Teaching Science for Social Justice allows opportunities for students to:

• Question, challenge and reconstruct knowledge

• Become SCIENCE LITERATE and increase their SCIENCE CAPITAL

  • • • Science Capital: a way of encapsulating all the science-related knowledge, attitudes, experiences and social contacts that an individual may have (Godec et. al. 2017, p. 5)

      • Scientific Literacy: a student’s knowledge and understanding about science and how science works. This includes their confidence in feeling that they know about science (Godec et al. 2017, p.8)

Integrating Social Justice Education, not only in science but also in other subject disciplines gives rise to Critical Pedagogy which is important to develop the 21st century skills in our learners.

Critical Pedagogy focuses on showing how learning should be empowering and should be seen as a transformative experience for students and teachers.

Integrating social justice issues into science education allows educators bring in Critical Pedagogy approaches, where students can critically think, question and generate relationships between classroom learning and students’ lived experiences (Upadhyay, 2010).

Learning and teaching allow individuals to develop personal and social consciousness that brings about change in the person as a whole (Upadhyay, 2010).

Critical Science Literacy focuses on engaging students with both science as it is and science as it could be.

Critical Science literacy:

• Encourages students to question the existing science knowledge and practice

• Expands students perspective on who should participate in science

• Empowers students to participate in a democratic society to bring about transformative change

“Thus, the concept of critical pedagogy captures the complexities of practicing social justice in science education where the individual and the social contexts are closely tied together.” (Upadhyay 2010, p. 57)