6

Approaches to Equity Through the Lens of Decision Making: Five Frames

Decisions—both the process of making decisions, and the results of those decisions—are one of the central ways that equity manifests in the U.S. education system: they are the primary way that actors can advance or constrain equity. In this chapter, we approach equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education through the lens of decision making. That is, we understand the patterns of inequity seen in education systems as the consequence of past decisions. Those past decisions influence the possible decisions to be made today regarding how to address inequities in STEM education. Further, the decisions made today will have consequences for the future. Decisions that are consequential for STEM education are made by an array of actors including but not limited to students, caregivers in families, teachers, administrators, and politicians. Chapter 3 offered insight into how decisions, once made, move through various levels of the educational system. Approaching the work of equity through this system illuminates how actors at every level of the educational system, from students to teachers to principals to superintendents, are potential decision makers whose actions shape equity in STEM education.

Decisions happen at every level of the educational system every day. These include decisions about moment-to-moment interactions in classrooms, decisions a principal makes about how to respond to a parent concern or an outbreak of COVID-19, as well as decisions made at central offices of school districts about what curriculum to adopt. There are also decisions by school boards at the district and state level, as well as laws proposed and passed by Congress and regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Education that impact what goes on in schools. The participation

of actors at multiple levels of the education system in making decisions might be said to be a distinctive characteristic of the U.S. education system (McDonnell, 2007).

The chapter first discusses how certain conditions for decision making lead to more or less equitable outcomes. We then consider the fact that actors within the system can have different implicit or explicit understandings of what “equity” means, and make their decisions according to their particular vision. We argue that actors should be clear on their understandings of equity as they make decisions toward more equitable STEM education. We offer five equity frames—that is, conceptions of equity that can be and are used as rationales for decision making.

They are

1. Frame 1: Reducing Gaps Between Groups
2. Frame 2: Expanding Opportunity and Access
3. Frame 3: Embracing Heterogeneity in STEM Classrooms
4. Frame 4: Learning and Using STEM to Promote Justice
5. Frame 5: Envisioning Sustainable Futures Through STEM

We conclude this chapter with a set of hypothetical scenarios where different frames are in contact or in conflict, to illustrate the usefulness of using frames explicitly in decision making in order to advance efforts to promote equity in STEM education. These scenarios can serve as guideposts to help readers understand how the application of different Frames can constrain or support decision making in their own contexts.

CONDITIONS OF DECISION MAKING IN STEM: CONSEQUENCES OF THE PAST, CURRENT REALITIES, AND POSSIBLE FUTURES

Before we can offer a conceptual structure to guide future decisions, the committee acknowledges that it is first critical to understand the conditions of decision making in STEM. That is, what shapes how decisions are made about STEM education? In order to answer that question, we offer insight into how policy (in particular the nested nature of the U.S. education system) informs not only how, where, and by whom decisions are made, but also how decisions often result in both intended and unintended consequences throughout the system.

The decisions people and institutions made in the past are important to explaining patterns of inequity today. The events described in Chapter 2 of this report were shaped by intentional decisions, all of them important for how we understand the decisions actors might make today in regard to equity in STEM education: these decisions include moves by the U.S.

government officials to remove Indigenous children from their families and place them in boarding schools where they were punished for any forms of cultural expression or engagement in Indigenous knowledge systems. Such decisions also include those by tribes to challenge these laws in ways that would ultimately succeed in securing passage of a federal framework for some measure of sovereignty for tribal nations over education (McClellan, 1998). Decisions by local school officials to segregate Mexican American students from white peers based on considerations of language, culture, and race, along with decisions by community members to legally challenge those segregation practices shape the landscape of opportunity for Mexican American students today (Donato & Hanson, 2019). Court decisions that limited interdistrict busing and integration efforts led to demographic shifts in both housing and education, weakening efforts to integrate schools (Orfield et al., 1997).

Decision Making in a Complex System

As we describe in Chapter 3 of this report, decisions made at one level of policy in the U.S. education system have consequences that cascade to other levels of the system. A principal’s decision to shift instruction to be more test focused instead of on the full range of standards could differentially impact low-income students and students in racially segregated schools (Diamond & Spillane, 2004; Ladd & Zelli, 2002). A district committee’s decision to change who can take Advanced Placement classes may expand access to advanced coursework for all students but not lead to clear reductions in inequitable access for underrepresented groups in STEM (Conger et al., 2021). A teacher’s decision to use instructional materials that enable students to connect their everyday experiences with disciplinary ideas and practices could help students of color identify with STEM disciplines (Tzou & Bell, 2010). So, too, does a mother’s decision to respond to her child’s attention to traces of flooding in a walk in an urban forest preserve by calling attention to more evidence of flooding and placing it within a broader understanding of land (Marin & Bang, 2018). A community-based organization and school’s decisions to collaborate on both curriculum and environmental justice campaigns can help students from a Latinx neighborhood learn how STEM can support community initiatives to reduce exposure to environmental toxins (Segura et al., 2021).

Often, decision making is guided by immediate, practical concerns. Actors at all levels of the system face myriad demands on their time and attention, and so solutions that may initially appear to satisfy those demands that are most pressing are often prioritized in organizational decision making (Cohen et al., 1972). But the appeal to what is practical and must be solved today can constrain actors’ imagination and overshadow

considerations about what is possible in the long term. Action driven exclusively by near-term considerations has the potential to reproduce the status quo, and can prevent discussions of what might be undertaken today in pursuit of more expansive possibilities for STEM education.

Thus, it is important to consider the possible consequences of decisions made today for equity in the future. For example, a decision to label students “proficient” or “advanced” on a standardized test—a common practice in state testing systems, supported by federal law—can impact a student’s chance of pursuing higher education, even when students’ scores are close to one another (Papay et al., 2011). A team of mathematics teachers’ decision to focus on preparing students to score well on a test item that students did poorly on in a benchmark assessment limits future opportunities for preparing them for deeper learning or connecting to students’ cultural identities or funds of knowledge in instruction (Garner et al., 2017). Conversely, a decision to emphasize field-based over laboratory-based science could lead to many more opportunities for students to engage in science outdoors and in their neighborhoods for decades to come, much in the way the early 20th century decision to emphasize laboratory work over textbooks transformed students’ routine classroom experiences with science (Rudolph, 2019). A decision to pay young people as educators of near peers could unsettle hierarchies of who is a teacher and also support a community’s self-sufficiency as they work to develop children’s competencies in mathematics (Gillen, 2019). A decision to focus on building a community-wide ecosystem of learning that is tied to goals for cooperative economics and sustainability could prepare people for using STEM to engage in new, expanded forms of democratic participation over time (Penuel & Roberts, 2022).

