Exploring Science Teachers’ Reflections on Using Identity and Criticality to Design Social Justice-Oriented Environments

Abstract

Recognizing that traditional science education materials often overlook students’ cultural and social contexts, this research examines the teacher-driven design of science teaching enactment—specifically, how teachers reflect on and adapt their science instruction to teach social justice through pursuits of identity and criticality using a framework rooted in cultural and historical responsive practices. The data for this study were collected from 14 online discussion sessions where three experienced science teachers engaged in adapting existing lessons, reflecting on their practice toward developing their own understandings of social justice. Through qualitative analysis of the teachers’ reflections, this study investigates how teachers think together about incorporating and nurturing students’ identities and criticality perspectives. The findings show themes related to challenges teachers faced, including parents’ concerns about addressing social justice topics in science class. Teachers also struggled with navigating discussions about identity, particularly when their race differed from that of their students. The teachers also reflected on aspects that promoted the work, such as students’ positive responses, and the deepening of their relationships with students. The teachers’ adaptations centered on students’ identities and the critical examination of societal issues, which were seen as accessible avenues for deepening scientific understanding and promoting engagement. Implications for teachers include using a reflective discussion approach for supporting curricular adaptations. There is a need for professional learning frameworks that empower teachers as agentive, intellectual actors to align science education with social justice principles. This will foster more inclusive and transformative learning experiences for diverse student populations.

1. Introduction

One approach to designing science environments to engage students includes integrating issues of social justice with science content. Integrating social justice issues with natural phenomena (i.e., hurricanes) and problems (i.e., COVID-19 disparities) can drive science learning (e.g., Grapin et al., 2023; Sadler et al., 2024; Tran et al., 2025). However, when replacing phenomena in this way, teachers act as social justice agents—through the act of design. In doing so, teachers subvert the paternalistic stances that demand strict adherence to the curriculum as written (Superfine et al., 2015).

This project purposely shifts how teachers are often positioned in curriculum enactment research. The teachers in this study situated themselves as agents of social justice by enacting curricula adapted for social justice orientation in their classrooms and professional communities. As knowledgeable intellectuals who deserve to be deeply interested and invested in the topics they teach, these teachers became attuned to social justice issues that engaged their students in science. When teachers design the topics they teach, they not only leverage the knowledge of their school community, which may often be sidelined, they also challenge their own and others’ assumptions about their capability to do so (Miller et al., 2022).

Science teachers can incorporate social justice into their practice, when given the license to make teaching decisions, by designing experiences that cultivate students’ identities, skills, intellect, and criticality. Gholdy Muhammad’s text Cultivating Genius, an Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) (Muhammad, 2020) supports teachers in this sort of design. She writes that genius is not developed through an educational context, but “already lies within students and teachers” (Muhammad, 2023, p. 13). Therefore, in this view, educational environments should focus on nurturing and developing children’s inherent genius in the form of artistry, intellect, and ability.

Research describes how teachers ensure they engage in social justice-oriented inquiry through culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), inquiry-based learning (Adah Miller et al., 2024) and STEM learning (Cowie & Mildenhall, 2022), and by interrogating how science and society intersect. These approaches make science more relevant to diverse and minoritized students, fostering engagement and achievement by connecting the science curriculum content to students’ lived experiences and cultural identities (Barton & Tan, 2010; Strong, 2016).

Teachers interpret their goals for designing science learning with social justice orientations in different ways, influenced by their personal lived experiences (Avraamidou, 2019), collaborative dialogue (Rodriguez, 1998), and contextual factors (Marco-Bujosa et al., 2024). However, more research is needed to examine how teachers engage in reflective discussions to identify both challenges and factors supporting efforts to incorporate social justice teaching through curriculum adaptations to science lessons. This project involved three self-selected science teachers in monthly meetings, two elementary and one secondary, reflecting on their lessons after addressing identity and criticality to integrate social justice.

By examining teacher reflection, this study seeks to understand how teachers discuss and understand their efforts. The research questions that frame this study are as follows:

• What insights do science teachers share when reflecting on how identity and criticality influence their instructional choices and classroom experiences?
• What do science teachers identify as opportunities and challenges in adapting their instruction to include identity and criticality?

2. Literature Review

2.1. Social Justice in Science Teaching

Traditional school contexts in the United States are beginning to integrate science education and social justice to prepare students for global challenges (Furtak & Lee, 2023). Recent efforts responded to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), developed to promote “in-depth understanding of content and develop key skills” (NGSS Lead States, 2013, p. 5). In the document, social justice is only briefly mentioned in the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012), primarily referring to access and equity for all, rather than as a dimension of integrated scientific understanding.

