ABSTRACT
Kevin Kumashiro begins the lesson by asking students to imagine that they were in a middle school life-sciences class and that the lesson took place at the end of their unit on human reproduction. When combined with an analysis of the science curriculum's underlying stories and their complicity with oppression, this emphasis is exactly what can help to make the natural sciences especially well suited for anti-oppressive education. The emphasis in the natural sciences on producing knowledge about the natural world in a systematic, verifiable way often implies that its process of producing knowledge is objective or bias-free. Kumashiro's discussion about the scientific method and problematizing how they teach and learn in a science classroom resonated with his lived experience. The practice of teacher and student participatory research (TSPAR) is inspired by and builds on the work of such scholars as Akom, Cammarota, Ginwright, Morrell, and Stovall as it relates to youth participatory action research (YPAR).
