Social Justice Science Issues and NGSS

Teaching decontextualized chemistry has often made it difficult for teachers to connect chemistry to students' everyday lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the George Floyd protests and the implosion of the Crawford Power Plant in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood I realized that students should have a working knowledge of chemistry to understand what is happening in their communities by examining social justice science issues (SJSI) as relevant storylines. Teaching SJSI allows students to identify, describe, and dismantle socioeconomic, environmental, and health issues that cause harm in their communities. In this article, I will explain how I use SJSI as a pathway to teach the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the fourth dimension of Johnstone’s Triangle.

johnstones_triangle_including_human_issues.png

Figure 1: Johnstone's Triangle including human issues - social justice, science issues and NGSS. Modified from Sjöström, J. & Talanquer, V. (2014).

The NGSS Science & Engineering Practice: Developing and Using Models and Johnstone’s Triangle suggest that teachers use models to teach chemistry (see figure 1). A fourth dimension, the human element to Johnstone’s Triangle, argues for integrating humanistic and social components in the conceptualization of chemistry teaching (Sjöström & Talanquer, 2014). SJSI can provide teachers with relevant storylines to teach the human element of Johnstone’s Triangle and NGSS. SJSI are “issues that sit at the intersection of the science we are asked to teach and the issues to which students or their communities are committed” (Morales-Doyle, 2024, p. 14). SJSI is a way for science teachers to teach using generative themes that emerge from student communities to science content to become "scientifically knowledgeable members of their communities of origin" (Varelas et al., 2018, p. 63), nurturing students’ agency to address local SJSI. Using SJSI as storylines as a humanistic approach to teaching chemistry requires teachers to be learners of students' local communities and shift who they foreground as scientists in their chemistry classrooms (Morales-Doyle, 2024). To make the shift, you must ask yourself, who's doing science in your students’ local communities? Why are they doing it? How are they doing it? In the past, I’ve responded that it’s scientists at universities. The Google search engine is now my initial step to finding credible SJSIs in student communities using multimedia resources such as local news articles, journal articles, videos, and government websites. Google search provides many resources to add local context to the science I want to teach my students. My response to those questions is: have you heard about Hazel Johnson, scientific work,  the “Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement,” and founder of People for Community Recovery (PCR) in the Altgeld Gardens on Chicago's far south side? She was a concerned Black resident who connected pollution in the area, which she named the "toxic donut," to health issues in her community and sounded the alarm for residents to fight back. How about the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), which got the Crawford Power Plant shut down thanks to residents researching and organizing about pollution and health issues? Recently, a scrap metal company called General Iron planned to move from the north side of Chicago to the southeast side, and Chicago Public Schools students, parents, and teachers joined with the Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF) and successfully pushed back, resulting in the denial of a permit for the facility. 

I used the General Iron relocation as my SJSI and found the local WGN News Clip about General Iron to introduce it as the storyline to my students. To provide students with more context for the SJSI, I used The Guardian newspaper article: This Chicago plant sparked a hunger strike amid environmental racism claims and created a News Article Reading Guide for my students to complete (See the Supporting Information). Student groups are assigned sections of the article and links to read. Then, we have a class discussion about the full article. In the group reading guide of The Guardian Article, students learned that residents are against the relocation of the scrap metal company General Iron because high concentrations of industry overburden the south and west sides of Chicago (Moore, 2021) causing pollution in the communities. The pollution aspect of the article led me to the selection of the NGSS Performance Expectation HS-PS1-1, which states that students should use the periodic table as a model to predict the relative properties of elements based on the patterns of electrons in the outermost energy level of atoms. To center the SJSI in my lesson planning, one of my science colleagues suggested rewording the NGSS HS-PS1-1 Performance Expectation to use the periodic table as a model to explain the relative properties of heavy metals and their persistence in air, water, and soil as pollutants based on patterns of electrons in the outermost energy level of atoms. 

