Quentin Charles Sedlacek

Trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons are—and have always been—an integral part of humankind. However, these communities are under attack. We live in a time of growing state repression and the normalization of political violence against trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons throughout much of the world, and we have a responsibility to understand these conditions and consider their implications for science education. In this commentary, we briefly outline the growing state repression of trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons, illustrating this repression with examples primarily drawn from the U.S. context, while acknowledging similar forms of repression happening in many countries. We discuss the ways that scientific discourses and ideologies are being co‐opted to rationalize these attacks, explain the responsibility this creates for science educators, and examine the important work that has already been done to understand and dismantle oppression and to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of these communities within and beyond science education. Finally, we offer recommendations for specific actions that science educators and researchers can take to uphold the human rights of trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons and communities.

College STEM curricula that depict scholars with marginalized identities could benefit students by disrupting pervasive and harmful stereotypes. Textbook analyses suggest that this potential has not yet been realized. However, textbook analyses do not present a complete picture of curricula, which also include slide presentations, assignments, lectures, and other materials. Given the methodological challenge of capturing depictions of marginalized scholars across complete curricula, a survey of college STEM instructors—asking them to holistically evaluate depictions of diversity throughout their curricula—could provide a valuable complement to past textbook analysis research. We surveyed STEM instructors at large US universities (final n = 712 at 57 institutions), asking them to estimate the percentages of individual scholars depicted in their undergraduate STEM courses who are scholars of color, women, or LGBTQ + . We compared responses with the demographics of recent Ph.D. recipients in corresponding STEM disciplines using data collected by the US government through its Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), an annual census of Ph.D. recipients in the USA. Based on conservative interpretations of SED data and instructors’ estimates, we find undergraduate courses in biology, computer science, and engineering tend to under-depict scholars of color, while courses in agriculture, biology, and health sciences tend to under-depict women (compared to the percentages of scholars of color and women among recent doctoral recipients in these disciplines). Although the SED has to date gathered limited data about LGBTQ + identities, we find evidence that LGBTQ + scholars might be under-depicted as well, with the lowest rates of depiction in chemistry and engineering.

Language, race, and racism are deeply connected in the United States and throughout the world. Over the past 10 years, a growing body of research has argued that many language ideologies and racial ideologies are closely associated with each other. However, few studies have sought to quantify these proposed associations by directly measuring the language ideologies, racial ideologies, and language-related behaviors of participants. In a recently published study of K-12 preservice teachers, we identified substantial correlations between racial ideologies and seemingly race-neutral language ideologies, as well as correlations between these language ideologies and the written feedback participants generated during formative assessment of student science writing. These findings have important implications for the social sciences; however, their significance is contingent in part on their reproducibility and generalizability. For this reason, we conducted a preregistered conceptual replication and extension using a larger sample of current U.S. science teachers (n = 387 teachers from 42 U.S. states). We demonstrate that all but one of the findings from our previous study are successfully replicated, and we identify several new findings. We discuss implications for research in science education, linguistic anthropology, social psychology, and sociology.

A growing body of evidence shows that positive student outcomes are associated with racial/ethnic diversity among university STEM instructors. However, few studies to date have been able to provide direct causal evidence identifying the specific mechanism(s) hypothesized to drive the benefits of instructor racial/ethnic diversity. Leaving these mechanisms unexplained may lead both receptive and critical readers to infer that race or ethnicity are somehow “natural” categories that “cause” such outcomes. In this narrative review, we eschew such racial essentialism in favor of an understanding of race as socially constructed, and use an ecological systems perspective to examine how multiple mechanisms of systemic racism operate inside and outside classrooms across multiple levels of analysis. Understanding how these mechanisms relate to each other, and how multiple interconnected mechanisms may drive the benefits of instructor racial/ethnic diversity, could inform the design of policies and practices to disrupt racism and advance equity. By integrating several bodies of psychological and sociological research on systemic racism in STEM and in higher education more broadly, we outline a multi-path model to explain how and under what circumstances STEM instructor racial/ethnic diversity may have particular effects on student experiences or outcomes. We use this model to generate predictions and recommend how researchers could test these predictions in future studies.

