One day all learners and educators will have equitable access to high quality science education opportunities informed by diverse perspectives that prepare them to understand and redress social and environmental injustices in their personal, professional, and civic lives.
BSCS believes that science learning should be inclusive, meaningful, and advance the work of social and environmental justice. We launched the Equity & Social Justice Initiative (ESJI) in 2018 to define our role and take action toward redressing inequity and injustice in STEM, and in the world at large, through science education. Our commitment to equity and social justice is central to our mission and at the heart of everything we do.
Today, we are committed to ongoing examination of the ways in which we can actualize inclusivity and diversity in our work and dismantle oppressive structures embedded in the culture of our organization. We are committed to science education that is actively antiracist and anti-oppressive in all its forms. We are committed to listening to and learning from critical voices from marginalized communities, now and going forward. We are committed to doing better.
How do we make more-inclusive, relevant, and actively antiracist materials for teachers and students? The imagery we include in materials is one key factor. Representation for the sake of representation should not be the goal. It’s not enough to include images of Black, indigenous, and other people of color in materials. Images tell stories. What stories are we telling about marginalized groups based on the images we’re sharing? BSCS has made our own mistakes in the past with the implicit stories we’ve told through imagery. We want to do better. So we’ve created a research-based tool that can be used to support materials developers in telling the right stories through imagery. Soon we will share this tool more broadly.
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