Consequently, this research builds on the work of other scholars with the view of all pedagogy as inherently tied to questions of justice (Freire, 1994). Moving beyond defining social justice as connected to equity (Rawls, 1971), social justice in education begins with “the full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs” (Bell, 2007, p. 3). In science education specifically, social justice extends this definition to have students interrogate disciplinary practices, and policy as a means toward these ends (Aikenhead, 2023). Social justice as an orientation in science teaching means that there is commitment to analyzing issues of equity as part of science teaching and learning environments (Rodriguez & Morrison, 2019) and as a topic within science phenomena and problems (Ntaganzwa, 2024). There is commitment to recognizing systemic structures that perpetuate historical inequalities by and through science processes and products (Patterson, 2018; Rodriguez & Morrison, 2019).

The integration between social justice and the science discipline enhances students’ ability to use their understanding of social justice in the service of science learning (Morales-Doyle, 2017). When social justice problems anchor practice-based activities in science class, deeper content learning is promoted (Fine, 2025). Social justice, when added to three-dimensional science learning, can represent an additional lens to make sense of a problem or a phenomenon, including the “situated problem” of knowledge-building (Morales-Doyle, 2023). In this way, social justice understanding adds an additional layer of awareness, possibilities, and action to the sensemaking embedded in science practices (Nordine & Lee, 2023; Torres Olave et al., 2023). When sociopolitical consciousness is a goal for students in science class, teachers’ sociopolitical consciousness is also supported (Jones & Donaldson, 2022).

Social justice in science contexts includes a participatory aspect for students as agents of change (Ladson-Billings, 1995). It also involves a participatory aspect for teachers by better addressing their students’ learning needs by expanding their approach to science teaching (Mensah, 2022). In Mensah’s study, when teachers considered social justice as a learning goal for students, there were benefits to teachers. Three pre-service teachers (PSTs) were involved in collaborative discussion in a professional learning community format to develop science lessons. Their assignment was to develop multicultural science lessons with learning goals related to transformation and social action. Inspired by texts about green spaces, they decided together to have the students take the roles as city planners. The students imagined rooftop gardens, and flowers growing on city buses. The lessons culminated with planting, using recycled materials as pots, and a letter-writing campaign to a state official to coordinate more green space. This study underscored pre-service teachers’ development as multiculturally minded teachers through lesson creation. The reflective discussion related to incorporating social action supported the pre-service teachers’ shared understanding of theoretical constructs such as multiculturality.

Social justice understanding is therefore situated and calls for teachers to incorporate design in science lesson enactment so as to engage students with content though opportunities for justice-oriented critical thinking. Muhammad (2020) provides a framework for teaching to make similar design decisions in Cultivating Genius, an Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL). Teaching with the HRL framework centers equity through understanding historical teaching on emancipation. It asks teachers to be mindful of minoritized students’ personal identity as rooted in history and culture, while also fostering literacy and language practices. The framework suggests all teachers, including science teachers, can use the pursuits of criticality and identity to encourage students to question and challenge societal issues. This leads to an enhanced understanding of how science intersects with race, gender, and class. This approach to social justice in science education is grounded in the theory of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), which describes how teachers support learning by considering students’ cultural, relational, and community-based knowledge as integral for intellectual endeavors.

To understand social justice, studies show students exploring socio-scientific issues such as climate change (Singh, 2023), environmental science (Dimick, 2012), health disparities (Carlsson, 2024), and technological inequalities (Eden et al., 2024). Through studying power dynamics within group projects in an environmental science course, Dimick (2012) suggests the need for student reflection throughout the project process. When teachers listen and support students’ power struggles among peers, the classroom may become a space where everyone feels comfortable to challenge and discuss similar empowerment struggles when engaging in social justice-oriented science.

These examples from the literature underscore approaches to designing for social justice integration. When teachers and students solve problems relevant to their lives and community, they co-develop a critical lens (Morales-Doyle, 2017). Over the last few decades, integrating social justice into science education through adaptation has become progressively more significant in contemporary pedagogical discourse. It is often presented as dependent on a teacher who comes to teaching with an identity as a social justice advocate (Marco-Bujosa et al., 2024). One way to support the development of critical awareness and identity is by helping teachers adjust their curriculum and teaching strategies to highlight equity, inclusion, and justice issues within the scientific context (Gandolfi, 2021; Miller et al., 2022; Reynante, 2022). Embracing teacher design allows teachers to gradually build their confidence and expertise in handling socially sensitive issues. For example, Gandolfi’s (2021) study explores decolonizing the National Curriculum in England in collaboration with a science teacher in a London school. Through planning and teaching four secondary science topics, the study found that integrating decolonial ideas enriched the curriculum, enhancing the representativeness of topic integration in science education. The effort promoted teachers’ critical thinking. Design through adaptation thus offers a means to align selves with content so that teachers’ developing social justice awareness emerges in students’ learning experiences (Banks & Banks, 2019) and is reflected in the content (Brown et al., 2019).

