ABSTRACT Integrated STEM education (iSTEMe) is increasingly emphasized in educational reforms around the world. These reforms prompted curricular changes in many countries, including Spain. In the Autonomous Community of Valencia, a new curriculum model was introduced that organized both STEM and non‐STEM subjects into broader interdisciplinary domains, designed to be taught through an integrated approach. However, the success of such reforms largely depends on teachers, who are the primary agents of educational change. This underscores the importance of understanding their motivation and intention to implement iSTEMe. Drawing on the expectancy‐value‐cost model, this study examined secondary education teachers' motivations toward iSTEMe, with a particular focus on STEM teachers, who comprised 70.2% of the total sample ( N = 439). The research addressed four key questions: RQ1. What are secondary school teachers' expectancies for success, values, perceived costs, and intentions to implement iSTEMe?; RQ2. How do secondary school teachers' expectancies for success, values, perceived costs, and intentions to implement iSTEMe vary according to sociodemographic characteristics?; RQ3. To what extent are secondary school teachers' expectancies for success, values, and perceived costs related to their intentions to implement iSTEMe?; and RQ4. To what extent do sociodemographic characteristics mediate the relationship between teachers' expectancies for success, values, and costs and their intention to implement iSTEMe? Multivariate analysis and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling revealed that teachers generally feel unprepared to implement iSTEMe, perceive limited pedagogical value in it, and associate it with significant instructional and learning challenges. Consequently, their intention to adopt iSTEMe was low, and this was associated with the perceived lack of pedagogical value. These findings raise concerns about the feasibility of iSTEMe reforms, which may struggle to succeed without stronger support and greater teacher engagement.

ABSTRACTCulturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) is an approach to teaching that challenges the inequitable structures that create an education debt for minoritized students. Many studies of CRP in science education focus on teachers' philosophies and dispositions; fewer studies have focused on enacted teaching practice, such as the use of curricular resources. CRP requires that teachers take an oppositional stance toward curricula and actively reconstruct them to center the cultures of their students. In this study, we use ethnographic methods informed by Ladson‐Billings' original work to investigate one teacher's implementation of a large‐scale science curriculum in a Spanish‐English dual‐language immersion class that serves Latine students. We illustrate the teacher's enactment of the conceptions of CRP, showing how she drew from the curricular resources and also diverged from them at different grain sizes, including (a) in‐the‐moment divergence from prescribed teacher moves, (b) lesson‐level divergence from curricular activities, and (c) unit‐level divergence from curricular goals. These divergences reveal how the teacher translated her culturally relevant philosophies into unique classroom practices that she coconstructed with her students. In contrast to other approaches in science education that position curriculum as authoritative and ask teachers to implement it, often with fidelity, we instead argue that teachers should be supported to take a critical stance toward curriculum and diverge from it in ways that reflect their justice‐oriented philosophies, like CRP.

ABSTRACTWe present a study that documented the participation of two high school Arab students in Israel in an extended (2‐year) authentic physics inquiry that took place in a regional program located in a Hebrew‐speaking kibbutz high school. The students' first language is Arabic, but they are fluent in Hebrew, and their inquiry was mentored by a Hebrew‐speaking teacher‐research‐mentor (TRM) who speaks very little Arabic. None of the other students in the classroom spoke Arabic. The situational features of this case reflect the complex structure of uneven power relations between Hebrew and Arabic, between kibbutz and Arab schooling in Israel, and between teachers and students. Within this complex structure of uneven power relations, this study aimed to uncover the functions the deployment of Hebrew and Arabic fulfilled for these students during their engagement in the epistemic practices related to their scientific inquiry. The research approach combined ethnography with sociolinguistic discourse analysis of selected episodes. The findings suggest that the students' spontaneous shifts from Hebrew to Arabic while engaged in scientific epistemic practices often reflected challenges that are more sociocultural than linguistic. They imply that merely legitimizing multilingual discourse in monolingual classrooms may not be enough to support equitable science education, particularly when the students are members of a minoritized group. Teachers should be supported in becoming more attentive to their minoritized students' frames of participation, and researchers should be wary of automatically interpreting minoritized students' deployment of their minority language as merely indicating a difficulty expressing their thoughts in the majority language.

