A Holistic Approach to Science Education: Disciplinary, Affective, and Equitable

In this chapter, we argue that science education is more than the high stakes, rigorous practices and methodology that students often find dull and uninspiring. We present that aesthetic and humanistic motivations, such as wonder, curiosity, and social justice, are also inherent reasons for doing science. In the MSUrbanSTEM program, we designed an approach that built on these aesthetic and humanistic aspects of science. In this chapter, we share three case studies to present everyday pedagogical approaches to science education used by three Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers during a school year. These classroom practices used wonder, curiosity, and social justice as motivations for engaging in science and provided a disciplinary lens to look at the world that students found to be fundamentally interesting and inspiring.