Transformative Science Teaching: A Catalyst for Justice and Sustainability

A call to action championing equity and social justice in K–12 science curriculum.

Transformative Science Teaching reveals Daniel Morales-Doyle’s vision for science education that supports meaningful learning in the sciences. In this sensible and sensitive assessment of science instruction in the United States, Morales-Doyle outlines both what science education is and what it could be. He suggests that a judicious shift in the field's goals and methods—for example, incorporating practice-based teacher education, justice-centered science pedagogy, and youth participatory science—could give all students, not just those preparing for STEM careers, opportunities to be engaged with the sciences, with their communities, and in the world.

Challenging science teachers to think differently about instructional priorities, Morales-Doyle draws on more than a decade's worth of teaching experience in high school science classrooms as well as recent studies in science curricula and instruction. He offers advice for middle and high school teachers on ways to center social justice science issues (SJSIs) within the context of Next Generation Science Standards and bring forward urgent topics, such as racial and environmental justice, that are relevant to students’ lives. The book features lesson plans, instructional materials, activities, and questions to help STEM educators develop their pedagogy.

This thought-provoking work promotes science instruction as a venue to fuel students’ imaginations, complex thinking, and commitments to sustainability while also cultivating their sense of wonder about the world.

About the Author :
Daniel Morales-Doyle is an associate professor of science education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty at UIC, he was a high school teacher in the Chicago Public Schools for just over a decade.  

Review :
“Morales-Doyle is a brilliant scholar who embodies the new generation of critical science educators by invoking Paulo Freire’s true notion of education for social transformation. This volume is full of hope and practical applications for retiring the tired ‘pipeline’ metaphor, and for replacing it with a pathway toward a sustainable future—a future where students critically engage in learning science for understanding and for transformative action.” - Alberto J. Rodriguez, distinguished professor of education and professor of cross-cultural science education, University of Houston

"“Bold. Lucid. Necessary. Transformative Science Teaching is both visionary and highly practical. Drawing deeply on his years of experience as a science teacher, Morales-Doyle reframes what it means to teach science in a way that centers kids rather than the canon, the world we inhabit rather than disciplines detached from that world. Using vivid examples from his own teaching, he shows how social justice is not a detour away from the serious business of teaching science, but rather a fundamental core of this work.” - Christine Sleeter, professor emerita, California State University Monterey Bay

“It is clear that Morales-Doyle is not here to play games. The challenge he puts forward to science educators is timely and revolutionary. For those who say it is impossible to pair science and justice-centered education, this book should be forever understood as instructions for those same people to be quiet and take a seat.” - David Stovall, professor of Black studies and criminology, law and justice, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Our field lacks compelling publications from practitioners. Even more rare in our field are the writings of practitioners whose teaching has been transformative for vulnerable and wounded youth. Perhaps the unicorn in this equation is the work of practitioners that meet those standards in the field of math and science. Daniel Morales-Doyle’s book ticks all those boxes. As an accomplished pedagogue in the nation’s most distressed teaching environments, his writing reveals what is possible and what it will take for us to meet the promise of a public education system that delivers on the nation’s promise to build a pluralistic, multiracial democracy committed to equity and justice for all.” - Jeff Duncan-Andrade, professor of Latina/o studies and race and resistance studies, San Francisco State University