Achieving any of the major purposes for STEM equity outlined in Chapter 1 requires attending to both immediate and long-term time horizons when considering the potential consequences of decision making. The work of educational decision makers involves attending simultaneously to many issues that demand immediate attention (Hochbein et al., 2021; Sebastian et al., 2018). In such contexts, considering long-term consequences of decisions is challenging. But to transform STEM education to support thriving communities and to do so on a planet that is warming requires us to make decisions with the longer term in focus. Fortunately, human beings are biologically, psychologically, and culturally capable of thinking in multiple time horizons when considering decisions. However, what shapes whether one can make these decisions are the conditions and systems one finds themselves in (Princen, 2009).

Who Holds Power for Decision Making?

Today, the influences on education policy and practice come from many sectors: from the state (e.g., Congress, state legislatures, courts), think tanks and philanthropies, and sociopolitical movements (Scott et al., 2009). Local politics also influence how decisions are made in schools and districts (Smith & Stoval, 2008). The data and evidence used to inform decision making are not neutral, either: data and evidence always reflect the biases and unique perspectives of people grounded in their own positions within an unequal society (Kirkland, 2019). Moreover, power operates in ways that make, for some people, some experiences of inequity more recognizable and more important to address than others, while for others, experiences of inequity are rendered illegible because of their race, their language, their nationality, or immigration status (Leonardo, 2013).

How does power operate within contemporary educational systems in the United States? For one, political actors and a range of “non-system actors” have significant influence on educational decision making, and act to influence policies in different arenas—from school boards to courts to professional meetings (for further discussion on the kinds of actors that inform decisions in the U.S. education system, see Chapter 3). By law and convention, authority for education policymaking in the United States is distributed and fragmented across different levels of policy aggregation—federal, state, and local—and is primarily responsive to specific geographic constituencies (McDonnell, 2007). State legislatures and school boards have significant authority to make decisions, as compared to the federal government, a fact that was reinforced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). But elected bodies are not the only sources of influence on educational decision making: advocacy organizations, teacher unions, professional associations, and think tanks all shape how those in official positions of power think and act. Many of those groups are directly involved, too, in shaping how data and evidence are used to support policy proposals (Henig, 2008, 2012; Scott et al., 2009, 2014).

At the local level, school districts are an important site of decision making. Decisions regarding educational policies made within school districts are rarely made by a single individual: they unfold over time and across different groups of people (Coburn & Talbert, 2009). For example, as part of a recent effort to promote more equitable outcomes for Black and Latinx students in algebra, a large urban school district adopted a policy that placed students in algebra in ninth grade (Handsman et al., 2022). The adoption by state leaders of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics acted as one impetus for the change in district policy, an effect of the policy cascade described in Chapter 3. Changing the course pathways in mathematics involved deliberation over a two-year period and required attention to

a host of issues ranging from assessment to professional development to identification of external partnerships. Key considerations in deliberations included data on passing rates in algebra disaggregated by race (Huguet et al., 2017), as well as practitioner-facing research syntheses related to de-tracking and pedagogies for heterogeneous classrooms (e.g., Watanabe, 2012). Administrators also considered the political viability of different solutions. For example, district leaders were particularly concerned about reactions of parents who would be disappointed that their students could not take algebra in eighth grade. They also took up pedagogical concerns related to how best to support all students in reaching standards and equity considerations regarding how a new policy might reduce inequalities in opportunity to take advanced coursework in mathematics. In this instance, balancing these considerations resulted in a policy that delayed but did not eliminate tracking in mathematics.

Educators in schools and community settings are important decision makers in educational systems through their interpretation of policies, and the decisions they make about instructional materials, teaching, grouping students, among other considerations, all matter for equity in STEM. In the past, teachers had considerable autonomy about how they teach (Lortie, 1975). But today, individual teachers’ decisions about what and how to teach are strongly influenced by the kind of guidance that comes to them directly from school leaders and in the form of standards, adopted instructional materials, teacher evaluation frameworks, and more (Hopkins et al., 2013). These forms of instructional guidance are themselves the consequence of multiple decisions made at different levels of the system—federal, state, and local education agencies, as well as at the school level (Hopkins & Woulfin, 2015). Sometimes, the result is coherent guidance that teachers can use to shift their instructional practice, but other times teachers struggle to make decisions that align with new infrastructural components, like new standards (Allen & Penuel, 2015; Hopkins et al., 2013). When teachers face contradictory guidance, they may feel constrained in their decisions, such as when they are asked to engage students in rich, project-based, interdisciplinary learning while also asking them to implement “no excuses” policies and practices that tightly script teaching (Mehta & Fine, 2015). Out-of-school providers of educational services traditionally have had more autonomy over what they choose to teach; however, many face similar tensions with contradictory guidance from funders and also from schools, who may emphasize behavioral discipline over belonging, and academic preparation over enrichment (Escudé et al., 2020).

Many education policies today—such as school choice—are intended to expand the power of parents and families to make consequential decisions about their children’s education. For example, lottery-based, inclusive STEM schools are intended to expand choices to parents to allow for

more specialized and challenging instruction in STEM (Peters-Burton et al., 2014). Inclusive STEM schools illustrate the complexity of such initiatives to promote choice within educational systems. In a study of such schools in two systems—Denver and Buffalo—choices for students were actually diminished as simultaneous accountability pressures led to more limited course offerings or to limiting students’ opportunities to meet graduation requirements (Weiss et al., 2015). Furthermore, the schools did not always directly engage systemic barriers to opportunity linked to race, gender, and intersections of race and gender, leaving students to navigate more local identities available to them that focused on achieving success principally by challenging themselves and staying motivated (Allen & Eisenhart, 2017).

Decisions to promote certain school choices over others can also limit options for parents in ways that exacerbate existing inequities. For example, a study of parents of students of color with identified disabilities navigating the school choice system in the city of Chicago found that they were constrained in their ability to choose geographically accessible schools that had sufficient services or welcomed their children into them (Waitoller & Super, 2017). These choices were limited as a direct result of the district’s earlier decisions to close a suite of neighborhood schools in service of consolidating resources, but the unintended consequence of that decision left many neighborhoods without accessible schooling opportunities, particularly for students with disabilities. Rather than having an expanded set of choices, these parents found their decision making limited, because school closures reduced the number of geographically accessible schools, as well as the inequities of distribution of services for their students.

In some instances, parent and community activists have been successful in advocating for more equitable policies and practices in STEM education. For example, in the late 1990s, parents working in partnership with university-based researchers were successful in advocating for greater access to more advanced coursework in high school (Oakes & Rogers, 2006). And in Baltimore, the Baltimore Algebra Project’s community activists have successfully created a vehicle for near-peer tutors in mathematics to be recognized and paid for their work as tutors, while also expanding opportunities for students to learn from caring others in their community (Gillen, 2019).