I introduce my students to the macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic models (Johnstone, 1993) to examine the pollution issues the Chicago communities faced. As a class, we define the models and practice making them to use later to explain pollution. Macroscopic models are based on students' observations (what they see, hear, touch, smell, and taste) of experiments, watching videos of experiments, and reading texts of experiments or phenomena to draw, label, and describe the components of a macroscopic model. The Periodic Table of Elements is used to identify the chemical symbols used to make chemical formulas or symbolic models. Then, atoms and chemical formulas are used to create submicroscopic models, which consist of circles to represent atoms, subscripts to determine the number of atoms in a chemical formula, and coefficients to draw the number of molecules and compounds.

Figure 2: Word wall instructional tool 

To further support students using these models to understand the SJSI, I use a word wall as an instructional tool for students to learn a common language (see figure 2). The word wall has three categories of words (models, scientific principles, and scientific vocabulary) that I use during planning, instruction, student practices, and assessments. The lessons in this unit focus on the Periodic Table of Elements, macroscopic,  submicroscopic, and symbolic (chemical symbols, formulas, and ions) models. The scientific principles (e.g., oxidation-reduction reactions, ionic bonding, periodic trends) are disciplinary core ideas students need to understand and explain. The scientific vocabulary (e.g., anion, electrons) are the essential terms students must understand to explain the scientific principles. 

The Guardian newspaper mentions lead, arsenic, and manganese as pollutants already present in the southeast Chicago communities where the General Iron scrap metal recycling plants were planned to be relocated. In the Heavy Metals Impacts on our Communities Activity, students use websites, the video clip, and the models they create to explain how heavy metals impact communities. (See the Supporting Information.) The Metallurgy of Lead video introduces students to the scientific principle of oxidation-reduction, which is explored in later lessons in the unit. The common language used to develop and use models helps students articulate their chemistry thinking about social justice science issues happening in their communities.

Shifting to local SJSI allows me to be a teacher-learner alongside my students. The SJSI storyline will enable me to leverage students' and my prior knowledge about Chicago neighborhoods to tap into the chemistry we experience in our everyday lives in Chicago, how it can impact our quality of life, and advocate for real solutions. 

I would like to acknowledge the help of the following in completing this work: Youth Participatory Science-Chicago, Daniel Morales-Doyle-University of Illinois Chicago, Donald Wink-University of Illinois Chicago, Dr. Mindy Chappell-Portland State University, Andrew Alexander-George Westinghouse College Prep, Le’Ander Gibbs, Student Teacher

References

1. Johnstone, A. H. (1993). The Development of Chemistry Teaching: A Changing Response to Changing Demand. Journal of Chemical Education, 70(9), 701–705.
2. Lenntech B.V. . (2024). Heavy Metals. Lenntech Water treatment & purification. https://www.lenntech.com/processes/heavy/heavy-metals/heavy-metals.htm#ixzz72lMusnsB
3. Moore, T. (2021, February 3). The Chicago plant that sparked a hunger strike amid environmental racism claims. The Guardian. Retrieved September 11, 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/14/toxic-plant-chicago-minority-neighborhood-hunger-strike
4. Morales-Doyle, D. (2024). Transformative science teaching a catalyst for justice and Sustainability. Harvard Education Press.
5. National Research Council. A Framework for K−12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2012.
6. NGSS Lead States. Next Generation Science Standards: For States, by States; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2013.
7. Sjöström, J. & Talanquer, V. (2014). Humanizing Chemistry Education: From Simple Contextualization to Multifaceted Problematization. Journal of Chemical Education, 91(8), 1125–1131. 
8. Varelas, M., Morales-Doyle, D., Raza, S., Segura, D., Canales, K. & Mitchener, C. (2018). Community organizations’ programming and the development of community science teachers. Science Education, 102(1), 60–84. 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.7 Translate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text into visual form (e.g., a table or chart) and translate information expressed visually or mathematically (e.g., in an equation) into words.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.1.A - Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among the claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence. 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.1.C - Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.2.D Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to manage the complexity of the topic and convey a style appropriate to the discipline and context as well as to the expertise of likely readers.