There are a few ways to develop a justice-centered phenomenon. Below we describe several approaches.

1. Survey students at the beginning of the year. Teachers can use a Google form or other tool to learn about students’ interests and then consider possible connections to units during the year. 
   
2. Create an asset map. Teams of teachers can make maps of community resources and knowledge that identify how local communities are working together on complex socio-scientific issues, with the goal of cultural and linguistic revitalization or sustainability. For example, in Hawaii, teachers are designing maps to help them learn about Indigenous ways of working with the land to design sustainable agricultural practices or understanding Indigenous Hawaiian cultural knowledge about relationships among humans, land, and sky before building more telescopes on sacred grounds. (See this STEM teaching tool for more information on asset mapping.)
   
3. Adapt the unit phenomenon after eliciting student ideas. When eliciting ideas at the outset of a unit, teachers can ask students to describe what the unit phenomenon reminds them of. We have seen students make connections to climate change, caring for animals, family structures, race, power dynamics in schools, and highly local phenomena like erosion on the playground. Often, asking students, “What does this remind you of” allows students to broaden from simply explaining one phenomenon (using select DCIs) to explaining a set of phenomena that often touches on many DCIs across a series of lessons.
4. Use one of the following examples to get started. Teachers can also consider whether existing phenomena and instructional materials would be relevant in their communities and draw on these to begin. Here are some examples of phenomena being developed in partnership with teachers. 

Critically Examining Phenomena. Below are questions to ask as you brainstorm potential phenomena or connections to the phenomenon in your curriculum. The questions are designed to consider critical aspects of equity, such as identities, power, and politics. Selecting consequential, real-world phenomena is a dance as you consider standards, students’ lived experiences, existing curriculum, local resources and expertise, and larger social, cultural, and political elements. We recommend this work be done with colleagues! 

1.) Nature-Culture Relations & Ecological Caring

• Does addressing this issue lead to better relations, interconnectedness, and collective thinking? And for whom?
• How does the issue move beyond “science for progress’ sake” narratives?
• How does the issue sustain or revitalize communities?
• How does working on the problem support a deeper understanding of place?

2.) Culture, Families & Communities as Rightfully Belonging

• How is the issue relevant and connected to issues of science with societal concerns?
• Are students positioned to study authentic problems that matter to them or society?
• Is the issue threatening BIPOC communities’ rights and/or cultural ways of knowing?

3.) Broadening Languages of Science

• How is the issue relevant and connected to multiple cultures and languages, both locally and globally?
• How can the unit provide a counterstory that highlights multiple ways of knowing and explaining science?

4.) Power, Histories, & Futures Matter

• How does addressing this problem require acknowledging systemic oppression and the limits brought about by white supremacy?
• Is the future well-being of society, ecosystems, and/or marginalized communities a focus?
• How does addressing this problem require considering resources, power, and physical & ecological well-being?

Examples of how teams of teachers shifted curriculum to incorporate consequential real-world events. 

4th grade Sound Pollution. A team of teachers adapted a unit to focus on sound pollution once they realized the planned phenomenon was not as relevant or consequential to students’ lives. Initially, the unit focused on a singer who shattered glass with his voice, but one year while doing an activity to record decibels on the playfield, we overheard students talking about how much they hated living near the airport as the planes interrupted their sleep. Everyone paused as an airplane flew over and landed at a nearby airport. One student exclaimed, “I hate airplanes. They wake me up every night.” Other students chimed in with stories of not sleeping and walls rattling. As teachers, we met after class and decided to shift the curriculum to reflect the importance of caring for one another and designing solutions for noisy places. We researched city ordinances and discovered they were 25 years old. The teachers decided to develop a complementary literacy unit to support students in writing to city and airport officials about the realities of sound pollution. In retrospect, we realized that 1) many of us did not confront our own privilege as we drove home to a quieter part of town and 2) we need to better connect to local community efforts currently addressing sound pollution. We have since adapted the unit in two ways, 1) to investigate nosey sounds within schools and have students design solutions they can advocate for within schools (to either maintain a space to be loud or to reduce noise pollution) and 2) to investigate sound pollution for resident and migratory orca whales in our backyard (the Puget Sound). We found that 4th-grade students have a tendency to care for animals and appreciate units that blend physical and biological sciences. 

7th grade Tree Cover and Advocacy. During a middle school unit focused on matter cycling and the role of photosynthesis in the ecosystem and human health, 7th-grade science classes in Rochester, NY, explored the phenomenon that there is an inequitable distribution of trees across our city, with the neighborhoods my students are from- those economically disadvantaged areas and those with larger non-white populations- having markedly fewer trees, correlated with a higher incidence of respiratory illness and much greater impact of the urban heat island effect in these areas. This learning motivated students to use the science we had learned in class to advocate for more equitable tree cover in the city by presenting their work to community members and submitting recommendations to the city forestry council regarding exactly where trees should be placed. 

2nd grade Place-based Earth Science. A second-grade unit at the William Trotter School in the south of Boston traditionally begins with a Foss Kit in which students view different kinds of pebbles, sand, and silt. One year, this brought up a conversation where students mentioned, “There’s no sand like beaches here in Boston – only on roads!” This shifted our unit to start with items collected on Carson Beach, a beach located only around 2 miles from the school. With these local items to explore, student engagement shifted to thinking about local landforms and how the environment around Boston impacts these. Further, one of the many items brought into the classroom students called a “man-made rock” that is one that had “real rock parts” but also chunks of pavement and even little insects and worms inside. In this example, students shifted from simply learning about pebbles, sand, and silt – to learning about how their urban environment is built on a lot of familiar (paved areas, etc.) and less familiar (mountains, beaches, marshes, etc.) landforms as it grew over time. One student even shared, “Before this, I thought there were only beaches in Florida!”

• Morales-Doyle, D. (2017). Justice-centered science pedagogy: A catalyst for academic achievement and social transformation. Science Education, 101(6), 1034-1060.
• For Teachers: Thompson, J. Mawyer, K., Johnson, H., Scipio, D. & Luehmann, A. (September/October 2021). C2AST Critical and Cultural Approaches to AST: Toward Developing Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Science Teaching Practices. The Science Teacher, 89 (1).
• For Teacher Educators: Thompson, J. Mawyer, K., Johnson, H., Scipio, D. & Luehmann, A. (2020). Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Approaches to Ambitious Science Teaching Pedagogies. In Stroupe, Hammerness & McDonald (Eds.). Preparing science teachers through practice-based teacher education. Harvard Education Press.
• Teaching for social justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE5hsLooM4w