2.2. Teacher Reflection

Teacher reflection, on the surface, involves examining experiences, learning from them, and planning improvements for the future (Machost & Stains, 2023; Larrivee, 2008). Under this definition, it has been associated with significant changes in teachers’ thinking and behavior toward outcomes generated outside the classroom (Zeichner, 1994). Research has also described reflective practitioners differently, as engaged in critical analyses of the goals that are expected of them (Brandenburg & Jones, 2017). They propose different goals, such as ethics and care (Parekh et al., 2023) and socio-political outcomes (Bhansari et al., 2024), that should inform their teaching decisions. Regardless of the goals, teachers engage in reflective practices, alone or with others, to better understand and evaluate teaching and students’ learning.

Research on teacher reflective practices as critical or “emancipatory” describes the goal of teaching as empowering others to create knowledge to bring about societal change (Ryan, 2014, p. 590). With the HRL framework, teachers use reflective practice to resolve ways to align their teaching toward desired outcomes (Muhammad, 2020). For example, in science, Severson et al. (2024) worked with other teachers to consider ways to combine the pursuits of criticality and joy. The teachers developed a science lesson focusing on students imagining themselves creating change, improving access to nature in their community (Severson et al., 2024).

There is some research that focuses on how the HRL framework (Muhammad, 2020) captures the efforts of building reflective practice into teacher professional learning. As an asset-based way to understand student learning, Muhammad described learning goals as equity pursuits, specifically involving identity, skills, intellect, and criticality. The teachers who focused on the pursuits of identity and criticality, for example, asked themselves and each other questions about their practices, such as “How does my instruction help students learn something new about themselves or about people who are different from them?” (toward the pursuit of identity) and “How does my instruction help students understand expression within humanity and or change the world?” (toward the pursuit of criticality).

Zoeller (2024) used the HRL model framework to reflect on and enhance language teaching tools and practices. By integrating Muhammad’s pursuits with culturally and linguistically sustaining teaching, she explored how six teachers reframed themselves as cultivating the genius of multilingual students in a dual-language secondary setting. The findings highlight how the teachers’ pursuits of students’ identities, namely, understanding themselves as people with rich multilingual and culturally based intellectual resources, enhanced literacy learning.

Glupker et al.’s (2022) study also highlights how to apply Muhammad’s framework to reflect on teaching, and underscores the potential of collaborative groups interested in applying specific pursuits to design new learning experiences. Glupker’s study emphasized the utility of the HRL framework related to teachers’ use of reflective practices to design their teaching, in different grade bands (elementary, middle, high school and college), in ways that help promote the literacy that is essential for a democratic society. For example, the first author utilized the pursuit of intellectualism in middle school. She integrated an independent reading curriculum that fostered literary communities. Another author in a first-year college writing course provided students with book choices across genres, allowing them to explore whether the texts served as mirrors or windows. The elementary teachers’ course culminated in a research project based on students’ interests. The three teachers, also authors of the study, came to use the HRL framework already committed to social justice and passionate about reading and writing.

By integrating reflective practices with the HRL framework, emerging research shows that teachers can enhance their cultural awareness, support equitable learning environments, and contribute to positive social change in education. Currently, there is no literature on developing science within the HRL framework. This research further explores how reflective practices support the development of social justice orientations for both students and teachers in science classrooms.

2.3. Cultivating Genius Framework

The book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (Muhammad, 2020) serves as a framework for viewing this research. The framework is specific to literacy; however, the text notes that literacy is equally relevant to all subjects. The five pursuits of the HRL framework are literacy, skills, intellect, identity, and criticality, and they are identified to support students in achieving success both in and out of school (Muhammad, 2020).

Literacy as a skill specifically enhances student engagement in reading, writing, and speaking unassisted, and with HRL, students can pursue joy through sharing thoughts with others (Severson et al., 2024). Similarly, literacy as intellect posits that the core of gaining knowledge lies in reading and sharing information. After gaining and practicing skills and intellect, students meaningfully use literacy to support their understanding of identity and criticality. Students understand their position in the school, community, state, country, and world through reading and writing. Students see themselves within these contexts, which may inform how they know themselves in the world. Teachers support student identity formation by carefully choosing readings that cultivate student identity. Furthermore, the same readings may inform how students develop criticality and come to understand the power and oppression of typically minoritized groups.

When identity is viewed as a pursuit, as in HRL, students engage in exploration and making sense of who they are, how they see themselves, how others perceive them, and how others are different. Muhammad (2020) describes a science lesson wherein identity is integrated within a genetics unit. Students explore their genetic makeup to understand their shared traits and unique differences. When teachers and students intentionally examine their identity, they are poised to “humanize the practice of teaching and learning” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 117). The humanizing process of science learning is sometimes lost if science is presented as objective. The meaning-making process is deeply influenced by the students’ identities, making identity a crucial pursuit in mastering scientific disciplines (Muhammad, 2020).