FIVE FRAMES FOR DECISION MAKING FOR EQUITY IN STEM EDUCATION

Throughout a decision-making process, it is common to hear advocates of one position or another making arguments that a specific policy will result in greater equity. But what is meant by “equity” is not always clear, and many people use the term in different ways. In this section, we summarize several different understandings of equity that can come into

play in decision making. We do this for three reasons. First, we hope to provide clarity about differences in the ways that people speak and write about equity. As we noted in Chapter 1, although there are certain key concepts that are often part of different concepts or definitions of equity, individuals have come to understand this idea in a myriad of different ways. Indeed, there is not a single concept or definition of equity, but rather, we highlight different perspectives from which one might speak about equity and explore how each of these perspectives yields different understandings of the world. Second, we aim to identify how different understandings of equity define the problems to be addressed and propose solutions to those problems, with important consequences for present and future learning opportunities. Third, we seek to provide examples of situations where these understandings may come into contact and conflict with one another. We hope that these examples can be focal points for discussion, to help surface and discuss conceptions of equity and their implications explicitly.

The report Science and Engineering in Preschool through Elementary Grades (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022) articulated definitions of both equity and justice that guided their work, and acknowledged that science education research, policy, and practice have adopted different conceptions of equity. Drawing on two earlier frameworks (Philip & Azevedo, 2017; Rodriguez, 2015), the committee articulated four approaches to supporting equity to guide their work (see Box 6-1). All four, the committee argued, were necessary and could work synergistically toward goals of equity and justice. At the same time, they recognized there could be both benefits and “pitfalls” to adopting a particular approach to equity as a lens. The committee argued for the need to make room for a diversity of conceptions, because different systems and actors differ in their starting points, work at different scales, and operate in different contexts. They asserted that all conceptions were likely necessary to make progress toward equity and justice.

This committee draws on these conceptions in our own analysis of the diversity of ways that people talk and write about equity. We extend the original four approaches to serve as different conceptual frames for decision making. As other scholars have (Coburn, 2006; Coviello & DeMatthews, 2021; Park et al., 2012; Woulfin et al., 2016), we use the concept of framing to analyze how approaches to equity can be and are used as rationales for decision making by educational leaders. Framing acts to shape decision making in several ways:

1. Framing focuses attention on some aspect of a problem, and often names explicitly or presumes a cause of the problem to be solved.
2. Framing can offer a reason to act, often an ethical one, to address the problem.
3. Framing offers solutions, or “prognoses,” which are typically linked to the cause of the problem.

When frames are used in deliberation, they are often invisible and taken for granted. At the same time, taken-for-granted frames can leave in place deeply problematic ideas about race, for example, even as people debate what is a good, just, or fair policy (Dumas et al., 2016). Making different framings related to equity and their underlying ethical rationales for action explicit is important, because initiatives to promote equity are profoundly shaped by how decision makers conceptualize it (Huguet et al., 2021; Turner & Spain, 2020)—that is, by the frames they use.

In extending the original four approaches to equity, this committee has arrived at five equity frames, each of which focuses attention on some aspect of a problem of inequity and diagnoses its causes in a particular way, urging action from a particular stance or motivation for change, as we elaborate below. In addition, we consider the concepts of history, power, and decision making in relation to two temporal horizons (short term, long term) as we seek to understand possible consequences of adopting each particular frame for equity. First, we consider what implicit or explicit conception of history each conception holds within it: Are there assumptions that decisions made in the past matter for how we understand the present? If so, what are those assumptions? Second, we ask what image of the future is explicit or implied for STEM education and its role in the lives of students and their communities. Is it a future that assumes institutions of schooling will be or should be as they are today, or different from those present? What is assumed about how equitable STEM education today might prepare young people for the future? Third, we consider what is assumed or made explicit about the role of power in STEM education and society. Will achieving this vision of equity require working within institutions of power, in ways that leave the

operation of power invisible? Will accomplishing this vision likely involve challenges to power and redistribution of power?

The names of these five equity frames are different from those presented in Science and Engineering in Preschool Through Elementary Grades: The Brilliance of Children and the Strengths of Educators (2022), and as we describe below, we have made a distinction to the fourth approach (seeing science and engineering as part of justice movements) that we argue necessitates the creation of a fifth frame. We have changed the names somewhat to better reflect a mix of the diagnostic and prognostic frames employed in the literature. In addition, we highlight differences in the transformations that each frame demands actors seek to bring about within the current system of STEM education. We have summarized each frame using a table showing the different ways each formulates the problems to be solved, the types of solutions proposed, the motivation for action, its attention to history, the conception of the future, the attention to power, and limitations of the frame. After presenting the frames individually, we describe how they are used in decision making. We also discuss some hypothetical scenarios where frames come into contact or conflict with one another.

Each of these equity frames can be invoked to serve any of the broader purposes for STEM identified in Chapter 1. While some goals may seem to “fit” well with a particular frame, in fact, people may use different frames to advocate for the same goal or multiple goals, and people with the same goal may advocate for different frames. Although we have presented these frames as five discrete ideas, we note that these boundaries are permeable. This overlap is especially true for Frames 3, 4, and 5, where the specific problems described within each often call for ideas and solutions presented in the other two frames. Although we describe distinctions across all five frames, we expect that readers will find areas of productive overlap as they apply these frames to their own lives.

Frame 1: Reducing Gaps Between Groups

In this first frame, the problem to be solved is to reduce gaps between different groups based on race, social class, gender identity, or some other factor (e.g., immigration status). Those gaps might be related to interest in STEM, achievement, or representation within the STEM workforce. The approaches tend to emphasize interventions, typically implemented in schools or within ecosystems, evaluated in terms of their ability to reduce such gaps, and they often target members of social groups (e.g., Latinx students). They also may treat groups as if they are homogeneous. A key motivation or ethical imperative behind this conception is to equalize outcomes for all groups. This framing of equity sometimes does not attend directly to how past inequities of opportunity or systemic oppression have contributed to gaps that exist today. Similarly, the image of the future implied is that

educational systems can function largely as they do today. This frame may not examine structural causes of different outcomes. Instead, responsibility or blame for gaps may be seen as originating with individual people, a stance that is often rooted in deficit ideologies about students, families, or teachers. In addition, it can leave unquestioned practices of schooling that might undermine efforts to help students identify more with school or with STEM, by demanding that students assimilate to existing practices. Table 6-1 summarizes the kinds of problems, solutions, and motivations made visible with this frame.

TABLE 6-1 Summary of Key Features of Gap Closing Frame

SOURCE: Committee generated.

An example of an equity project that employs this framing of equity as the reduction of achievement gaps is the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) within the Strategic Education Research Partnership. MSAN is a consortium of multiple school districts originally founded to address achievement gaps particularly between Black and Latinx students and their white counterparts (Alson, 2003). Their theory of action has emphasized the need to analyze and use disaggregated achievement data from standardized tests to understand achievement gaps and inform the search for solutions to those gaps. They explain the causes of the gap in ways that are consistent with multiple frames presented here but, consistent with this frame, they explain the gap with causes like “low teacher expectations” and “instruction not aligned with student needs.” One of the interventions designed and tested by AlgebraByExample illustrates a typical solution within this frame: designing an intervention intended to support students in meeting high expectations and in alignment with their needs. This intervention was co-designed in a research-practice partnership, and it focuses on applying principles of how people learn through “worked examples” to reduce achievement gaps. A random-assignment study found that it boosted achievement for low-achieving students on both released test items and a researcher-developed test of conceptual understanding in mathematics (Booth et al., 2015).

