Learning Sciences Lunch and Learn with Dr. Wisam Sedawi “Minoritized Teachers as Agents of Climate Justice: Cultivating Transformative Pedagogy through Place and Family Partnerships”
The format for this event will be hybrid with both in-person and virtual options. Our speaker will be presenting on Zoom virtually. However, all students and faculty are invited and encouraged to join us in the GSE Lecture Hall (Room 124) to connect with each other in-person and with the speaker virtually. Lunch will be provided!
For those who cannot attend in person, there is an option to attend virtually via Zoom. Zoom link will be provided closer to event date.
Anthropogenic global climate change disproportionately threatens vulnerable communities such as people of color, immigrants, indigenous peoples, and ethnic minorities. Yet science education often fails to prepare students adequately, focusing narrowly on scientific content while remaining “silent” about underlying disparities. While teachers can become active agents in promoting climate justice, they often lack institutional support and curricular guidance, leaving them to navigate challenges on their own.
In this seminar, I will present how minoritized teachers navigate climate justice pedagogy through connections to place, community, and family partnerships. Drawing on two studies, one with Bedouin indigenous teachers in Israel and another with an Arab American teacher in the USA, this work explores how these teachers position themselves within the sociocultural, historical, political, and local contexts of climate justice. Findings show how teachers’ agency emerged through working in solidarity with families within the “figured worlds” of climate justice, engaging community-based epistemologies, cultural anchors, and home-school alliances. These practices opened new possibilities for teachers to enact transformative agency by “writing new worlds” and advocating for climate justice and community thriving.
Bio:
Dr. Wisam Sedawi is a Research Investigator at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on designing teaching and learning environments that create justice-oriented opportunities for minoritized youth in science and STEM education. She was a science teacher and instructional coach and earned her PhD from Ben-Gurion University. Using ethnographic and participatory approaches, she studies and co-designs curricula to amplify the Rightful Presence of youth and families across schools, science centers, makerspaces, and community organizations. Sedawi serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and on the Learning Sciences Steering Committee at the University of Michigan.
Recordings of the Lunch & Learn presentations are typically made available on the Rutgers GSE YouTube Channel. Be sure to check back regularly for any talks you may have missed or want to see again!