Criticality, as a learning pursuit, addresses academic excellence by seeking power and equity and promoting anti-oppression. The pursuit of criticality also humanizes, as it advances the disruption of oppression. In Cultivating Genius, it is discussed how students understand how oppression (hurt, pain and harm) is reproduced in the world and how it has been resisted and disrupted (Muhammad, 2023). Muhammad stresses the importance of teachers doing self-work to understand and foster the pursuits within themselves as they move their culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning forward with their students.

HRL is specifically written with Black and Brown students in mind, and using the framework with minority students in the classroom helps them understand and acknowledge their valued place in the classroom and the power of their education. The knowledge of student experiences is critical, as outlined by the number of pursuits described in the HRL. The teacher should be grounded in their own identity and ideologies to be conscious of any bias they may project. Previous research has used HRL to ground studies of literacy and multilingual learners (Zoeller, 2024), PSTs (Paulick et al., 2022), and the use of reflective practice in lesson design (Glupker et al., 2022). To our knowledge, research exploring science teachers’ shared use of the HRL framework is scarce.

3. Methods

The study aimed to gain insights into how these teachers designed science lessons, adapted from curriculum, in order to use the HRL framework, and the challenges and enabling factors they encountered in their lesson adaptation. This general qualitative study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) approach examined the reflective discussions of three science teachers over five months.

3.1. Study Context and Participants

Each of the teachers had, at some time in their careers, used curricula that centered on the problem-based learning approach (PBL) (see Fackler et al., 2024; Li et al., 2023). The teachers attended PBL sessions together and had a positive working relationship, which ignited the collaboration. One teacher, Ella, was using [Blinded] curriculum that was grounded in project-based science learning to center their science learning goals within math and English/Language Arts (ELA) topics and teaching practices. Another teacher, Holly, used a large-scale scripted curriculum aligned with NGSS. She also referred to PBL principles used prior to the large-scale curriculum adopted by her district. Last, Denise used a wide-scale district textbook curriculum featuring online videos and simulations. Further information about the participants, data collection, and analysis is given below.

3.2. Problem Based Learning

Problem-based learning (PBL) supports collaborative working groups to create a tangible outcome by applying their understanding of content learning. Usually, a PBL unit, in any discipline, includes specific features (Halvorsen et al., 2019; Severance et al., 2024), such as the following:

• Driving question;
• Authentic experiences;
• Tangible product;
• Collaboration with peers and adults;
• Project and time management;
• Reflecting on work and learning.

Familiarity with this approach was potentially helpful for including social justice within the classroom by considering the benefits of student-centered teaching, collaborative work, and designing the project.

Teachers were engaged in a book study group surrounding Cultivating Genius to adapt their current curriculum and foster a more socially just classroom. Three teachers reading the book sought guidance from the third author in creating adaptations to the [Blinded] curriculum. From this contact, the teachers agreed to participate in research investigating their self-guided reflections pertaining to adaptations to create a socially just classroom environment.

Participants of this study comprised a convenience sample from three separate schools, and taught upper elementary or middle school. The teachers were all in the same midwestern state in a rural district. The state adopted new science standards aligned with NGSS in 2017. All three teachers identify as white cis-women and teach in schools with a mixture of White, Black and Latine students. The town became more populated by families who relocated to be near their loved ones incarcerated in the local prison. This has given rise to generations of tensions, often between races. The first participant, Denise, is a 4th grade teacher with 12 years of experience. The second participant, Holly, is a 6th–8th grade teacher with 19 years of experience. The third participant is Ella, a specialist with 12 years of experience who taught 4th- and 5th-graders and teaches Kindergarten to 5th-grade PBL Science.

3.3. Data Collection and Analysis

The teachers met once weekly on Zoom along with the fourth author. During the meetings, the teachers led a reflective discussion surrounding adaptations made in the past week to the curriculum, such as instructional choices, challenges, and strategies for modifying lessons in relation to the Cultivating Genius framework. The fourth author attended to answer questions or give suggestions, but in no way led any part of the reflective discussion. Each virtual session was recorded, downloaded, and then transcribed using an online software, Otter.ai. This resulted in fourteen reflection discussions of approximately one hour each.

Data analysis began after all fourteen reflection discussions, with the researchers reading the de-identified transcripts for clarity. The group discussed each transcript to answer the first research question, creating descriptive codes to describe the day’s reflection and mentions of social justice within the discussion. Next, the codes and memos were condensed into common themes so as to summarize all fourteen reflection discussions (Miles & Roby, 2022).

Each recorded conversation was organized by interview date, and then the researchers read through the excerpts looking for specific mentions of identity and criticality, paying special attention to opportunities and challenges teachers encountered when using the HRL framework in their course (Saldaña, 2021). Specific portions of the transcript conversations focusing on identity and criticality were identified by authors one and four as representative of themes, and were organized in a spreadsheet. From here, the codes were organized as expressing (1) opportunity, (2) challenge or (3) neither. Researchers discussed and agreed upon themes the teachers expressed regarding the opportunities and challenges they face in adapting their curriculum.