Frame 2: Expanding Opportunity and Access

Frame 2 sets up the problem to be solved as a different kind of gap, namely between different groups’ access to opportunities in STEM. The source of those differences is typically imagined in terms of social and material resources necessary to learn—access to well-prepared educators, a network of adult and peer supporters for learning, and high-quality curricular experiences. The approaches to increasing access and opportunity vary, but in contrast to the focus on interventions at the individual level, these interventions focus on changing conditions for access through policy changes within institutions or use strategies for brokering opportunities across institutions.

A key motivation or ethical imperative underpinning this framing of equity is fairness, or the need to equalize opportunity for all groups, often under the assumption that if opportunities are equalized, all learners will have an equal chance of success. This framing of equity does attend to how past inequities of opportunity have contributed to gaps in outcomes but may not consider the ways inequities were “designed into” the education system. The image of the future implied in this frame is that educational institutions will be more just in how they distribute resources in the future

and that they will be better connected to support students in engaging in STEM pursuits in and out of school, wherever they might be. This framing may deflect attention from what happens inside these learning opportunities, and whether they afford meaningful learning to students who are experiencing opportunity gaps. It can also leave unexamined the ways of thinking and being that are welcomed within STEM classrooms.

The Computer Science for All movement is a good example of an initiative that employs this frame for promoting equity. The movement comprises a network of actors from the private and public sectors, including funders from the National Science Foundation, who are dedicated to ensuring that all students at some point in their K–12 careers have access to a computer science course. This movement sees its goal as ensuring broader diversity in computer science, particularly for women and racialized groups that are underrepresented in computer science. Key means to that end are changing policies at the state level to require computer science, incentivizing the development and scaling of instructional materials and professional development models (National Science Foundation, 2018), and expanding access to opportunities to learn computing in out-of-school spaces.

Another example of an initiative that is focused on expanding access to STEM opportunities across a community is the Chicago City of Learning (CCOL; see Chapter 11 for a more detailed discussion of this initiative). A central aim of CCOL has been to connect young people and their families to find enriching learning opportunities around the city in community-based sites and in schools. Nichole Pinkard and a team led by practitioners and scholars at a group called YOUmedia in Chicago created a platform and coordinated an effort that got more than 170 organizations to list more than 3,000 opportunities for youth in just the first year. Pinkard (2019) saw the absence of systems for sharing available opportunities and for facilitating deliberation among program leaders and policy makers as to what learning opportunities are offered where and what gaps there are as a significant challenge to be addressed in promoting equity. She and her team sought to create a more robust sociotechnical infrastructure that could provide “connective tissue” (Pinkard, 2019, p. 43) between components of the ecosystem of school-based and out-of-school learning opportunities in the city, such that youth themselves could see what choices were available to them at any given time, as well as potential pathways for developing knowledge and skills across multiple programs that were related to their interests. Table 6-2 summarizes the kinds of problems, solutions, and motivations made visible with this frame.

TABLE 6-2 Summary of Key Features of Expanding Opportunity Frame

SOURCE: Committee generated.

Frame 3: Embracing Heterogeneity in STEM Classrooms

The third frame is distinct from the other two in that it directly challenges the notion that the current educational system is organized in such a way to build with and toward the concerns, lived experiences, and identities of those students who have been and continue to be harmed in schools, including as part of their STEM classrooms. It locates a key problem in the idea that students should learn only “settled” disciplinary knowledge and practices, as well as the active exclusion of different ways of thinking, feeling, and being of young people within STEM classrooms (Warren et al., 2004). Proposed solutions include creating learning environments in schools and out-of-school spaces that disrupt how STEM fields are presented, and designing learning around students’ diverse sensemaking repertoires. Rather than move toward a “single story” or narrative of disciplines, disciplines are understood as evolving and internally heterogenous, and as cultural practices for developing and warranting knowledge claims. The ethical imperative for these kinds of changes may be framed in different terms: as supportive of respect for different ways of being and knowing (Bang et al., 2010), and as presenting students with an appreciation for STEM as a cultural and sociopolitical endeavor, situated in time, place, and within networks of power. The future is imagined as one that requires greater respect for and meaningful involvement of families and students from nondominant communities, as well as new opportunities for intergenerational and connected learning across settings. Infrastructures linking those different institutions would likely be more community centered (as opposed to school centered) than they are today. These changes would necessitate a redistribution of power—to shape curriculum, to define possibilities for contributing to ongoing endeavors in the community.

An example of a project that draws on the embracing heterogeneity frame is TechTales (Tzou et al., 2020). TechTales is a community-based project that includes a university, a science center, a library, an Indigenous theater group for youth, and the Native Education program of a school district near Seattle, Washington. In the project, families are invited to develop, tell, and animate stories from their own lives using robotics components, sensors, and everyday materials over the course of a 5-week series of workshops. Grounded in an understanding of learning as a cultural process, the program actively promotes multiple ways of knowing and making in STEM, begins with the premise that learning should begin with the lives of learners, and repositions family members as expert—no matter their formal preparation in STEM. The program positions parents as co-facilitators, and it centers members’ own family and cultural knowledge in the stories they created and told. The program also elevates participants’ observations of and ways of relating to land, drawing on Indigenous ways of knowing and

TABLE 6-3 Summary of Key Features of Embracing Heterogeneity Frame

SOURCE: Committee generated.

being (Tzou, Meixi, et al., 2019). Consistent with the idea of embracing heterogeneity at all levels of programming, the team uses co-design and co-facilitation as a way to design alongside or with partners rather than for them (Tzou, Bell, et al., 2019). Table 6-3 summarizes the kinds of problems, solutions, and motivations made visible with this frame.

Frame 4: Learning and Using STEM to Promote Justice

A fourth frame for equity centers learning STEM not as an end for its own sake but as a resource within movements for social and socioecological justice. A key problem to be addressed from the standpoint of this frame is that throughout history, there are examples of ways that the STEM fields have been used as instruments in larger agendas of nationalism and colonialism, and their role as an instrument for justice for marginalized communities has been diminished, both in practice and within education (see Chapter 2 for a deeper discussion of this history). In addition, the problem of “interest” in STEM is recast as a problem of engaging young people in STEM learning in ways that allow them to engage directly in actions that work toward remedying injustices experienced in their communities,

or to contribute to larger justice projects such as abolition and decolonization (Tuck & Wang, 2018). Through its embrace of solutions that position STEM as inherently a sociopolitical endeavor (Morales-Doyle et al., 2020), this frame portrays STEM as a tool in struggles for civil rights (Moses & Cobb, 2001; Moses et al., 1989). Examples of solutions include engaging young people in participatory action research related to issues of environmental racism in communities, using geospatial technologies to advocate for more equitable transportation solutions in their communities, and engaging strategically with data to combat policies that would reduce necessary services to low-income residents in cities. Within this frame, history is a resource for activists to connect with multiple traditions—of past and ongoing social struggles for justice, as well as with how different tools of STEM have been used in those struggles. This frame can also be seen as utilized to support the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous peoples (e.g., Whyte, 2012), while simultaneously contributing to broader justice-oriented efforts faced by other historically marginalized groups. The future for which advocates within this frame argue is transformative and just, and can be worked toward both distally and currently, where actors are intentionally oriented toward correcting past injustices. Power, within this frame, comes from activists and communities appropriating tools typically associated with powerful institutions to work toward justice, in which control of valued social, political, and economic resources is shared among many rather than concentrated in the hands of the few.

