Zoë Buck Bracey
Bio
Senior Science Educator and Director, Design for Social and Environmental Justice Outcomes
Dr. Zoe Buck Bracey is a research scientist and senior science educator who works across curriculum development, professional development and research at BSCS, with a focus on re-framing the endeavor of science education as a tool for equity and social justice. She graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a BA in Astrophysics, and received her PhD from the University of California at Santa Cruz in science education, working with Professor Doris Ash. She taught across informal contexts for over a decade, including professional tutoring in math, science, Spanish and English, and a year as an astronomy instructor at Astrocamp in Southern California. She assisted with and then solo-taught several courses in education and equity at UCSC, and she has three years of experience teaching at Hartnell Community College in central California, where she designed and taught several inquiry-based, culturally responsive astronomy courses in linguistically diverse classrooms. At BSCS she works across several projects in both supportive and leadership roles, including: as a unit lead and curriculum writer on the OpenSciEd project, and as a co-PI on a grant to close the internship access gap for community college students in collaboration with Hartnell Community College. She is co-chair of the BSCS Equity and Social Justice working group, and organizes the annual BSCS family science nights. Outside of BSCS, Dr. Buck Bracey is a member of the board of directors for the Pikes Peak Observatory, a volunteer for the Pikes Peak Road Runners, a slow runner, an occasional beer drinker, a political activist, and a co-parent of two.
Selected Publications
Buck Bracey, Z.E., Stuhlsatz, M., Santiago, M., Cheuk, T., …Osborne, J. (in prep). Bias and EL designation in automated scoring of student argumentation.
Donovan, B. M., Semmens, R., Keck, P., Brimhall, E., Busch, K. C., Weindling, M., Duncan, A., Stuhlsatz, M, Buck Bracey, Z. E.… & Kowalski, S. (2019). Toward a more humane genetics education: Learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could reduce racial bias in adolescent and adult populations. Science Education, 103(3), 529-560.
Donovan, B.M., Stuhlsatz, Mpu., Edelson, D.C., Buck Bracey, Z. (2019). Gendered Genetics: How reading about the genetic basis of sex differences in biology textbooks could affect beliefs associated with science gender disparities. Science Education.
Buck Bracey, Z. (2017). Personal Universes: revealing community college students’ competences though their organization of the cosmos. Cultural Studies of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-017-9827-z
Buck Bracey, Z. E. (2017). Students from non‐dominant linguistic backgrounds making sense of cosmology visualizations. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 54(1), 29-57.
Bean, J. R., Stuhlsatz, M., Bracey, Z. B., & Marshall, C. R. (2017, December). Teaching Climate Change Using System Models: An Understanding Global Change Project Pilot Study. In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts.
Buck, Z. E., Lee, H. S., & Flores, J. (2014). I Am Sure There May Be a Planet There: Student articulation of uncertainty in argumentation tasks. International Journal of Science Education, 36(14), 2391-2420.
Lee, H.-S., Liu, O. L., Pallant, A., Roohr, K. C., Pryputniewicz, S. and Buck, Z. E. (2014), Assessment of uncertainty-infused scientific argumentation. J. Res. Sci. Teach., 51: 581–605.
Jiang, L., Fan, X., Bian, F., McGreer, I. D., Strauss, M. A., Annis, J., Buck, Z.E.,… & Richards, G. (2014). The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 Imaging Data: Depth-Optimized Co-adds Over 300 Deg^2 in Five Filters. arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.7382.
Buck, Z. E. (2013). The Effect of Color Choice on Learner Interpretation of a Cosmology Visualization. Astronomy Education Review, 12 (1), 010104.