4. Findings

Overall, the teachers discussed three themes during the reflection sessions, which included aligning lessons with the HRL framework, attending to students’ understanding of a specific pursuit, and expanding knowledge about identity work in the classroom. Additionally, teachers mentioned opportunities and challenges in successfully implementing the Cultivating Genius framework within their classrooms. The findings are discussed in further detail under the research questions below.

4.1. Overall Reflective Themes

4.1.1. Aligning Lesson with the Framework

The first of three themes identified through analyses of the teachers’ conversations included the consideration of lesson alignment with the Cultivating Genius HRL framework. When teachers presented a plan, they relied on one another’s responses about how aligned it was to the framework. After teaching, the reflections of lesson enactment served as a pedagogical tool for framework alignment. In this theme, teachers often reflected on small but continuous ways they aligned their science curriculum materials with the HRL framework. For example, Ella considered her students’ perspectives about science learning and identity, and evaluated her adaptations accordingly in discussion. Ella explained many of her students believed identity was stable and predetermined. She saw social justice as the opportunity to press students about identity, saying, “I’m trying to work on with the kids is their identity… what they believe is true and… don’t believe is true, what they take for granted”. During this reflection, Ella spoke about using identity in the classroom as a lens for students to view themselves as scientists who could engage with science content. She used readings and texts to support students’ interactive discussion about their beliefs and ideas; for example, she introduced a text from the internet about a scientist in Kenya. Many students were surprised that there were scientists in Africa and said that they learned something new. She asked students to think about themselves as changed. She also shared a non-fiction text that was written in Spanish, part of the curriculum materials, to spark discussion about languages and expert readers. Thus, she designed adaptations to align with her understanding of the framework’s definition of identity as interwoven with learning experiences.

As identity became a pursuit woven into Ella’s practice, she changed her science lessons to help students develop the sense that they are constantly changing, which is an aspect of learning (Muhammad, 2020). She suggested that the others make similar adaptations to lessons. According to Ella, the focus on identity as a response to learning and engaging with the science texts was not included in the original PBL lessons, or intended for different purposes.

Holly mentioned using the HRL framework to “intentionally build in conversation points… to lift the lesson to a new level”. She described the heightened level of discussion around justice when she played a Joni Mitchell song about building a parking lot in paradise. She built these dynamic discussion moments into her plans when she found that playing songs while students were working in their notebooks could engage the students in criticality. She also asked them to read and discuss lyrics of songs, such as one about Desmond Tutu. This was an in-the-moment adaptation that Holly made to align to the pursuit of criticality.

Denise was also working towards supporting student criticality; however, her continued attempts to align the HRL framework raised concern. She described feeling challenged to adapt the pursuit of criticality to the elementary grade level. For example, she wanted to hear others’ thoughts on “…my decision to guide them [students] with the right questions to ask… and what needs to be posed by me at this age level”. She was working towards incorporating criticality into her lessons and felt she should guide the students new to this pursuit.

Teachers also responded to each other’s plans of adaptation to incorporate the framework into the curriculum. Holly said “… the students really understood humane society connection, … that’s criticality” in reference to a lesson Denise shared. This reinforced Denise’s decision to guide students to see care of animals as part of working against oppression. Denise’s class watched a tug of war video in class during the forces unit from the curriculum. The video showed children versus adults, and Denise felt it presented an opportunity to talk about equity with her students. She recalled, “… this is kind of criticality because they [the adults] have the advantage over the students in the video”. Denise found she could uncover places in her curriculum already aligned with the HRL framework without making adaptations to activities. Both Ella and Holly agreed and supported her adaptation decisions. Denise added discussion points in the moment, using it as an opportunity to align curriculum resources and meet social justice goals.

4.1.2. Attending to Students Understanding of Specific Pursuits

The second theme derived from the reflective discussions included attending to students’ understanding of a specific pursuit within the HRL framework (i.e., identity or criticality). Denise recalled students having a new and unfamiliar experience during a lesson about other cultures. She said, “…the students weren’t in their comfort zone…learning another language [or] dance”. This part of the pursuit of identity involved expecting students to be open to differences, especially in this case, with kinds of houses. She continued to analyze whether the students’ identities made them uncomfortable or excited about learning through the new experience. She further reflected, “I need to work on [identity] more in the classroom. More of that…I need to make time to think about [identity pursuit] and debrief [what it means for students]”. Denise wanted to ensure students understood the goal or pursuit of the framework they were engaged in, but did not always have time to debrief aloud with the students. Similarly, Ella believed that “criticality comes from reflection”, and Denise agreed that criticality requires “some guidance [and] guiding questions,” when working with elementary students.

Ella combined identity with other framework goals, such as intelligence. She said, “You take identity and put it into intelligence… and then you’re looking more at how this piece of information is to me”. Here she emphasized a student’s idea, an intellectual and introspective aspect of understanding oneself, other people, and difference. Holly, like Ella, saw students defining identity on their own. For example, they aligned themselves with a crosscutting concept (CCC), represented by systems and systems thinking. She promoted this direction, giving group names related to their favorite science phenomenon or CCC.

