Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President at the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bang's research focuses on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just…

This paper discusses findings from 40 ethnographically inspired interviews with 21 Native science professionals conducted in two iterative phases (21 in Phase I and 19 in Phase II), and a structured dialogue workgroup session with a six-member subset of the interviewees. Interview and group questions were open-ended to allow the participants to…

The field of science education has struggled to create robust, meaningful forms of education that effectively engage students from historically non-dominant communities and women. This paper argues that a primary issue underlying this on-going struggle pivots on constructions of nature-culture relations. We take up structuration theory (Giddens,…

This case study focuses on a Native American family's experience on a walk in an urban forest preserve. Drawing on interaction analysis traditions, we analyze video data and transcript data to characterize how learning unfolds in place, in this case an urban forest. We build on this analysis, as well as the work of Indigenous scholars, to…

In this paper, we aim to contribute to ongoing work to uncover the ways in which settler colonialism is entrenched and reified in educational environments and explore lessons learned from an urban Indigenous land-based education project. In this project, we worked to re-center our perceptual habits in Indigenous cosmologies, or land-based…

Indigenous people are significantly underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The solution to this problem requires a more robust lens than representation or access alone. Specifically, it will require careful consideration of the ecological contexts of Indigenous school age youth, of which more than 70%…

Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational research community. However, within Native American communities, language revitalization is pushing education beyond former iterations of culturally relevant curriculum and has the potential to radically alter how we understand culture and language in…