Search

• The process of designing curriculum is quite useful as it details how different activities correspond to learning goals in science, mathematics, and technology. Fig. 3 describes the steps: selecting content through content specialists in the POAC team, making a curriculum outline, individual meetings with content specialists, and making the lesson plans. I really like the activities they designed, such as comparing different mask materials and how they protected against differently-sized viruses. They were also given time to research career pathways and present on epidemiology careers, a step that invites students to imagine career pathways. 

• I realize the scope and audience of this paper is different, but I am so curious about how the Imhotep Academy created a setting that encouraged underrepresented students to participate and speak up, given that they cite evidence of how difficult that can be. How did they choose participants? 

• Having read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed recently, I am thinking about his approach to curriculum design that is based on a feedback loop between would-be learners and would-be educators. The roles of learners and educators aren’t fixed. Content development is not done beforehand just by content specialists but in an iterative process with multiple feedback loops. Since very few research teams have the time or the resources to deploy Freire’s rigorous approach, I am not surprised that most curriculum development does not follow the route. And educators are working with former experiences anyway. So I am curious about how the authors’ previous experiences shaped their approach to curriculum design?

• A context for this paper is the controversy on the proposed revisions to the California math curriculum that conservative media outlets argue “waters down” calculus–a cherry topping on the college admissions cake–to privilege data science in middle-school grades. Education researchers contend that apart from physics and engineering majors, not many colleges actually require calculus for admissions (many private institutions do), and that the relevance of advanced calculus for college preparation is overrated. 

• National Commission on Excellence in Education ‘s 1983 report Nation At Risk: the need for a new STEM workforce specializing in computer science and technology 

• National Council on Mathematics 2000 guidelines for preparing American students for college in Common Core Mathematics 

• Stuck in the Shallow End: Virtual segregation; Inequality in learning computer science in American schools focusing on Black students 

The case study findings in the text have been discussed with senior staff at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and members of the California Latino Legislative Caucus. It has also been presented at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration during a Scoping Analysis workshop with California policymakers and advocates.

“Despite these disadvantages, the state of California has failed to map wildfire vulnerability based on socioeconomic status. Without an accurate identification and mapping process, the state is unable to provide local governments and community-based groups with a reliable rendering of the populations most vulnerable to the impacts of wildfire. Most importantly, by failing to identify socially vulnerable communities across California, government entities are unable to understand in advance where to target limited resources and programs (Sadd et al., 2011).” (Mendez 57)

“To further ensure participation and strengthen capacity, federal, state and local governments should provide appropriate funding to community-based organizations working directly with vulnerable populations.Community-based organizations have stronger cultural competency in engaging with communities of color and immigrants,

greater levels of trust, and more flexibility to explicitly assist these populations. In community-based planning processes, vulnerable communities are actively engaged in the identification, analysis and interventions, monitoring, and evaluation of disaster risks. This approach helps reduce their vulnerabilities and enhance their capacities.” (Mendez 59)

This text highlights the importance of a mixed methods approach to disaster planning. Specifically, the importance of incorporating qualitative research methods as a way to anchor the voices of marginalized communities within disaster planning and provide context to emerging trends observed in climate related risks.  Regarding disaster planning and undocumented immigrant communities for example, Mendez (2020) stresses that practitioners must go beyond addressing the contextual vulnerability of these communities and consider how to address systemic problems perpetuated by the agricultural industry. The lack of accountability and disregard for human life within the industry, coupled with the lack political power within undocumented immigrant communities, particularly those belonging to the Mixteco/ Indigena indigenous groups, are systems of oppression which must be addressed if climate disaster risks are to be truly addressed.

Mendez (2020) stresses that the intersectionality of race, class, gender, indigeneity, and many other dimensions of identities coalesce to shape the lived experiences of people in their local environments. Traditional quantitative methods, though useful in providing snapshots of disaster vulnerability, can do little in capturing the social environmental conditions which determine responses to extreme weather and climatic events. At best, it can serve to provide an obscured understanding of disaster risks, at worst, this one-dimensional methodology approach may exacerbate existing inequalities perpetuated by systems of racism, classicism, and sexism by rendering whole communities invisible simply by virtue of sampling biases (Mendez, 2020). The case study by which Mendez frames his central argument focuses on how Indigenous immigrants were systematically ignored in emergency response and alleviation efforts following the Thomas Fire in California’s Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. 

The author of this article is Scott Gabriel Knowles, the department head and an associate professor in the Drexel University Department of History Center for Science, Technology and Society. His focuses are on risk and disaster, with particular interests in modern cities, technology, and public policy. He also serves as a faculty research fellow of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware and since 2011 he has been a member of the Fukushima Forum collaborative research community. His more recent works include:

The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).4

Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (Editor, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

"Defending Philadelphia: A Historical Case Study of Civil Defense in the Early Cold War" Public Works Management & Policy, (Vol. 11, No. 3, 2007): 217-232.

This article examines how disaster investigations in the United States have evolved over time, from the burining of the capitol building near the birth of the republic through the theater fires and boiler explosions of industrialization to the collapse of the world trade centers at the present, showing how the modern, bureaucratic system of disaster investigation was built. 

This arguement is supported by looking at 4 specific case histories and examining the factors contributing to the investigations in each.

1. The 1814 Burning of the Capitol Building - Investigation of the disaster conducted by one engineer, B.H. Lathobe, who was given vast resources with very few obsticles, except for financial constraits and an impatient congress, to complete his investigation and reconstruct the building. 

2. 1850 Hauge St. Explosion - After a major boiler explosion in Manhattan's Lower East Side, a pannel of "jurrors" and "experts" were called together to complete investigations, bring forth the history of the fauty boiler, and place the blame for the accident in an effort to "memorialize the dead and bring them justice." Because of the way this investigation was conducted, the blame could not be accurately placed so everyone involved was blamed for the failure.

3. 1903 Iroquois Theater Fire - John Ripley Freeman, a fireproof engineering expert and factory inspector, was brought in to complete a report and provided one of the first "modern" scientific disaster investigations. He utilized a new network of investigators, engineers, insurance companies, testing labs, and inter-industry coordination that characterizes modern disaster investigation. 

1. "Clashes over authority among powerful institutions both public and private, comptetition among rival experts for influence, inquiry into a disaster elevated to the status of a memorial for the dead: these are the base elements of the World Trade Center investigation. And yet, even a brief historical review shows us that these elements are not unique."

2. "In this article, I will show that conflicts over authority, expertise, memory, and finally the attribution of responsibility suffuse the history of disaster in the United States."

3. "Blame, memorial, and reconstruction tend to outpace technical consensus."

Detailed research into historical cases was done to produce the claims and arguements presented in this article. No new investigation was conducted to obtain support for the arguement, and the historical cases were used to draw ties with the ongoing investigations taking place at the World Trade Center site.