Denise discussed how she ensured students understood the pursuits by returning to how she prompted them. She explained she would “guide them [students] with the right questions to ask… in an appropriate way… [so the students can] express unfairness or injustice”. All teachers saw themselves as avenues to supporting students in their understanding of identity and criticality, but they contrasted in how they defined those pursuits and supported them.

4.1.3. Cultivating Student Identity

The final theme teachers reflected upon included how they expanded their lessons in novel ways to include cultivating student identity in their classrooms. The teachers supported students’ identity development through activities that were not always aligned with the content but helpful in community building, and created a sense of trust between teachers and peers. Holly used superhero characteristics to mix up student groupings. She said, “I read different descriptions of superheroes to the class. Then they have to choose which superhero is most like them”. She then asked students to choose a superhero trait they identify with. In another activity, Denise asked students to create identity maps and then share them with their peers. These looked like bubbles of connected phrases and words that they used to define themselves, such as jokes a lot, loves birds, and Latina. Then students discussed how they saw themselves within the school and community.

Similarly, Holly changed a lesson to allow her students to apply science knowledge to support their stances on using animals for scientific research. She said, “I was really pleased with how they took their science background [to support] their ethical stance”. Holly went on to describe how her students justified and rationalized their opinions through background knowledge and were able to engage with opposing opinions with other students. She intentionally leveraged how students understood and described their identities when asking students to form opinions based on scientific knowledge. These examples underscore the need for adapting PBL-written, teacher-facing materials. To pursue identity, teachers had to bring in ideas from elsewhere that moved completely away from what was in the science materials.

4.2. Opportunities

Through reflecting on their efforts to plan and enact adaptations to their science curriculum by incorporating identity and criticality, four themes emerged from the teachers’ conversations about opportunities, as follows: having supportive colleagues and administrators, students’ positive attitudes and responses, quality materials supplied by the district, and establishing a positive relationship with students.

4.2.1. Supportive Working Environment

Teachers described that their effort to adapt the science curriculum to engage in social justice work could receive opposition from parents and community members, and other teachers may be cautious about incorporating a framework such as Cultivating Genius. The participants in this study reported that they felt supported by their colleagues if situations where they would normally feel intimidated about parent responses came up. During her reflection, Holly mentioned this as something that would have to be there for her to take the risks—“I’m much more likely to take some riskier conversations because I know I’ve got collegial support”. She felt more empowered to add identity and criticality into the curriculum knowing that, if there was a problem, other teachers and her administrator would support her against any complaint. Additionally, Holly noted that when her colleagues also employed criticality, such as when they analyzed Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb in Language Arts, students expanded their constructive discourse and argumentation skills beyond a single subject.

4.2.2. Students’ Positive Attitudes/Responses

Teaching students constructive discourse between peers was described as an important skill in science, and a key part of each teachers’ adaptations that led to positive responses from students. Argumentation as a science and engineering practice promotes this discourse within the national standards. Students are often unaware of how to have constructive and respectful conversations about controversial social topics. The framework allowed the participant teachers to engage students in meaningful discourse. Denise was very proud of her student’s ability to “pick[ed] up the skill of having a conversation and… disagreeing kindle, instead of attacking each other”. Constructive discussion is important in science, but it is also a life skill the students will use into adulthood.

4.2.3. Quality Materials Supplied by the District

Teachers discussed the support for adaptation that some teachers had provided by giving high-quality materials that were provided by the school. Denise acknowledged this point when she commented that the lessons she had to deliver set her up to address the pursuit of identity well, stating that “It was like a bonus lesson I guess you’d say. And it fits in with animal adaptations because they were talking about the polar bears and how they survive and how they stay warm and all those kinds of things. So yes, it was part of the curriculum, but not something we’ve done before”. In this case, Denise saw the opportunity to have students share with each other their selected research animals. There was an opportunity created to intentionally examine their own identities.

Later, Holly related her experiences of using a curriculum containing a storyline that began with an anchoring phenomenon, and harnessed student curiosity with a driving question board (DQB). She organically cultivated genius by using student-generated questions like “How do different materials affect temperature?”, connecting the science concept of thermal energy to natural phenomena such as urban heat islands. Then, the causes and effects of the phenomena became a natural transfer point to discuss the inequitable effects of heat as a pursuit of criticality. It was found that student curiosity fosters the pursuit of identity, while student agency and student ownership empowers the pursuit of criticality.

4.2.4. Establishing a Good Relationship with the Students

By engaging in the HRL framework, teachers found a mutually reinforcing aspect of adaptations; through adapting the lessons, they felt more connected to the students. Ella thought this was because the adaptations allowed the teachers to closely “tie their instruction to the cultural identity [practices] of their students”. In her view, the increased awareness and response to students’ identities created a strong base for relationship building between student and teacher. Teachers generated meaningful connections to support students, especially when connecting identity and criticality into their pedagogical work.

