Science & Education最新文献

How might science education researchers expand the study of affective and emotional phenomena in ways that afford a better understanding of human learning experiences, support conditions of justice, and affirm learners’ dignity? How far from the realization of these goals we now feel in the fall of 2025. And yet, we persist in pursuing them. In this introductory editorial to the special issue on Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Dignity and Justice in Science Education, we explain what animates this question, introduce the structure of the special issue, and provide an overview of the papers. To us, questions like, “what is the emotion in this situation?” lead to analytical dead ends. They seek to apply a flimsy nametag over a phenomenon that runs much deeper and holds much greater consequence. As affect emerges, how is it channeled and mediated, and by whom? When people apply emotion terms to the ways they feel, what forms of social understanding and possibilities for action follow? Seeking justice and dignity in science education will require us to stop treating emotion as something ready-made, with uncontested and straightforward meanings, and start treating it as a matter of social coordination and meaning-making processes, inflected by power, shaped by history, and creating contingent openings for imagining futures and acting on the world. Toward charting these possibilities, we introduce 29 manuscripts (14 original papers and 14 corresponding responses, plus a synthetic essay) that emphasize the social embeddedness of affect and emotion in science teaching and learning rather than interiorizing and individualizing accounts.

In this response to Jonathan McCausland's “Emotional Configurations of White Shame and White Ambivalence for White Interns in a Secondary Science Teaching Program,” as part of the special issue on Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, we reflect on the complexities of Whiteness, emotion, and antiracist teaching in science education. Building on McCausland's analysis, we examine how configurations such as white fragility, superiority, apathy, and exceptionalism operate alongside shame and ambivalence to maintain racial comfort and protect Whiteness in classroom spaces. Drawing from our experiences as scholars of Whiteness and former K–12 educators, we reflect on the challenges of facilitating antiracist learning with White interns, particularly within Teacher Education Programs (TEPs) that remain embedded in structures of Whiteness. We briefly reflect on the tension between the justice-oriented aims of teacher preparation and the challenges of securing aligned field placements, particularly within a broader context of increasing political scrutiny of public education. In doing so, we point to the need for continued institutional reflection on how Whiteness operates across both coursework and clinical experiences in science education.

Undergraduate research experience programs can provide students with significant opportunities to engage in research and further develop scientist identities. Grounded in theoretical frames of identity compatibility, interactionist approach, and intersectionality we present findings from an undergraduate research experience program intentionally designed to promote the development of a student's scientist identity while welcoming other personal and social identities. Student participants engaged in a reflection activity up to three times over the course of their 2 years in the program. The analysis of their essays revealed students brought with them many personal and social identities to the program and they found ways to make their scientist identity co-exist with their other identities that felt right for them, despite starting the program with feelings of incompatibility. Unlike previous research, how our participants incorporated scientist identity with their other identities suggested qualitatively different selves that included scientist identities. Lastly, participants recognized the importance of the program, university, and greater research community contexts in their identity development. We discuss connections with other identity integration constructs and suggest implications for research and undergraduate research experience programs.

As part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, this paper responds to Robertson and colleagues' article: “Exposing and Challenging ‘Grit’ in Physics Education.” It examines affect theory and its connections to science identity formation. However, the paper critiques the body-mind split inherent in affect theory, arguing it stems from colonial epistemologies. Through a decolonial analysis, the paper proposes an integrative framework informed by nondominant epistemologies. It argues that racism and colonization hinder learning possibilities and scientific advancement. The paper emphasizes shared responsibility for dismantling oppressive structures, including the “grit” discourse identified in the original paper. It aims to facilitate individual reflection and encourage collective action, fostering positive change within physics spaces.

In this response to Zhang and Kuo as part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, I argue that to truly care for the well-being of our students, we need to go beyond research: we will need to abolish harmful systems and replace them with systems in which students would not need to “cope”. I argue that the phenomenon of hierarchical status construction amongst students is connected to racism, sexism, ableism, and other dominant systems of oppression. Centering affect and emotion toward justice and dignity in science education would require dismantling and reassembling educational systems with a view towards the thriving of those historically denied access. For that, I argue, we need a major redistribution of decision-making power.

We live in times of crises, genocides, and massive destruction of both the natural and social habitat, where justice-centered socio-political visions of the future enacted in the present are urgently needed. Hence, the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education could not be more timely and needed. In this commentary we first provide a brief synthesis of the empirical findings and conceptual ideas presented, and then we discuss absences and constraints. Our response is grounded within the fact that engaging with affect is crucial in addressing justice-oriented goals in and through science education. Building on the authors’ work, we argue that to re-imagine science education, we need to engage more thoroughly with critical pedagogies, invest in humanizing science education, decolonize our research methodologies, and consider the diversity of geographies of injustices. The manuscripts hosted in this issue present a range of examples of work carried out in different places and showcase how this is possible in ways that resist hegemonic ways of being and doing science. We end our commentary with an invitation to our community to move from the politics of affect to the politics of allowing ourselves to be affected by and with others for the purpose of resisting, repairing, and acting otherwise in science education.

In this response to Silvis, Clarke-Midura, Lee and Shumway as part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, I discuss some of the key openings and complexities involved in interpreting the affective, powered, embodied, historical, and cultural layers present within the learning processes of young children in a computer science setting. I consider 1) methodology as a process of learning to see and revise our conceptions of embodied learning; 2) the importance of attuning to both power and agency in STEM learning settings; and 3) analytic openings that can draw together the historicized and relational details of learning. I highlight key strengths and contributions of the paper while wrestling with important field-level challenges raised by the analysis of embodied learning among Theresa and her small group. These include the affordances and constraints of comfort as a construct, and the powered dimensions of intercorporeal dynamics among children. I reflect on the ways rendering the complexity of students’ ingenuity in navigating marginalization and finding comfort alongside attention to power is important both for developing multi-dimensional views of embodied learning among children in STEM environments and for helping surface possibilities for intervention and change.

This response to Davis and Philip, as part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, takes seriously the idea that a core responsibility of science educators and researchers is to think carefully and critically about students’ socioscientific sensemaking and its relationship to coloniality. This response engages three dimensions of their writing, in particular. First, that emotions do things in learning and therefore demand closer analytic attention in research and teaching. Second, why the emergence of hyperrationality in students’ reasoning (as a specific emotional configuration) is a generative site for identifying when racism, patriarchy, and colonialism imbues STEM learning. Third and finally, this response considers how teachers and researchers might build capacity for the kind of interdisciplinary and interpretive analysis Davis and Philip reflect in their writing, and as is necessary for advancing justice and dignity in science education.