ABSTRACTThis study tracked pre‐service science teachers (PSTs) over 3 years as they completed required science courses (e.g., chemistry, biology and science and technology laboratory courses). The PSTs' use of argument, representations, and reasoning were examined (1) to determine the coherence within and between these and (2) examine the relationship between the use of these in relation to the degree to which the learning environment was generative. In this longitudinal, mixed methods study, a data‐transformation variant of the convergent design was used. The study tracked nine PSTs and collected 522 laboratory reports over six semesters. The laboratory courses were classified into three levels as fully, partially and basic generative learning environments based on interviews and observations. The PSTs' arguments were analyzed considering the strength and connectedness of components; reasoning was examined using Walton's argument schemes; and representations were analyzed using multiple levels of representation in science. A Friedman test and multiple correlations were completed for statistical analysis. The results regarding the coherence within highlight that the utilization of argument, representation, and reasoning is strengthened when PSTs are in more generative environments, and the coherence between highlights a positive strong relationship between argument, representation, and reasoning, with the level of use being dependent upon the level of the generative environment. The importance of this study is that it demonstrates the need to be aware that merely labeling an environment as generative does not mean that benefits are the same. The more generative the learning environment, the greater the utilization of written reasoning, representation, and arguments.

ABSTRACTThe disproportionate impacts of societal challenges (e.g., climate change, air and water pollution) on minoritized groups expose systemic injustices and compels STEM educators to reframe the role of STEM education in society. In this article, we describe traditional approaches, contemporary approaches, and our proposed future approach in science and STEM education with a focus on equity and justice. First, we begin with conceptual framing for equity and justice. Second, for each era (traditional, contemporary, future), we describe the intersections among (a) what counts as science and STEM subjects; (b) what role phenomena, problems, and societal challenges play in science and STEM education; and (c) how students learn science and STEM subjects. Traditional approaches in science education focused on learning canonical knowledge of science. Contemporary approaches, based on A Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards, center equity by providing opportunities for all students to make sense of phenomena in science and design solutions to problems in engineering. Going beyond contemporary approaches and complementing other research programs that share a commitment to justice, we propose a potential future approach—justice‐centered STEM education—that addresses societal challenges by leveraging multiple STEM subjects while centering justice. Finally, we close by calling for the science and STEM education communities to address increasingly complex societal challenges by centering justice for minoritized groups.

ABSTRACTHow science is traditionally taught and presented in westernized classrooms, Western Modern Science often does not offer creative and culturally sustaining pathways for students with diverse multicultural backgrounds to view science as a beneficial resource for their worldview, values, and funds of knowledge. This conceptual position paper addresses the need for science teaching to be relevant to all science learners. However, making science relevant is an easy phrase to say, but operationalizing this concept in the classroom needs to become more practical for science teachers so that students will clearly recognize what science really is and that it is for them. This paper introduces the Science Relevancy Bridge, a framework developed from extensive research and empirical studies, which was designed to conceptualize how relevant science learning experiences can create necessary and constructive dialogue between students' sociocultural identities and their developing science identities, despite powerful hegemonic societal messaging. The Science Relevancy Bridge framework is composed of four dimensions: science for everyday life, science and society, science learning preparedness, and foundations of scientific thinking. Interacting with these dimensions are the students' intersecting identities (intersectionality) of their sociocultural lived experiences and their developing sense of recognition and belonging in science (science identity). Challenges for K‐12 science teachers include utilizing the Science Relevancy Bridge framework in their instructional practice, lesson planning, and actively incorporating students' diverse experiences in shaping their science learning community. Science teacher educators and researchers are challenged to call out and critique the status quo and ineffective systems that hinder all learners from equitably engaging in science and illuminate a better way forward in both thinking and in doing. The Science Relevancy Bridge can serve as a resource for meeting this challenge.

ABSTRACTFamilies play a pivotal role in fostering children's science literacy, interests, and identities through everyday interactions and informal learning contexts, with parents as main facilitators. An essential, yet often underexplored, aspect of this process is the role of emotions in shaping science learning experiences. Emotions serve as powerful mediators of engagement, influencing key learning outcomes such as interest, motivation, achievement, and persistence. Despite the recognized importance of family engagement in science learning and the emotional dimensions associated with it, there is a significant gap in research specifically examining how families engage with science at home and the role emotions play in these settings. In this case study, we employed a mixed methods approach consisting of electro‐dermal activity (physiological) and recorded observations (behavioral) to identify the emotional expressions of a mother as she engaged in five science activities with her children (ages 13, 11, 7, and 4) at home. All five activities were analyzed utilizing the following procedures: 1. Peak analysis, 2. Structural breaks, and 3. Microanalysis. We complemented our interpretation of the data with reflective notes and a reflective interview (self‐reports) with the participant. The study reveals that mediated activities elicit more positive emotional expressions; the interrelationship between emotions and cognitive, social, and cultural domains needs to be accounted for while analyzing emotions, and highlights the methodological challenges of measuring emotions. By focusing on how a parent guides home science activities, it fills critical gaps in understanding family‐based science engagement and sheds light on the affective dimensions of informal science learning. Employing a mixed methods approach provides a comprehensive understanding of emotional expressions during home science activities, which enhances the validity of the findings and captures the dynamic nature of emotions, offering a robust approach for analyzing the interplay between physiological, behavioral, and interpretive emotional expressions in real‐world contexts.