Holly discussed with the group how she saw herself as an advocate for students. She acted “as a touchstone of justice or criticality”. Students turned to her when they needed someone who could advocate for them, such as a student who wanted input into his IEP. She further explained how she saw the other goals of HRL aligning with “school is skill and intellect”, and her role as a teacher “intersected” intellect and criticality and allowed “being that person for that student”. She was thinking about a time when a student faced issues at home, and how she was able to support the student through the relationship already created. Holly found that establishing a classroom culture with norms that support productive and equitable participation and science discourse built student trust and willingness to take risks in the learning process.

4.3. Challenges

Challenges were categorized into two different themes. Some were considered by teachers hurdles to resolve in their discussions. Other challenges were aspects that the group did not know how to resolve, or even how to understand with respect to meeting their goals.

4.3.1. From Parents

The teachers were more likely to use identity and criticality in their practice based on colleague support, but they often faced pushback from parents. Although all of the teachers discussed parent pushback as a concern, Ella was the only one who faced this as a challenge. Ella remembered deviating from the scripted curriculum, and she had parents accusing her of “trying to convert them [students] to paganism”. This was extreme, and based on instances like this, Ella was apprehensive about bringing up race and social class to students. Bringing up race as an aspect of identity was an important issue to her as a teacher, and she was uncertain when and how to incorporate it explicitly. She “would love to… get them talking a little more about that race and class…” but was “nervous to bring it up”. Ella was looking for the group to help her plan a lesson incorporating either issue—race or class—so students could discuss inequalities. Ella wanted race and class to be a way to connect identity with criticality as a pursuit in an adaptation she wanted to make to lessons about air quality and chemical plants. In this instance, colleague support did not overshadow the trepidation she felt related to parent backlash.

4.3.2. Student Socioeconomic Status

Teachers described the intersection of socioeconomic status (SES) and criticality as a challenge in their reflections. As students thought about and learned more about pursuing criticality, they started to identify the power a certain class or group had over another. In Denise’s class, some students “don’t have a snack, and the other kids do have something [a snack], and it’s power”. At elementary school, students were aware of the discrepancies in the SES of their peers, according to Denise, but they were not considering it critically. Denise stressed that she had snacks for those who did not bring snacks.

I have a lot of very poor students in my classroom this year; probably out of 21, seven get a backpack of food to take over the weekend because of their socioeconomic situation. I see it at snack time because we have a snack break. Some kids do not have a snack, and others have something and its power. You know, they hold that over each other now, you know, when we talked about if you do not have a snack to bring, I have got stuff for you. Just ask. Some will. I have one little girl who always does not care if she has a snack. She always wants somebody else’s. Nevertheless, it is her situation. It is her family situation.

Like Denise, Holly also noticed the SES of her students, and wanted to ensure her students understood the criticality involved in breaking “the cycle of poverty”. As she noted, [it is] “rural students that are at a disadvantage”. Holly was speaking of rural residents not getting the same access to scholarships as students in more urban districts. Both teachers saw the SES differences as important to bring up in class, but struggled to overcome preferences to not speak about class. Even in cases when teachers wanted to engage critically with students, in their reflections, this topic felt off-limits.

4.3.3. Challenge with the Teacher Race

Ella described how, in her class, she wrestled with an unspoken tension in her classroom. She was challenged, and appealed to the group to help her, but the group struggled to understand how to resolve it. The students were discussing identity, yet race—an ever-present reality—remained absent from their conversations. The teacher wondered if her whiteness created an invisible barrier, an unintentional filter, that shaped what students feel comfortable expressing, as she said,

Yeah, I mean, we’re talking about identity in this class. And that [race] hasn’t come up. I think it’s curious. Yeah. So that, yeah, it should be organic. But I feel like I mean if they feel like they shouldn’t say something because I’m a white teacher or something, then I want to make sure that they’re not feeling like it is happening because of my race.

The challenge about race was brought up as a concern but needed further exploration. In this case, the group did not return to this comment.

This study analyzed the teachers’ reflections on their lessons to explore how they incorporated and nurtured students’ identities and criticality perspectives, and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in designing lessons within a social justice classroom environment. The findings reveal that participants successfully adapted their lessons through three key approaches, as follows: (1) Aligning lessons with the framework, (2) attending to students’ understanding of specific pursuits, and (3) cultivating student identity. These strategies enabled them to integrate criticality and identity perspectives into their teaching. Teachers identified support from colleagues and administrators, students’ positive attitudes and engagement, and strong teacher–student relationships as facilitators of their efforts. However, they also faced challenges, particularly from parents, which were often influenced by factors such as the teacher’s race and students’ socioeconomic backgrounds.

