Papers by Alexa Schindel (*previously Dimick)
Empowerment
BRILL eBooks, May 8, 2019
Mediating Learning in the Zones of Development: Role of Teacher and Kindergartner Talk-Turns During Read-Aloud Discussions
Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Nov 30, 2022
Altering the Ideology of Consumerism: Caring for Land and People Through School Science
Sociocultural Perspectives on Youth Ethical Consumerism, 2017
In this chapter, we examine how school science can engage ethics of care to interrupt harmful env... more In this chapter, we examine how school science can engage ethics of care to interrupt harmful environmental and economic practices of consumption. More specifically, we question: how can science education promote ethical practices of sustainability, particularly within contexts of economic oppression? We first describe how consumerism has become an under–interrogated dominant neoliberal ideology, calling attention to how unfettered consumerism has had devastating effects on individuals, communities, land, and other living beings. We outline how these effects are disproportionately intensified within economically oppressed communities. We then propose an ethic of caring for land and people by drawing on conceptualizations of caring in education literature, environmental education, and Indigenous thought. Next we draw from two case studies of high school science contexts to show ways that youth and their teachers critique consumption through and within an ethic of caring for self, each other, land, and community. As youth re/learn sustainable practices, they attend to both ecological and economic dimensions of sustainability–caring for both land and people. Ultimately, these cases highlight how youth benefit from opportunities to rethink consumption and consumerism in ways that are situated within the complex ecologies of their lives.
Teaching science to transgress: Portraits of feminist praxis
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2021
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2018
This article examines the public school food system in Buffalo, New York, for a just transition (... more This article examines the public school food system in Buffalo, New York, for a just transition (Movement Generation, n. d.). School food programs built on just transition characteristics democratize engagement, decentralize decisionmaking, diversify the economy, decrease consumption, and redistribute resources and power. The Buffalo public school district's food system is an important subsection of the city's food system that reaches the most vulnerable populations. School food systems contain teachable spaces within schools to introduce students to healthy eating, fresh food, and the (in)equitable economies of the larger community food system. We argue that school food is an ideal entry point for introducing a just transition to the local food system, enhancing food equity built from healthier social, economic, ecological, and political systems. Related to this JAFSCD issue's call on Local Government in Food Systems Work, we aim to bring attention to the role and responsibility of public education systems in managing and enhancing community food systems through public policy. This qualitative case study examines five public school food programs
The Journal of Environmental Education, 2017
What role does caring play in environmental education? The development of caring relationships in... more What role does caring play in environmental education? The development of caring relationships in formal school settings remains a foundational yet underexamined concept in environmental education research. This study examines the role of caring relationships between people and place in an urban high school in the United States. We draw upon theoretical lenses of caring and justice by egalitarian and feminist scholars to examine the role that authentic caring plays in a teacher's practice and in students' experiences when engaged in urban park restoration. Findings reveal that the caring role of the environmental science teacher in this study is significant; the teacher's caring/carework mediates how students in his class relate to the environmental learning experiences. Further, through these experiences students in the study likewise initiated care both for themselves and others.
Empowerment
Keywords in Radical Philosophy and Education, 2019
Science Education, 2018
In this article, we critically examine what a commitment to equity, diversity, and social justice... more In this article, we critically examine what a commitment to equity, diversity, and social justice in science and science education means for our research practices and methods. Using a blend of critical cross-cultural and feminist lenses, we explore relationships of power in our research, specifically in terms of knowledge production, representation, and positionality. We also consider our ethical obligations and relational responsibilities as researchers in terms of caring and solidarity. We argue that relevance should be measured as a function of the transformative impact of the research enterprise. We also argue that to do this, researchers need to examine and expose their own positioning and positionality. We propose a variety of strategies, drawn from our work and from that of many others, which illustrate how to build and sustain more caring, ethical, responsive, and responsible relationships with research participants.