A long-term partnership between the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) with science teachers from the Greater Lawndale Little Village High School for Social Justice (SOJO) illustrates how this frame can be used to organize learning opportunities at the intersection of science and activism (Segura et al., 2021). The partnership is part of a climate justice initiative begun in 1994 within an area in Chicago populated primarily by immigrants from Mexico. The wider movement goals are aimed toward a different economic future based not on extraction but on regeneration and sustainability. The curriculum of SOJO—a small school that is housed within a larger campus fought for by neighborhood residents—integrates the work of LVEJO directly into it, weaving the work of campaigns (such as seeking to get rid of a major polluter in the community) into multiple science courses at the school. Staff of the two organizations have over time played roles in both LEVJO and SOJO, and students contribute directly to the work of campaigns through participating in activism (e.g., door knocking, planning and leading workshops with the community to garner support). Students study not just the science but the wider economic systems that are perpetuating the climate crisis. Table 6-4 summarizes the kinds of problems, solutions, and motivations made visible with this frame.

TABLE 6-4 Summary of Key Features of the Justice Frame

SOURCE: Committee generated.

Frame 5: Envisioning Sustainable Futures Through STEM

The fifth frame for equity identified by the committee is one that is grounded in one of the key purposes for STEM education outlined in Chapter 1 of this report: to cultivate equitable, just, and thriving social and ecological futures that attend to and support both ecological and human wellbeing. This frame acknowledges the ways STEM education can play a role in promoting justice (Frame 4) through embracing heterogeneity in STEM (Frame 3), but it calls for envisioning futures in ways that both call upon knowledges and wisdom from traditions that dominant STEM actors have sought to erase or suppress, while also imagining entirely new educational arrangements in STEM, not just new forms of learning within schools as they are today. Because the complexity of current and ongoing socioecological challenges demands the search for new ecological and educational solutions for the future of society and the planet, we argue that both the immediacy of this challenge and the need to adapt the perspectives highlighted in both Frames 3 and 4 call for the creation of a new, independent fifth frame for actors to employ in decision-making endeavors.

Indeed, finding these solutions demands that one look to advances in the STEM fields for models of discovery that integrate different forms of knowledge, prepare us for the future, and help sustain cultural practices and lifeways of communities that are themselves sustainable (e.g., Shamon et al., 2022). Notably, possible solutions to future challenges of sustainability are interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in nature, and so educational opportunities, from the standpoint of this frame, need to be reconfigured away from treating disciplines as siloes and toward rich dialogue across disciplines. Models of co-design called for in this approach are ones that are transdisciplinary (Mawasi et al., 2021), that prefigure new forms of relationships among people and institutions (Gutiérrez et al., 2020), and that allow for thinking far into the future where global conditions are changed (Irwin et al., 2015). In addition, this frame calls for design that recruits wisdom and knowledges explicitly that have a deep history to imagine possible futures, recognizing that peoples across the globe have always been doing science and inventing technologies (Cochran et al., 2020).

An example of a programmatic effort to shift institutional relations among families, schools, and communities toward more sustainable futures is the Learning in Places Collaborative. At one level, Learning in Places is a curriculum project, building new kinds of interdisciplinary science instructional materials for preschool- and elementary-aged children (Tzou et al., 2021). And at this level, it is innovative in the frameworks it brings to helping children imagine and explore their ethical responsibilities to the planet now and in the future, and to be able to empirically examine the

consequences of decisions made in the past and by them and their families in the present for human communities and for non-human species and natural kinds in the world. Young people are invited to engage in a deep examination of the human relationship to the natural world right in their own homes and neighborhoods and connect these to broader scales. Learning in Places, as a curricular resource, also includes educator frameworks that orient educators to models for socioecological decision making, thinking about power, historicity, and the histories of places, as well as family and community engagement (Learning in Places Collaborative, 2021).

In addition, Learning in Places facilitates thinking across scales in times constructed to not only support reasoning about complex socioecological systems but also complex social systems and power over time. For example, Learning in Places engages people in learning about Indigenous peoples’ time as distinct from nation-state time, and facilitates decision making that engages with Indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems, sovereignty, and self-determination (Lees & Bang, 2023). Further, Learning in Places upholds Indigenous visibility and recognizes Indigenous peoples at a global scale, and, too, recognizes their territories, which are central to a sustainable future; it is aligned with federal and international policy (see, for example, White House OSTP, November 30, 2022). These principles are reflected in the Learning in Places Histories of Places framework in which educators incorporate Indigenous, national, and global perspectives of socioenvironmental phenomena. Further, the Learning in Places project incorporates attention to upholding Indigenous sovereignty in decision making.

The collaborative is also innovative in its formation of a partnership that includes universities, multiple community organizations, and tribal communities and schools. In this, it seeks to embody different kinds of relations and draw on the expertise of community partners for how to grow and eat food in ways that regenerate healthy ecosystems. Table 6-5 summarizes the kinds of problems, solutions, and motivations made visible with this frame.

TABLE 6-5 Summary of Key Features of the Envisioning New Futures Frame

SOURCE: Committee generated.

USING FRAMES TO PROMOTE EQUITY AND JUSTICE IN STEM EDUCATION

Different actors—family members, educators, leaders, students—can strategically use different frames for equity to bring in new collaborators, mobilize support, and secure resources for the full range of equity purposes. In the district effort described above to delay tracking in algebra (Handsman et al., 2022), district leaders deliberating about the need for a new policy used a combination of frames to develop the policy and secure support for it. They appealed to the gap closing frame in calling attention to high failure rates of Black and Latinx students in algebra when taught in eighth grade. They appealed to the opportunity frame when calling for more equitable opportunities for students to meet ambitious new standards. Internally, to persuade others in the district that the policy needed to change, some district leaders invoked tracking as a harmful, unethical practice. In the end, it was a combination of frames that shaped the policy that ultimately won the support of the superintendent and school board.

