Chapter 6 Pedagogies in Science Education for Social Justice
In: Harnessing the Transformative Power of EducationSearch for other papers by Barbara Kameniar in
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Abstract
The School Reform Longitudinal Study undertaken in Queensland between 1998 and 2000 identified four dimensions of productive pedagogies considered key to enhancing educational outcomes for young people: (1) intellectual quality; (2) relevance; (3) supportive classroom environment; and (4) recognition of difference. While many pedagogical instruction models have emerged since this time, the productive pedagogies continues to provide a robust framework to plan cutting-edge and socially just learning interventions, and to evaluate them. More recently a link has been shown between productive pedagogies and redistributive, recognitive and representative justice.
This chapter investigates a university outreach program – the Indigenous Academic Enrichment Program (IAEP). The chapter focuses on a series of student workshops delivered by personnel from the Gene Technology Access Centre (GTAC) to illustrate the impact of ‘strongly composed’ programs and ‘cutting edge strategies’ on a diverse group of students from regional Victoria and particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. A background to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education is provided to position the chapter before an overview of one of GTAC’s outreach programs is given. The final part of the chapter considers the relationships among the GTAC strategies, productive pedagogies and Frazer’s principles of justice and then lay out a set of principles for practice to further enhance student learning in science in ways that are socially just.