math and science lessons are taught through the lens of real social justice issues, with each lesson focusing on a different social or natural phenomenon. Students get to analyze data and make calculations concerning, for example, the environmental impacts of different types of cars, how the rates of human trafficking differ between states, and how diseases (such as COVID-19) can differentially affect various racial groups.
While working with these issues, students learn crucial mathematical concepts such as proportions, statistics, algebra, and so much more while simultaneously becoming aware of societal inequalities. Through the curriculum we present, students also get to engage in the peer-review system and learn how to clearly and effectively justify arguments with scientific and mathematical evidence. This enables children to gain the skills that are required to move from simply being passive, knowledgeable observers of these issues to active, driven problem solvers.
The lessons we create progress through a series of eight stages that include different aspects of preparing and brainstorming an approach, collecting data, creating an argument, crafting a conclusion, and presenting and defending a claim. We introduce the phenomenon of study through a guiding question, while also giving suggestions for what mathematical concepts could be utilized to approach it. The guiding question, much like a research question, is the main question around which students center their claims. Importantly, it does not necessarily need to have one ‘correct’ answer; that’s where argumentation comes into play! Inquiry-based learning gives students the opportunity to create their own ideas and approaches for solving a problem.
After students analyze the data and craft an argument, they move to create and present their views, defend their claims, and critique others’ positions. This allows students to show their peers what mathematical concepts they utilized within their investigation and justify why they formed their claims. The students then critique their peers’ arguments in an environment where they can respectfully debate their varying ideas. This style of teaching not only allows students to use math and science to tackle real-world issues of inequality and injustice, but it also teaches them how to present findings from research, how to provide constructive critique, and how to use feedback to revise their initial arguments.
At the University of Texas at Austin, we say, “what starts here changes the world.” We say this because we recognize the importance and impact a quality education can have not only on ourselves, but also on others. Therefore, let’s teach the next generation in a way that allows them to effect the change our society so desperately needs.
For more information concerning these efforts, please visit https://argumentdriveninquiry.com/.
Thumbnail image courtesy of Hannah Penley, with image credit to the Argument Driven Inquiry Project.