Engaging in Research Practices as Critical Scholars/Activists: A Metalogue
Critical Voices in Science Education Research
In this chapter, we use a metalogue format to discuss the possibilities of engaging in activist o... more In this chapter, we use a metalogue format to discuss the possibilities of engaging in activist oriented scholarship as critically engaged scholar/activists. We draw upon our experiences to think about what this type of engagement means both on personal and individualized levels as well as in the broader context of being/becoming activists and critical scholars within a field – science education – that has little history of supporting this type of work. Each of us has chosen to engage with activism as a methodological and theoretical approach to working within and for schools as science educators. We will narrow our focus in this chapter to consider and creatively re/imagine the following research practices: (1) Positionality: What are our own social, political, and gendered/classed/racialized roles as we conduct research within economically oppressed communities?; (2) Public: What are our responsibilities to the communities in which we work and to the broader public?; and (3) Rigor: How do we (re)define rigor as a measure of transformative impact with the communities with whom we research? This metalogue will contribute to critical perspectives on research and research relationships in science education.
Teaching science to transgress: Portraits of feminist praxis
Journal of Research in Science Teaching
Social justice education is undertheorized in science education. Given the wide range of goals an... more Social justice education is undertheorized in science education. Given the wide range of goals and purposes proposed within both social justice education and social justice science education scholarship, these fields require reconciliation. In this paper, I suggest a student empowerment framework for conceptualizing teaching and learning social justice science education in classroom settings. I utilize this framework to analyze the case study of a high school environmental science classroom in the United States where the teacher and students created environmental action projects that were relevant to their community. I examine how social, political, and academic empowerment were or were not enacted within the classroom and argue for educators to give heed to all three simultaneously to mediate student empowerment while working toward social justice science education.
What aspects of environmental citizenship do educators need to consider when they are teaching st... more What aspects of environmental citizenship do educators need to consider when they are teaching students about their environmental responsibilities within a neoliberal context? In this article, I respond to this question by analyzing the relationship between neoliberalism and environmental citizenship. Neoliberalism situates citizen participation as an individual concern that removes states from responsibility for public goods, such as the environment, while environmental citizenship scholarship runs the risk of promoting a diluted form of environmental engagement similar to that found within neoliberal ideology. This can result in negative consequences for the environment and for environmental participation among citizens. I conclude with a discussion of pedagogic and curricular practices that educators can use to support youth in developing forms of environmental citizenship that actively disrupt neoliberalism’s privatization of responsibility for the environmental commons.
In this commentary on Per Anderhag, Per-Olof Wickman and Karim Hamza’s article Signs of taste for... more In this commentary on Per Anderhag, Per-Olof Wickman and Karim Hamza’s article Signs of taste for science, I consider how their study is situated within the concern for the role of science education in the social and cultural production of inequality. Their article provides a finely detailed methodology for analyzing the constitution of taste within science education classrooms. Nevertheless, because the authors’ socially situated methodology draws upon Bourdieu’s theories, it seems equally important to extend these methods to consider how and why students make particular distinctions within a relational context—a key aspect of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production. By situating the constitution of taste within Bourdieu’s field analysis, researchers can explore the ways in which students’ tastes and social positionings are established and transformed through time, space, place, and their ability to navigate the field. I describe the process of field analysis in relation to the authors’ paper and suggest that combining the authors’ methods with a field analysis can provide a strong methodological and analytical framework in which theory and methods combine to create a detailed understanding of students’ interest in relation to their context.
Various schools of thought and critical theories have been brought to bear upon the field of soci... more Various schools of thought and critical theories have been brought to bear upon the field of social justice science education, which has begun to garner some much-needed attention (e.g. Calabrese Barton & Upadhyay, 2010; Emdin, 2011; Schindel Dimick, 2012). While each contribution to this nascent field may represent a step forward—that is, towards more socially just and egalitarian educational experiences and outcomes for science learners and their teachers—attention must also be placed on understanding how the varied directions of social justice in science education research work together. The field is fragmented. Some areas of social justice research flourish, such as attending to students’ opportunities to access science courses and scientific discourses and practices, while other aspects of social justice in science education remain under-researched, under-theorized, and under-critiqued. Such discontinuity may lead science educators to struggle to define the field and to feel puzzled by a lack of coherent direction in the field. In this essay, I explore the concept of flourishing in an attempt to illustrate how it might contribute to an understanding of social justice science education’s goals and purposes.
