Barton, Angela Calabrese. et. al. eds. Teaching Science for
Social Justice. New York: Teachers College, 2003, 197 pp.
Teaching Science for Social Justice offers scenes from the
trenches of the cultural war zone that is K-12 science education
in an impoverished urban environment, and the view is at once
sobering and inspiring. The authors explore the results of
putting feminist theory into action via several in-depth case
studies of how students learn science in after-school programs
at two homeless shelters: Southside Shelter in New York City and
Hope Shelter in Well Springs, Texas. This compelling book
demonstrates the power of story as a tool for social change; the
authors add this qualitative evidence to the quantitative data
on urban education and the theoretical frameworks offered by
feminist science studies. As the author’s say, although the
“solutions to these dilemmas about access and opportunity in
science education seem so simple in theory: Create science
lessons that are student-centered, culturall