Shakuntala Devi Gopal

Shakuntala Devi Gopal is a REEDS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona where she supports research grounded in culturally responsive practices to broaden participation in STEM. 

 Devi’s own research examines the ways social and political forces inform how socio-scientific issues, such as climate change, are treated in the classroom. Her dissertation work entitled, Investigating Guyanese Science Teacher Identity as a Conduit for Revealing Sociopolitical Discourse in the Science Classroom, explores exactly this in her family’s home country of Guyana in South America.

 Broadly, Devi’s research interests revolve around culturally relevant teaching practices, equity and intersectionality considerations in science education, and the value of informal science learning. In kind, Devi has been working with the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Department of Education on a National Science Foundation funded project called Voices to Hear for several years in which she co-designs summer programming for Coeur d’Alene middle and high school students. Youth learn and design oral stories about environmental, social, and political events that have shaped how indigenous tribes in Northern Idaho have made decisions about complex socio-scientific issues throughout time.

 Other projects Devi has facilitated largely emphasizes how to use storytelling as a pedagogical tool to leverage learners’ cultural capital in the teaching and learning of science. One such project, called Working for Education-Equity: Scientists, Artists, and International Design, engaged high school youth from North America and India in the design and use of graphic novel storytelling to discuss the handling of COVID-19 in youth’s respective communities.

 Devi was formerly an informal educator at the New York Hall of Science before transitioning to a high school science teacher and then to her doctoral degree.