By Stephanie Chiang, Kristin Majda, Reuben Medlock, Mary Ann Ng, Maria Parker
with assistance from STEM4Real Coach custom ChatGPT chatbot on behalf of the CASE DEI Committee

Imagine students investigating a local ecosystem. As they share what they notice, their observations begin to connect to experiences in their communities. One student remembers something they learned from a family member about local plants. Another notices a pattern similar to what they have seen in their neighborhood. Someone else looks at the same problem from a completely different perspective. Each student brings something different to the conversation, deepening the collective science learning.

Diversity in the science classroom is about making space for diverse perspectives.

Through our Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in Action series, we explore how we can think more intentionally about science instruction. When we design for diversity, we are asking ourselves whose experiences, knowledge, assets, and perspectives are represented and valued in our classrooms.

Students do not walk into science classrooms as blank slates. They bring knowledge from their families, cultures, communities, and lived experiences. When we make space for that knowledge, students have more ways to connect with science, ask questions, and approach problems from different angles. Welcoming that knowledge allows students to bring their whole, authentic selves into our science classrooms. 

As educators, how can we create more opportunities for students’ diverse perspectives to become a regular part of science learning?

Designing for Diversity: Prioritizing Diversity as an Asset

Diversity in science classrooms is not about celebrating scientists during heritage months. It’s about positioning multiple ways of knowing as legitimate scientific contributions. It’s making sure you provide students with opportunities to explore or consider how diverse community members approach and view problems differently. Designing for diversity means making space for the unique perspectives of students who come from traditionally marginalized communities, including disabled students, neurodiverse students, ethnic or religious minority groups, and LGBTQ students. 

Science has always been shaped by culture, geography, and community priorities. When we center diversity as an asset, we help students recognize that scientific understanding is strengthened, not weakened, by multiple perspectives, lived experiences, and cultural knowledge systems. Students begin to perceive science as a human endeavor, something that is dynamic, collaborative, and deeply connected to identity and place.

For example, in a primary-grade unit on local plants and animals, students might investigate a habitat near their school, such as a garden or park. Schools with limited access to greenspace might focus simply on their schoolyard or a weedy area near a fence. Students observe which organisms live there, identify what plants and animals need to survive, and document patterns across seasons, which could align with standards such as K-ESS3-1 (model how living organisms get what they need from their habitats) or 2-LS4-1 (compare the diversity of life in different habitats). The teacher introduces examples of how Indigenous communities in the region have traditionally cared for the land, such as seasonal harvesting practices or planting native species to support ecosystems. Students might also look at local city practices like periodic tree planting or controlled burns (described simply and safely). Students might design a simple action plan in response, like planting native species in a school garden, reducing litter, or creating signs to protect pollinators. 

The science remains central: students use evidence from observations, describe relationships between organisms and their environments, and identify patterns. And they also learn that caring for ecosystems is a community responsibility and that knowledge about nature comes from many sources. Rather than positioning one source of knowledge as superior, the class examines how multiple knowledge systems contribute to sustainable decision-making. By integrating social studies and local history, students see that science is not owned by one culture; it is enriched by many. These moves signal that diversity is not ornamental; it is intellectually valuable.

Designing for Diversity Planning Moves: 

• Cultivate a Classroom Community of respect and self-respect. Recognize students’ multiple identities and the intersectionality of them.  
• Use locally relevant phenomena that reflect the cultural, environmental, and economic realities of your students’ communities.
• Embed diverse expertise directly into the core lesson, not as sidebars or extensions. Integrate scientists, engineers, and community knowledge holders whose identities and contexts shape their work. Invite community voices (guest speakers, recorded interviews, local data sources) to expand whose knowledge is represented in the classroom.
• Compare multiple approaches to the same problem. Ask students how an urban planner, a tribal environmental steward, a public health official, or a local farmer might define an issue differently.
• Facilitate structured reflection on perspective: “How might someone with different lived experiences interpret this data?”  
• Incorporate diverse assessment types to evaluate learning, allowing students to lean into their personal strengths to “show what they know.” 

Go Deeper Resources: 

• Community Cultural Wealth (Tara Yosso) – Framework for recognizing the assets students bring into the classroom
• I Am A Scientist and Science Delivered – Real-World Examples of Diverse Scientists
• Teaching Students How to Respect Cultural Diversity – An article that provides strategies for incorporating Multicultural Education at schools

Visit the JEDI in Action: Extended Resource Guide for more information and resources. Keep the JEDI Planning Reflection Tool at hand as you plan.

Your First Move: 
When planning your next unit, take time to reflect on where you or your curriculum may be presenting science as culturally neutral or singular. Ask yourself, “How can I bring in diverse perspectives (including student perspectives) and intentionally expose students to multiple ways of knowing?”

When diversity is centered as an intellectual asset, students learn that different perspectives generate new questions, new methods, and new solutions. They begin to see that disagreement can sharpen reasoning, lived experience can shape inquiry, and community knowledge can inform innovation. Perhaps most importantly, students from historically marginalized communities see that their identities and experiences are not tangential to science; they are part of its ongoing story.

The Courage to Design Differently
Designing for diversity means having the courage to explore new perspectives that might take you and your students out of your comfort zone, but this is exactly the type of real-world systems thinking, stakeholder analysis, and problem-solving NGSS asks us to implement in our classrooms. When students connect what they notice to community knowledge, neighborhood patterns, and different ways of seeing the same problem, it’s not a detour from rigor; it is deeper rigor. 
The JEDI awakening was just the beginning. Now comes the intentional design, not someday, not district-wide reform, but one lesson, one shift, one question at a time. 

Want more? Check out other articles in this series:

• The JEDI Awakens: Designing for Justice in Science Classrooms
• Learning the Ways of the JEDI: Justice in Action 
• Learning the Ways of the JEDI: Centering Equity in Lesson Design

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