What went on in this district is an example of what is sometimes referred to as strategic framing (Benford & Snow, 2000). Strategic framing can involve different approaches to persuasion through the development of specific frames (i.e., lenses that shape how information is seen and understood). For one, an actor or group of actors might try to connect a frame to something a stakeholder already cares about. Many people, for example, value “hands on” and “inquiry-based learning” in science, and so connecting these to the Framework for K–12 Science Education’s (National Research Council, 2012) vision of engaging students in science and engineering practices can be a skillful way to build support for the latter vision. Sometimes, an actor can try and heighten the ethical importance of addressing a problem, drawing on a particular argument’s characterization of why it is important to act. When advocating for a culturally sustaining curriculum in computer science, for example, a group might appeal to the need for diversity in computer science and importance of people seeing themselves in instructional activities. A third strategy involves using an argument where people are familiar with its application and extend it to a new context. People may be familiar with struggles of communities to combat environmental racism, and then invite others to consider how students might be involved in such initiatives as part of their own learning. Strategic framing highlights the need to be intentional about the language used to bring people into the work of promoting equity and justice in STEM.

Not all frames are likely to resonate in a given political context with all actors, and some frames—at particular times, at least—may not resonate at all. Scholars refer to the kinds of policy arguments and solutions that are judged to be “acceptable” as within a particular “zone of mediation,”

that is, within the realm of possible solutions that are politically viable at a given time (Oakes et al., 1998). Policy proposals inside the zone are often described as acceptable, sensible, and popular. Proposals outside the zone are often described as unthinkable or radical. What falls within the zone is more likely to become policy. Importantly, the zone of mediation is dynamic and changing: it depends on the audience and decision makers, as well as who has what kind of decision-making power. Several things can impact what causes the zone to shift: changes in global, societal, regional, local, and individual norms; events that affect people directly or indirectly; and the strategic actions of what various actors say and do to establish and expand or narrow the zone of mediation.

Frames can be used not just to advocate for specific positions, but to encourage new ways of thinking about problems and possible solutions for groups engaged in deliberation. For example, Ladson-Billings’ (2006) reframing of the idea of an “education debt” as a different way to understand “achievement gaps” served a more pedagogical purpose for her audience: to help education researchers reimagine educational inequity. The idea of “rightful presence” (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2020) provides a different image than “inclusion” as a goal for equitable learning environments and STEM, opening up possibilities for how the political dimensions of students’ everyday struggles might become part of STEM learning. The exploration of the possibilities for new framings can allow groups to expand the kinds of perspectives they consider, as well as lead to shifts in what they value in STEM learning environments. Such a view is consistent with findings from psychology that show that the values invoked in different arguments significantly shape people’s thinking (Brewer & Gross, 2005).

The arguments people use strategically—or otherwise—are consequential for decision making. When actors adopt a multifaceted conception of equity—one that could include elements, for example, of the opportunity and heterogeneity frames—they are more likely to diagnose inequities as based in systems rather than individual deficits and pursue more multipronged solutions to attenuate inequities. (For example, Phelps & Santo, 2022, describe district decision makers’ efforts in one large school district to diagnose inequities that were preventing full student participation in computer science classes.) With the help of a researcher in their research-practice partnership, district staff came to see that an observed gap in enrollment in a required computer science course between emergent multilingual learners and learners whose home language was English was due to the former’s limited opportunities to take prerequisite classes. Notably, district staff did not look to deficits within emergent language learners as the cause, because they had developed a more complex view of equity and approach to problem solving.

ANTI-EQUITY AND NON-EQUITY FRAMES

Some actors appropriate equity arguments in ways that can subvert equity goals named in this report, or they use arguments that argue actively against equity as a goal for STEM education at all. For example, some people may invoke the principle of fair distribution of resources to argue against efforts to compensate for past injustices, arguing that a fair distribution does not consider race, gender, or any other identity. Others may say it is wrong to consider identity at all in STEM curriculum, since the most accessible curriculum for “all” is one that treats STEM as a neutral discipline that anyone can learn. Still others may argue that “equity” is not an appropriate goal at all. All three of these arguments have been important in recent public debates and legislation passed in dozens of states that have made it unlawful for educators to talk about race—or any other topic judged to be controversial—with students. Being knowledgeable about these arguments and how they cause harm or limit opportunity is therefore important.

On still other occasions, an equity frame can be recruited by actors who oppose efforts to repair unjust distributions of opportunity in a school system. Wieselmann et al. (2021) describe one district’s path to creating a STEM focus across all its elementary schools. Initially, district leaders proposed making a school that was failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress goals on state tests into a “choice” STEM school. The new school was attractive to more economically advantaged parents, who wanted their children to be able to attend the school as well. But the enrollment limits meant many could not attend. These parents used an opportunity frame to argue that their students were unfairly being denied opportunities to enroll in the new STEM school. Partly to accommodate the resistance, the district decided to make all elementary schools in this district STEM schools. Thus, an attempt to create more opportunity for students that the system was failing (i.e., an effort to promote equity) resulted in a policy to provide the same opportunity to everyone, thanks in part to the use of the opportunity frame (Frame 2) by more advantaged parents.

Sometimes, when educators are asked about how their school or district promotes equitable teaching and learning in STEM, educators reply that they seek to teach all students or that their goal is to meet each individual student where they are. Such a response likely reflects a genuine concern for fairness as well as for individualized responses to student needs that avoid stereotypes. At the same time, such a response can deflect from direct conversations about the historical and continuing patterns of discrimination based on race, gender and sexual identity, class, and disability that have led to unequal opportunities in the first place (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Calabrese Barton, 1998). Sometimes, these injustices are relegated to the past, limiting

opportunities to discuss how they continue to be perpetuated today or acknowledgment of the people, policies, and actions responsible for those injustices (Basile & Lopez, 2015; Philip & Azevedo, 2017). In addition, it is easy to use expanded opportunity “for all” language to justify “sameness” when educational justice might demand more transformative change to systems (Gutiérrez & Jaramillo, 2006). Treating equity as demanding the same curriculum for all ignores the unique histories, experiences, and perspectives of racialized communities such as Black students and families (Martin, 2013; Mutegi, 2011).

The ideal of customizing instruction to each individual student—or to student groups as if groups were made up of similar individuals—can be similarly problematic. Human beings live and learn culturally: a person grows up and becomes who they are through participating in practices they share with others and in multiple contexts (NASEM, 2018; Rogoff, 2003), and true personalization or individualization requires attention to the varied histories and current values and dreams of the communities to which students belong. Often, however, advocates of personalization argue for specific kinds of educational interventions that do not align well with images of STEM and STEM learning as social and cultural enterprises (Roberts-Mahoney et al., 2016). Customizing instruction to match the perceived characteristics of a cultural or racial group runs other risks, namely of flattening of differences within defined groups (Omi & Winant, 1994). In policy documents like this one, it is common to refer to large groups of people in this way, by referring to those groups by name but with no specific description of those groups (Basile & Lopez, 2015). When aiming toward equitable STEM education, it is critical to bring a lens that holds both regularities of cultural communities and variations within them together (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003).

