Anti-racist Praxis in (Science and) Education

This chapter takes up overarching questions that stemmed from the authors’ participation as panelists in an international town hall at a science educator conference: our vision for cultivating anti-racist and social justice-driven (science) education, challenges we have experienced while enacting this vision, and creative maneuvers and resistance strategies we have used in overcoming those challenges. The chapter (and town hall upon which it is based) brought together racially and geographically diverse educators with a wide range of expertise, from political science to science education, literacy education, teacher education, and social justice education. Our diverse positionalities helped us engage with challenges and possibilities from a more robust and multidimensional perspective. This chapter is not trying to make a case for anti-racism in science education or why we should take on anti-racist projects as part of life and living together in the Anthropocene. Rather, our goal through these conversations was to bring our own experiences to bear on how anti-racist and social justice-driven education can be enacted and sustained in science and education and beyond. We found that our diverse perspectives enabled us to collectively think and imagine beyond the limitations of our own disciplinary and nationalist socializations.