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Research
Innovations as Science Teaching in NYC
Starting in 2011, I started my teaching career and I thought critically about my new Harlem neighborhood and considered the role science played in my students’ lives. Through this introspection I engaged in culturally relevant pedagogical practices (also I was unaware of the framework), and chose to tailor my science teaching mostly around research projects and performance tasks that dealt with issues of systemic racism as it pertains to health equity, such as redlining and food deserts; the US’s handling of climate change and fracking and its effect on other countries; and critical issues in the science community such as stem cell research, cortisol, and racial health disparities in the Black and Brown community. In 2015 my work as a science teacher earned recognition from the community earning me an award from New York City’s Department of Health called the ‘Health Equity Champion Award’, for which the then Commissioner of Health, Dr. Mary Bassett, came to visit my students and learn issues of health equity from them.
Womanist Pedagogy in Science Teacher Education
As a manifestation of her doctoral research, Riley (2023) brought the Womanist Pedagogy framework (Beaubeouf-Lafontant, 2002) to science education by explaining that Black women science teachers identify with the long-storied history of how Black women have approached teaching before, during, and after integration. Ranging from zero to twenty-one years of teaching experience, the teachers in the study had not heard of Womanist Pedagogy, but were able to identify how they brought their embrace of the maternal, political clarity, and ethic of risk to their individual classrooms. This study provided implications for how to support teachers of color who find themselves in the margins engaging in science teaching and learning.
Sista Circle Methodology in Science Teacher Education
Riley brought the Sista Circles methodology to the science education community (Riley, 2022) and also provided specific instructional practices that embodies liberatory and anti-racist framework in a science classroom demonstrated by Black women science teachers (Riley & Mensah, 2023). Few scholars have engaged in the pertinent work of considering the specific content-expertise and experiences of Black women science teachers (Mensah, 2019; Mohorn, 2021), the Sista Circle methodology utilized in my dissertation allowed for the science teaching and learning field to understand the need for racial affinity spaces and also to learn directly from that is highly valued, yet overworked.
Centering Critical Consciousness in Science Teacher Education
In 2018 I began to use my budding qualitative skills to make sense of my experiences as a Black women science teacher which eventually resulted in the a manuscript entitled ‘“My Curriculum Has No Soul”: A Case Study of the Experiences of Black Women Science Teachers Working at Charter Schools’ which included implications for science teacher educators to encourage risks in science curricular redesign that centers critical consciousness (Riley & Mensah, 2022). By providing examples for how these secondary Black women science teacher considered their raced, classed, and gendered experiences when redesigning their curriculum, this manuscript added to the need to have research to support teachers and teacher educators in using culturally relevant pedagogy within a science context (Madkins & McKinney de Royston, 2019). As part of my continued work, I have developed a framework that foregrounds how to center critical consciousness in the context of science teaching and learning called Historically Relevant Science Pedagogy (Riley, b under review).
Service in Science Teacher Education Community
Along with countless, informal mentoring of grad students and novice science teachers outside of my immediate organizations, as part of a two-year elected appointment as the Graduate Student-at-Large, I served on the Board of Directors for the Association of Science Teacher Educator, using my position to push the science education field to meet the unique realities of teachers and students of color. I also served as the co-chair of the Membership & Participation committee. In 2022 and 2019, I was a member of the Jhumki Basu Scholars Program from the Ethics & Equity Committee for the National Association for Research in Science Teaching.
Archival Work - Black Science Epistemology
My future work will lay the groundwork for the important work of addressing anti-Black epistemologies (Morton et al., 2022) by unearthing and sharing more truth - a fuller picture of the history of Black science knowing/doing and Black teaching of scientific phenomena in this country. People from the African diaspora have always practiced food sustainability, been innovative with scientific and agricultural practices, and valued the Earth’s natural resources. As a result of the Brown decision of 1954 and the culture of science which privileges white hegemonic culture (Mensah & Jackson, 2018), this way of knowing, being, and doing science has been ignored in science teaching and learning. Engaging in endarkened storywork (Dillard, 2012; Toliver, 2022), this project will use the archives to (re)member and unearth how Black (formal and informal) educators have innovated, embodied, and taught about science. The project will offer a Black feminist perspective that creates a map for telling this story for what the archives share, using endarkened storywork as Black imaginary praxis in science teaching and learning.
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