*** Published in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annual-review-of-applied-linguistics/article/abs/digital-accents-homogeneitybydesign-and-the-evolving-social-science-of-written-language/6F0DF411B71E82778B88F99F6E81FFBD *** Human language is increasingly written rather than just spoken, primarily due to the proliferation of digital technology in modern life. This trend has enabled the creation of generative AI trained on corpora containing trillions of words extracted from text on the internet. However, current language theory inadequately addresses digital text communication's unique characteristics and constraints. This paper systematically analyzes and synthesizes existing literature to map the theoretical landscape of digital language evolution. The evidence demonstrates that, parallel to spoken language, features of written communication are frequently correlated with the socially constructed demographic identities of writers, a phenomenon we refer to as ``digital accents.'' This conceptualization raises complex ontological questions about the nature of digital text and its relationship to identity. The same line of questioning, in conjunction with recent research, shows how generative AI systematically fails to capture the breadth of expression observed in human writing, an outcome we call ``homogeneity-by-design.'' By approaching text-based language from this theoretical framework while acknowledging its inherent limitations, social scientists studying language can strengthen their critical analysis of artificial intelligence systems and contribute meaningful insights to their development and improvement.

Ideologies of language and race are deeply connected in the United States. Language practices associated with racially marginalized communities, such as African American Language (AAL) or Spanglish, are often heavily stigmatized. Such stigma is not grounded in empirical research on language, but rather in “raciolinguistic ideologies” that reproduce white supremacy and oppression in teacher education and in US classrooms—including science classrooms. Science education need not be this way, however. Translanguaging pedagogies can create space for students to use any and all types of languaging practices to engage in scientific sensemaking. Implementing translanguaging pedagogies to support scientific sensemaking will require science teachers to develop inclusive ideologies of language—not only the knowledge that multiple varieties of language are valid tools for sensemaking, but also the inclination and ability to formatively assess student thinking even when that thinking is not couched in canonical “science language.” In the present manuscript, we explore the relationships among teachers' language ideologies, their racial ideologies, their knowledge of language as an epistemic tool for teaching science, their self‐reported assessment practices, and their actual responses to several different samples of student science writing—including a writing sample that includes an oft‐stigmatized feature of African American Language. We show that teachers with more language‐inclusive ideologies—that is, those who take a translanguaging stance, and thus value the use of AAL in classrooms—appear to be better at formatively assessing and responding to student science writing compared to teachers with more language‐exclusive ideologies. We also show that seemingly race‐neutral ideologies of language are in fact strongly associated with oppressive ideologies of race, and that these language ideologies predict teachers' science formative assessment practices independently of existing measures of pedagogical knowledge. We discuss implications for science teaching, teacher education, and science education research.

This commentary proposes the metaphor of “languaging-as-practice” in science education as an alternative to “language-as-tool” metaphors. Describing language as a tool implicitly positions language as static and unchanging and assumes that named languages are distinct and bounded entities. In contrast, describing languaging as a practice acknowledges the multiple and advanced ways speakers draw on many aspects of their linguistic repertoires while often crossing purported boundaries between named languages. This approach is grounded in translanguaging theory and offers a dynamic understanding of language in educational settings. It envisions students constructing and expressing scientific knowledge by drawing on their complete linguistic repertoires. By advocating for this approach, we aim to promote practices that acknowledge and leverage the diverse linguistic backgrounds of students, fostering inclusive and effective learning environments. While this approach has gained some traction in language-education circles, we believe it needs more consideration in the science education community. We also critique the limitations of viewing language merely as a tool for reproducing predefined scientific concepts and discourses, proposing that a more expansive approach to language can enhance opportunities for scientific sense-making and knowledge construction. We urge science education researchers and practitioners to shift how we think and talk about language in the science classroom to adopt and act upon a metaphor of “languaging-as-practice.”

A growing body of research demonstrates the value of asking students to write about science for authentic purposes. But which purposes–and, just as importantly, whose purposes–count as authentic? In this theoretical article, we review several conceptions of authentic purpose drawn from science education and literacy education and use these to question the meaning and significance of authenticity in student science writing. Next, we examine the framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) and ask how it might be used to define authentic purposes for science writing. We offer an additional conception of authentic purpose, one focused on situations where students’ purposes for writing about science directly overlap with teachers’ purposes for asking students to write. We share an illustrative example from our work as teacher educators that demonstrates how CRP can focus our attention on the types of classrooms and interactions that might create conditions where students becoming increasingly likely to pursue their own purposes through writing. Finally, using CRP as a framework, we offer seven strategies that might help create such situations, and discuss their implications for science educators and science education researchers. We argue that using CRP to operationalize science writing for authentic purposes can push the field forward by suggesting new directions for research and practice.