Jasmine Nation & Hosun Kang

Original article: Nation, J., & Kang, H. (2024). “We need to step it up—We are basically the future”: Latinx young women co‐construct science storylines in high school chemistry. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 61(4), 873-904.  https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21921 

“We need to step it up—We are basically the future”: Latinx young women co-construct science storylines in high school chemistry

A classroom is a complex space where one teacher works with 20-30 students from a wide range of backgrounds. It can be challenging to support students in authentically contributing, especially in science classes where teachers are asked to follow a preset “science storyline” to structure students’ activities. 

This article shows how co-constructed science storylines can create space for rich scientific thinking. “Co-constructed science storyline” refers to a storyline emerging from the classroom interactions driven by students’ identities, developing ideas, and concerns. The researchers ask, “How can students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, change the storyline originally developed by the teacher and become co-authors of the science they learn in school?”

Through in-depth analysis of three 10th grade Latinx female students’ experiences in a chemistry classroom, research reveals how meaningful learning emerges when students bring personal experiences and community concerns into the classroom. The findings highlight three instructional practices:

1. Connect to students' personal concerns – The unit focused on local wildfires, an issue that directly impacted students' lives. This helped students see chemistry as relevant to their communities.
2. Support thinking across learning spaces – Students had opportunities to think and talk in individual, small-group, and whole-class contexts, which allowed them to contribute meaningfully and take on scientific identities for different audiences. 
3. Recognize students as knowledge-makers – The teacher validated students’ questions and reasoning, recognizing students’ ideas as scientific and relevant both in the moment and over time. This made students’ contributions visible and positioned students as legitimate contributors to scientific inquiry.

For educators, this research offers actionable insights:

• Design science units around relevant phenomena with meaningful essential questions so students are motivated to engage and contribute. 
• Start with a teacher-created activity sequence where the science story is a blueprint for higher level goals. Focus on bigger picture instructional goals to cover the preset curriculum yet be responsive to students; balancing the “what” and “why” of practice.
• View the preset storyline and curriculum as a tool—not a script—to adapt based on student input and lived experience.
• Encourage epistemic agency by recognizing students’ ideas as scientific and relevant to the science storyline, and creating participation structures that value diverse voices and ways of knowing. 
   

Through co-constructing storylines, teachers can support equity and authentic scientific identity construction—especially for Latinx youth and other groups underrepresented in STEM.