A good example of an anti-equity frame is the argument that teaching about matters of race and racism is somehow unfair or harmful. A network of organized groups that has created toolkits for parent and community groups has promoted this idea, claiming that educators across the country are teaching Critical Race Theory, a theory that aims to explain the persistence of racism in U.S. society and its impacts on different institutions.¹ Pollock and Rogers (2022) argue that the effort is a “conflict campaign” aimed primarily at preventing dialogue and discussion about legitimately controversial topics that should be the focus of a robust civics education through the promotion of a caricature of the theory the laws are intended to forbid. As a result of this organizing, at least 54 bills in 24 states were

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¹ For more information on the origins and history of the term, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (Crenhaw et al., 1995) defines key terms, offers case examples, and discusses the application of the theory to different academic disciplines.

introduced in the first nine months of 2021 that forbade educators from discussing topics related to race and racism in the classroom; a total of 15 states have passed such bills into law (PEN America, 2021). This campaign has occurred in a time when over 95 percent of Americans want high school students to learn about slavery, and 85 percent want high school students to learn about racial inequality (Polikoff et al., 2022).

The consequences of this campaign on educators (including principals and teachers) and students are significant. A nationally representative survey study of principals found that it has limited students’ opportunities to practice dialogue about matters of race and racism and reduced support for teaching about race, racism, and racial and ethnic diversity, including in STEM education (Rogers & Kahne, 2022). According to one principal, parents complained when a teacher showed clips from the film Hidden Figures, which highlights the contributions of African American women to NASA’s early spaceflight, because it depicted segregation in restroom facilities (Rogers & Kahne, 2022, p. 19). Almost half (45%) of the principals in the study reported higher levels of conflict since the pandemic and that parents and community members often made their case through spreading misinformation and using threatening, denigrating, and violent language, thus eroding trust between parents and teachers. Seven out of ten principals reported that students made derogatory remarks to classmates whose views differed from their own, a phenomenon that was most likely to occur in politically divided communities. A separate nationally representative survey of educators (principals and teachers) found that 42 percent of mathematics teachers and 37 percent of science teachers reported that political issues and opinions impacting their classrooms are a source of job-related stress, and those teachers that did reported lower levels of wellbeing (Woo et al., 2022). Together, these findings point to the importance of taking anti-equity frames seriously when discussing equity, as they can have far-reaching harmful effects on school-family-community relations and limit opportunities to engage in dialogue about equity.

HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIOS OF STRATEGIC FRAMING IN ACTION

In this section, we turn to some hypothetical scenarios where different frames are in contact or in conflict, to illustrate the usefulness of thinking about frames in relation to purposes in efforts to promote equity in STEM education. Understanding the limitations or tradeoffs linked to a particular frame requires thinking through specific instances of decision making. Looking at specific examples can help us become aware of the limitations of our own perspectives. It can also help actors gain appreciation for ways that frames they would not be inclined to use can advance purposes they

care about. The scenarios we present are hypothetical, though they are grounded in situations that we know about or learned about in our visits to different communities.

These examples are meant to be discussed with others. Discussing these hypothetical examples can help a group of people responsible for decisions related to equity in STEM come to a better understanding of one another’s purposes and ways of thinking about equity. Ultimately, they may help to guide better decision making as well.

Example 1: An Argument About Graduation Requirements

According to this state’s laws, each student must take three science courses. The state is small, and the state education agency reviews each district’s plans to make sure that their own requirements comply with the law. A Career and Technical Education teacher from a district approaches the state science coordinator at a meeting in their district. The teacher approaches the state leader with the idea that an elective course in the district’s high school focused on making and tinkering counts toward the required science course for high school graduation, arguing that it will help vocational education students become more interested in science. Ultimately, their program is aiming to get students in this rural district with a mix of white and Indigenous students into STEM careers, and they see a tie between interest in STEM and pursuing a STEM career.

The state leader does some research and looks more carefully at the curriculum and finds the content to be limited and does not address any science standards at all. This leader is strongly motivated by the goal of ensuring that the students in this community have the knowledge they need to build thriving communities. They are also motivated by a strong desire for Indigenous students in the district to be able to pursue questions of importance to their community’s relation to the land. The leader argues to the teacher that changing this policy would reduce access to necessary coursework to build students’ science literacy and prepare them for a wider range of careers and the possibility of pursuing STEM in higher education. They try to convince the teacher that this is not a good course for CTE students to take to meet their science requirements because it will limit their opportunities. They do not mention their own goals explicitly in the conversation, but instead try to appeal to the teacher’s goal. The teacher is unconvinced but does not have the authority to change the policy.

In this example, readers can see different frames in play, and a strategic move by the state leader to shift the terms of a debate to appeal to the teacher. The teacher employs Frame 1—the gap reduction frame—in appealing to increasing interest as a reason to change the graduation requirement to accommodate their school’s course. The purpose motivating this

teacher is that of STEM for economic wellbeing of individual students in the community. The state leader argues with this educator using a different frame, an expanding opportunity frame (Frame 2). Importantly, they use this frame while also appealing to the educator’s underlying view about the purpose of his course. Their own purposes may or may not be realized in this deliberation, unless the science standards expressly emphasize the need for students to be able to investigate questions that pertain to the thriving of their own communities. This example also shows the operation of power—in this case, the action of the state leader to use their power to influence the ultimate outcome.

Example 2: Curriculum Adoption

A mathematics curriculum adoption committee in a large suburban district is using a rubric to evaluate different materials. The district is newly diverse, with a high percentage of Latinx families having recently moved into the area. The committee is charged with making a decision and passing their recommendation on to the director of mathematics in the district, who in turn will take their recommendation to the local school board.

The rubric the committee is using includes elements that focus on acknowledging culturally and linguistically diverse students’ life experiences and valuing their backgrounds. Among three sets of materials reviewed, only one set meets the criteria. A different curriculum has strong evidence of effectiveness in reducing achievement gaps. One member of the committee argues the latter curriculum should be adopted, because it will produce better outcomes for Latinx students in the district. This committee member further expresses concern that these outcomes matter for later economic advancement for Latinx students and their communities. A second member argues that that curriculum uses biased examples and does little to help students see themselves in the curriculum. This committee member sees an important goal of mathematics education to be diversifying the field of mathematics to bring new perspectives and possibilities for knowledge advancement. They say that they are concerned that without seeing examples of Latinx mathematicians and their discoveries in the curriculum, there’s little chance of meeting this goal. A third member says that the culturally responsive curriculum doesn’t go far enough—and that the rubric is not strong enough. The materials and rubric should both include opportunities for students to see how mathematics can be a tool in advocating for social and ecological justice. This member says mathematics should involve problems where students grapple with the disproportionate impact of pollution in the city on Latinx neighborhoods in the district, evident in health disparities documented in city statistics. Two other members object to considering anything but the test scores and effectiveness data, and that the committee

should choose the curriculum that works the best. One of them argues that “math is math,” no matter who you are, and a curriculum should not take sides on controversial matters. In the end, the committee takes a vote and chooses to recommend the curriculum that has evidence that it reduced achievement gaps between white and Latinx students.

