#19: Teachers’ Expansive Explanations of Environmental Justice Issues

This study documents the efforts of science teachers to expand how they teach environmental and climate phenomena to include social systems and structures as drivers of change. Through expansive practices, teachers can disrupt normative, science-only ways of teaching the climate crisis and environmental degradation by integrating political, cultural, and justice dimensions of socioecological issues. Through a lens of transdisciplinary teaching and epistemic diversity, this study analyzes the explanations and diagrammatic models teachers created while planning instructional units. Analysis identifies components and strategies for blending scientific and sociopolitical dimensions of environmental justice issues. This study contributes expansive practices of ambitious and equitable science teaching during times of changing climate.