Texas and the politics of abstinence-only textbooks
Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Alexa Schindel (*previously Dimick)
Critical Voices in Science Education Research , 2019
Abstract: In this chapter, we use a metalogue format to discuss the possibilities of engaging in ... more Abstract: In this chapter, we use a metalogue format to discuss the possibilities of engaging in activist oriented scholarship as critically engaged scholar/activists. We draw upon our experiences to think about what this type of engagement means both on personal and individualized levels as well as in the broader context of being/becoming activists and critical scholars within a field--science education--that has little history of supporting this type of work. Each of us has chosen to engage with activism as a methodological and theoretical approach to working within and for schools as science educators. We will narrow our focus in this chapter to consider and creatively re/imagine the following research practices: (1) Positionality: What are our own social, political, and gendered/classed/racialized roles as we conduct research within economically oppressed communities?; (2) Public: What are our responsibilities to the communities in which we work and to the broader public?; and (3) Rigor: How do we (re)define rigor as a measure of transformative impact with the communities with whom we research? This metalogue will contribute to critical perspectives on research and research relationships in science education.
In this article, we critically examine what a commitment to equity, diversity, and social justice... more In this article, we critically examine what a commitment to equity, diversity, and social justice in science and science education means for our research practices and methods. Using a blend of critical cross-cultural and feminist lenses, we explore relationships of power in our research, specifically in terms of knowledge production, representation, and positionality. We also consider our ethical obligations and relational responsibilities as researchers in terms of caring and solidarity. We argue that relevance should be measured as a function of the transformative impact of the research enterprise. We also argue that in order to do this, researchers need to examine and expose their own positioning and positionality. We propose a variety of strategies, drawn from our work and from that of many others, which illustrate how to build and sustain more caring, ethical, responsive and responsible relationships with research participants.
Empowerment. The term empowerment has long been utilized by radical educators within critical edu... more Empowerment. The term empowerment has long been utilized by radical educators within critical education movements to refer to both the form of schooling and powerful outcomes for students. Ira Shor's (1992) " Empowering education: critical teaching for social change " serves as an iconic text in the field. And yet, empowerment is also a problematic word. Like many words in progressive or activist movements, it has been co-opted, even used to promote projects antithetical to justice. Srilatha Batliwala (2010) characterizes " empowerment " as a word that, despite its centrality to mid-to late-twentieth century social and political struggles of the Black power movement, feminism, popular education, labor rights, and liberation theology, has been " 'mainstreamed' in a manner that has virtually robbed it of its original meaning and strategic value " (p. 111). Women's empowerment, for example, can mean anything from working in solidarity with women to subvert oppressive policies and practices, to appropriating legacies of domination and patriarchy to use for one's own individual economic and political gain (think " lean in " here). The word, when used in anti-empowering contexts that promote individual gain over collective liberation, is not only cringeworthy but potentially dilutes its anti-oppressive meaning. Empowerment is contentious word because of the way it has been co-opted, yet by the same token, a word that is difficult to replace. Empowerment matters because it centralizes the role of power and draws attention to the inequitable distribution of power across political, economic, and social groups. Empowerment is not only about emancipation or liberation, which are words that conjure up images of a charismatic leader leading people to freedom. Empowerment is about ensuring that oppressed communities are equipped with the resources and knowledge to retain power and self-determination for their collective well-being, to maintain checks on imbalances of power. Empowerment is a process of " transforming the relations of power between individuals and social groups " (Batliwala, 2010).
What role does caring play in environmental education? The development of caring relationships in... more What role does caring play in environmental education? The development of caring relationships in formal school settings remains a foundational yet under-examined concept in environmental education research. This study examines the role of caring relationships between people and place in an urban high school in the United States. We draw upon theoretical lenses of caring and justice by egalitarian and feminist scholars to examine the role that authentic caring plays in a teacher’s practice and in students’ experiences when engaged in urban park restoration. Findings reveal that the caring role of the environmental science teacher in this study is significant; the teacher’s caring/carework mediates how students in his class relate to the environmental learning experiences. Further, through these experiences students in the study likewise initiated care both for themselves and others.
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Papers by Alexa Schindel (*previously Dimick)
Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Alexa Schindel (*previously Dimick)