In this example, multiple equity frames are in evidence: Frame 1 (gap reduction), Frame 3 (embracing heterogeneity), and Frame 4 (using STEM to promote justice). The first three committee members’ positions are also consistent with the purposes they see for STEM education, and they are explicit in their arguments about the purposes they see as important. In addition, at least two of the members of the committee do not use an equity frame at all; their argument might be seen as an active denial of the validity of the embracing heterogeneity frame (Frame 3), in favor of a consideration of evidence alone. While evidence need not be pitted against another frame, here as in many instances, readers can see that it is. Last, this example illustrates how a decision can unfold over time and across different contexts. This committee’s recommendation is only the first step in a multistep process involving the adoption of a new mathematics curriculum. Their own decisions could be reversed or challenged by the director of mathematics or the school board.

Example 3: Applying for a Computer Science Grant

A private foundation has set up a grant program that districts can apply to for aid in creating computer science education programs in schools. A requirement of the grant program is that it be offered across an entire district, to ensure opportunity for all. An express purpose of the program is to promote workforce development and diversify the engineering workforce. In one school district that is applying, the region is rapidly gentrifying due to an infusion of the tech workforce, changing the racial makeup of several neighborhoods near downtown. In developing the grant application, one of the district leaders argues that offering a computer science course in high school to everyone will have the potential to reduce gaps in both achievement and interest in STEM. They are excited about the possibility of the grant bringing in resources to support these aims. Another teacher from a high school on the committee is worried that, in fact, the course will do nothing to change the actual workforce opportunities for students. As a former Black worker in the high-tech industry in the area, too, this teacher questioned the desirability of preparing applicants for such a workforce. They think a computer science program should be about changing cultures of computing to recognize the distinct contributions of community members, and also should foreground how students can be activists in combating algorithmic injustice in the community that come from using

algorithms that make it difficult for Black applicants to obtain loans to buy a home. The proposal to the foundation that the team develops articulates a mixture of goals: (a) expanding access and (b) helping students see how computer science can help reveal both the harms to communities caused by creating and using algorithms and the possibilities of using computer science to help advance goals for creating a better city for everyone.

In this scenario, a team in a school district adopts multiple goals and uses multiple frames to develop a proposal to a foundation that frames its purposes in entirely different terms. One of the district leaders uses a gap-closing frame (Frame 1) to argue for the importance of the program, while the high school teacher in this example employs Frames 3 and 4 (embracing heterogeneity and promoting justice). The proposal also articulates a larger goal of using computer science to help promote thriving communities (Frame 5).

Example 4: Planning an Investigation with Kalo (Taro Plant)

A second-grade class in Hawai’i is studying the conditions needed to support plant growth. At the beginning of the unit, elders from the community came in to discuss the role of waters in the communities over several generations, as well as the role of kalo (taro plant) in supporting the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the people. A community organization dedicated to protecting waters shared with the students that climate change is making local fields of kalo periodically flood with salty water from the sea, which mixes in with the freshwater from rains that flows down to the fields from the mountains. The organization representative tells the students that studies of the impacts on the kalo plants could help mobilize change. The kalo is a sacred plant to native Hawai’ians, and one girl in the class knows the story of how kalo came to be, and understands kalo to be the ancestors of the people, a sibling to the first human. This girl decides she would like to do a controlled experiment to investigate whether the kalo can grow in the mixture of salt and freshwater that is now common in the bay near her. She consults her teacher, who advises her that she needs many taro plants to be able to test her idea that the kalo will grow better in freshwater than in the salty water. Her teacher suggests that for her experiment to be convincing to people who can do something to protect the kalo fields, there will need to be a large sample, since if she tests just a single plant, it might survive or die by chance. The girl objects, though, saying that because kalo is sacred, it should not be sacrificed without consideration for the plant. She argues that the study should require as few plants as possible be potentially destroyed if it turns out the salty water cannot keep the plants alive. The teacher decides to honor her decision, and the teacher also says that the class could consult the elder about their dilemma.

In this dilemma, adapted from Bell et al. (2019), adults and children are drawing on different frames to inform decision making to support goals of thriving non-human species and a sustainable planet, as well as the goal of scientific innovation. The community group appeals to a justice frame (Frame 4) in calling for the need for studies of the impacts of saltwater on kalo plant growth. The teacher elevates this frame in appealing to the reasons why the student should choose a larger sample of kalo plant for her study, noting it will be more convincing if she can rule out chance as the explanation for her findings. The student is drawing on a knowledge base that allows for different meanings of the kalo plant, both as a participant in a study and as a living being worthy of her care and concern and important to her community. The classroom as a whole is one that appears to be one that embraces epistemic heterogeneity, as it makes room for both adults and students to move among different perspectives on the phenomena they are studying.

CONCLUSIONS

We intend the five frames of equity and the scenarios presented in this chapter to serve as a springboard for helping groups of educators, leaders, students, families, and community members imagine different possibilities for what STEM education could be and how those possibilities might align with the different possible goals for STEM education. We are not urging to pit different conceptions of equity against one another, even though during deliberations, this can happen. Rather, the invitation here is to allow for the different frames to help expand and complicate thinking about the causes of inequity and directions for pursuing equity and justice in STEM education.

That said, it is important to remember that some uses of frames foreclose possibilities for change, rather than open them up, when one frame is used to “shut down” others, which as noted above can happen in the name of pragmatism and expediency. Working with the frames also requires careful attention to timescales and the relationships between short-, medium-, and long-term goals and possibilities for change-making.

We return to these Frames throughout the rest of the report in order to orient readers toward potential decisions for equity. The committee argues that how actors approach and conceive of equity then shapes their rationales for decision making and deployment of resources. If an actor focuses on an issue or approach toward equitable STEM learning that can be “fixed” today, they may not be thinking about the possibilities for the future and could end up replicating the status quo. Working toward more equity-oriented STEM learning requires not only making decisions on how to bring these opportunities to students today, but also for thinking about

how best to leverage these opportunities to prepare students their futures in a rapidly changing world.

Conclusion 6-1: All actors in educational systems and contexts engage in decision making and take actions that are consequential to equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Education decision makers can find opportunities through interpretation and enactment of policy that allow them to advance equity in STEM education. Identifying these opportunities requires an understanding of the policies, the key actors in the context, potential resources to leverage, and a willingness to be creative. Consequential decision making for increasing equity in STEM education involves balancing short-term gains while maintaining a vision for and strategic action toward long-term, continuous, and broad systemic change.

Conclusion 6-2: Actors implicitly and explicitly use different ways of thinking about equity and move between them. In making decisions about equity, actors can pursue the following five frames:

1. Reducing Gaps Between Groups,
2. Expanding Opportunity and Access,
3. Embracing Heterogeneity in STEM Classrooms,
4. Learning and Using STEM to Promote Justice, and
5. Envisioning New Ways of Living Sustainably with STEM.

The frame that an actor pursues matters for the strategies they choose, the investments they make, and the outcomes they will achieve.

REFERENCES