Teacher learning about the integration of energy and equity: A case study

Abstract

Multicultural education invites teachers to support students in critiquing the foundations of a given discipline, with the aim of reimagining that discipline and the purposes it serves. In this paper, we present a series of cases in which high school physics teachers who are enrolled in a summer professional development course expressed vexation as they tried to integrate equity with the physics concept of energy and in which one teacher made significant progress in this integration. These cases serve to illustrate what teacher learning about multicultural education might look like in physics and what resources may support this learning. These cases also point us to some of the ways in which physics as a discipline and schooling as a system make it difficult for teachers to critically examine the canon.