Theorizing and Designing Relational Possibilities in Teaching and Learning

Challenging assimilationist science requires examining relationalities-the ways we are bound to each other, our personal histories and interactions, and the broader sociopolitical histories of learning contexts. We take up the need for understanding powered relations in this innovative extended-time and hybrid engagement symposium with opportunities for engagement before, during, and after ISLS23. We recognize all learning as political and examine powered relations and relational possibilities across four settings: drawing on Black methodology to disrupt how researchers and educators come to understand Black girls' learning in a summer camp, two pre-service teacher programs to explore “becoming” and challenging dominant logics, and how an in-service teachers' shifts towards humanizing and empowering kindergarten learners. Together we explore how participants' and researchers' understandings of relations in how we “see” science teaching and learning and ways to theorize and design for spaces that open multiple relational possibilities in science learning and teaching.