4.4. Limitations

The limitations noted within this study include a small sample size and lack of diversity among participating science teachers in terms of background, teaching context and geographical representation, which may affect the generalizability of the findings. The data are derived from self-reported reflections of teacher attempts to create social justice-oriented classrooms. When adapting science lessons to include identity and criticality, there could be social desirability bias or inaccuracies in recollection. Furthermore, the study identified challenges, such as parental concerns or differences in racial identity between teachers and students; it did not fully explore strategies for grappling with these challenges, suggesting an area for future research.

5. Discussion

This study investigated how teachers sought to incorporate the Cultivating Genius framework into their science classroom by adapting their science curriculum to incorporate the two pursuits of identity and criticality. The three teacher participants engaged in reflective discussions highlighting opportunities and challenges related to incorporating the framework into their science curriculum. The teachers’ thorough understanding of their students and classroom dynamics allowed them to think beyond the traditional curriculum and raise specific social justice elements with their students (Miller et al., 2022).

Reflective discussion about adaptation design was supported by the HRL framework, which was used to guide discussion. Participants designed their lessons according to their developing understanding of the HRL framework, working together to identify when adaptations aligned with the pursuits of identity and criticality. They described how they made small and large adaptations such as adding new prompts to discussions about what it means to be a person who knows science (small), or analyzing music lyrics about creating parking lots over green spaces (large). This aligns with the work of Mensah (2022), who described pre-service teachers’ responses to ideas related to multicultural lessons during shared reflection, but went further by explaining how teachers’ reflections helped define practices that were aligned with their goal of social justice.

The shared discussion of adaptation was an appropriate and successful forum for enabling the teachers to embed identity and criticality into their science teaching. The reflective nature of the teacher sessions was inherently design-based, as teachers gained new ideas through discussion with peers, helping them to ultimately change their practice in the future (Muhammad, 2020). Teachers discussed their plans, challenges and opportunities for incorporating social justice pillars derived from Cultivating Genius into the curriculum. This work highlights the importance of teachers working together in a collaborative setting (Carlone et al., 2010).

At the same time, aspects of the work remained unexamined, and the format allowed for uncomfortable topics to be avoided. On the one hand, teachers expressed ideas about social justice that were brought up as conflicts, such as Denise’s concern that students needed careful teacher-directed guidance but were left without critical tools to address deepening assumptions. Holly explained at other times that she wanted discussions about criticality to be student-driven, yet she did not challenge Denise’s stance. This avoidance of challenging one another relates to the watering-down of aspects of equity, such as inclusion, that avoid politicizing inequities (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2020). Another example of the format allowing topics to go unexamined was when Ella brought up the feeling that students might not bring up race when their race was different from hers. This suggests that, in this case, the goal of social justice (Rodriguez & Morrison, 2019) via the examination of systemic inequities and distributions of power was sidelined.

Teachers described designing for identity and criticality, having students identify as a superhero, select an animal to share, or engage in argumentation about animal research. The teachers used the existing science curriculum materials, and found areas in which they could align their lessons with the HRL Framework (Muhammad, 2020) while introducing science concepts, such as forces, animal structures, and genetic testing. Through the intentional implementation of a social justice-oriented curriculum in their classrooms along with reflective discussion (Mensah, 2022), the teachers deepened their understanding and knowledge of social justice learning for the future.

6. Implications and Conclusions

The implications of the study underscore the benefit of teacher collaborative planning and reflection. Instead of studying lessons or assessment data, this study describes the discussions and interests of teachers in one another’s planned changes to their science units in the pursuit of agreed goals, sharing and reflecting on the enactment. Teachers were interested in design, and they were engaged with one another in finding evidence to support claims that identity and criticality were embedded in lessons and enacted by students. The teachers strengthened their lessons. Holly mentioned using the Cultivating Genius framework to “intentionally build in conversation points… to lift the lesson to a new level”. However, the study also underscores the need for time and space for teachers to design lessons, with the development of lesson goals chosen by those teachers. Teachers needed to be given the license to describe, anticipate the benefits, and navigate the challenges of designing justice-centered science curricula.

Given these implications, there is a related need for teachers to be trusted with the tools to design adaptations and reflect on them together, and possibly to be allowed to define goals as moving or ambiguous targets. We see this as an aspect of social justice. Teachers may develop pursuits for identity and criticality, for example, as responses to their students, and in response to the context in which they teach. At the same time, and contradictorily, this study also highlights a need for professional learning frameworks guided by facilitators who can challenge teachers’ thinking while also positioning them as agentive and intellectual actors. We call for more research to support teachers, either through reflective, teacher-directed groups or in facilitated cohorts, so as to align science education with social justice principles. Teachers come to the table often as willing partners, committed to analyzing equity and fairness in treatment and access to opportunities and resources for everyone. Teachers also often view their own pedagogy as part of social justice action. Giving them the capacity to design their lessons is part of creating a socially just world.