Justice-centered STEM education with multilingual learners to address societal challenges: A conceptual framework

We propose a conceptual framework for STEM education that is centered around justice for minoritized groups. Justice-centered STEM education engages all students in multiple STEM subjects, including data science and computer science, to explain and design solutions to societal challenges disproportionately impacting minoritized groups. We articulate the affordances of justice-centered STEM education for one minoritized student group that has been traditionally denied meaningful STEM learning: multilingual learners (MLs). Justice-centered STEM education with MLs leverages the assets they bring to STEM learning, including their transnational experiences and knowledge as well as their rich repertoire of meaning-making resources. In this position paper, we propose our conceptual framework to chart a new research agenda on justice-centered STEM education to address societal challenges with all students, especially MLs. Our conceptual framework incorporates four interrelated components by leveraging the convergence of multiple STEM disciplines to promote justice-centered STEM education with MLs: (a) societal challenges in science education, (b) justice-centered data science education, (c) justice-centered computer science education, and (d) justice-centered engineering education. The article illustrates our conceptual framework using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has presented an unprecedented societal challenge but also an unprecedented opportunity to cultivate MLs' assets toward promoting justice in STEM education. Finally, we describe how our conceptual framework establishes the foundation for a new research agenda that addresses increasingly complex, prevalent, and intractable societal challenges disproportionately impacting minoritized groups. We also consider broader issues pertinent to our conceptual framework, including the social and emotional impacts of societal challenges; the growth of science denial and misinformation; and factors associated with politics, ideology, and religion. Justice-centered STEM education contributes to solving societal challenges that K-12 students currently face while preparing them to shape a more just society.