National standards in K–12 science education appropriately prioritize equity in science learning.1,2 However, teachers can struggle to see how equity and justice relate to science content. For many teachers, physics is a particularly difficult area in which to make connections to equity—and the more specific the disciplinary content, the more difficult it is to make these connections.3–6 As physics teachers stated in an equity-focused professional development course:
Often I teach content and then social justice separately by bringing up “hidden figures”7 and talking about women in physics and people of color in physics and LGBTQ people in physics and space travel and that sort of thing. But it’s not interwoven into the curriculum: it’s “here’s these people,” and “here’s physics.”
—Rebecca, high school teacher
How do you actually incorporate this stuff into the curriculum? We talk about gravitational potential energy or whatever it is; how does that...