Designing for Justice-Oriented Critical Caring in Science Methods Courses

Contemporary science education centers on the desired conceptual understandings and science practices students should develop. While positioning students as knowledge constructors by valuing a sensemaking stance and leveraging heterogeneous meaning-making repertoires are important for equitable learning, the moral and ethical dimensions that undergird this emphasis have been overlooked. Here, we study our efforts to support science pre-service teachers (PSTs) in our methods courses to develop pedagogies rooted in what we call justice-oriented critical caring. Our design-based research approach grounds PSTs’ science futures pedagogical practices in an ethic of care and in broader sociopolitical systems, particularly in three key ethical and design commitments: discursiveness, relationality, and reflectiveness. Our findings show how intentionally designed learning experiences for PSTs supported learners in navigating complex trajectories toward enacting transformative forms of caring.