Cultural Relevance in Chemistry Education: Snow Chemistry and the Iñupiaq Community

U.S. education generally portrays science from the Western perspective. As a result, students from different cultures, also referred to as nonmajority students, often struggle to relate material learned in class to their own cultures and lived experiences. Cultural relevance is gaining momentum in broader education reform movements to relate content in the classroom to students' cultures and worldviews. Even with this momentum, examples of implementing culturally relevant instruction remain sparse in science education, and in chemistry education in particular. This article outlines a collaboration between Iḷisaġvik College, a tribal college in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, and the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to learn more about how culture and context influence the design and implementation of culturally relevant curricular materials for introductory chemistry. Throughout the ongoing process, students work with community members, Elders, and scientists to develop an environmental chemistry research project focused on integrating local, cultural, and scientific resources to explore Arctic snow processes. Participating students engaged in a three-part unit, including information gathering from cultural and scientific resources to develop research questions, collecting and analyzing samples from the local area using analytical methods, and interpreting the data and communicating results to the greater community. Here we outline the design considerations used to construct and implement a culturally relevant chemistry unit. We describe activities where students cultivated relationships with the community and identified resources to inform their research design and classroom interactions. We also detail how culturally relevant education relates to the unit and identify areas where we are still growing as we engage in the design process. Finally, this project demonstrates how a student-driven environmental chemistry project can connect introductory science students to their community while engaging in authentic research practices.