In 1984, a businessman, Ed Bass, and an ecologist, John Allen, launched an effort to create a self-contained ecosystem. The project was called Biosphere 2, and it was regarded as a possible means of sustaining human life in adverse atmospheric conditions—whether brought about by environmental catastrophe or encountered during interplanetary travel.

Biosphere 2 was built between 1987 and 1991. In September 1991, eight “biospherians” moved into the complex for a two-year experiment. Inside Biosphere 2, they were expected to grow their own food, recycle their own waste, and survive largely on what was available within the biosphere.

Although Biosphere 2 did not immediately meet all of its objectives, it could be considered a success in another sense: we learned a great deal about Earth’s ecology and about human dynamics within small, closed systems. One finding that is especially interesting involves the trees.

Some of the trees in Biosphere 2 grew rapidly, but they developed structural weaknesses and sometimes broke before reaching maturity. One important difference between their environment and the natural world outside was the absence of normal wind.

Wind is a stressor that helps trees grow strong. As trees grow, winds push and pull against them. In response to that mechanical stress, trees develop stronger trunks and supporting structures. What appears to be an impediment to growth is actually part of the process through which trees become capable of standing.

That observation has stayed with me because I see a similar tendency in how we sometimes raise and educate children. In our efforts to protect them, we can begin removing the very stressors through which strength develops.

We tell children not to ride too fast because they might fall. Not to take certain risks because they might fail. Not to engage difficult people because their feelings might be hurt. We place bubble wrap around their experiences and yellow tape around the parts of life that seem uncomfortable, inconvenient, or uncertain.

The instinct is understandable. We want children to be safe. But safety and insulation are not the same thing.

Children should never be neglected, abused, or intentionally subjected to hardship. At the same time, healthy development does not occur through protection from every force that challenges us. Some capacities develop precisely through our engagement with the world as it actually exists.

Education and the Environments We Create

This distinction becomes especially important when we think about the education of Black children.

There is no need to manufacture adversity for Black children. Society has already provided more than enough. Racism, economic inequality, distorted representations of Black people and Black history, unequal access to opportunity, and other forms of injustice are obviously not social conditions that we should celebrate. But neither should we create a bubble (an artificial biosphere) in which children are prevented from encountering, understanding, and learning to navigate the realities that will shape their lives.

The educational question is not how to manufacture the correct amount of adversity. It is how to avoid insulating children from the developmental work of encountering, interpreting, navigating, and ultimately acting upon the realities they face.

That requires more than simply making children comfortable. It requires knowledge. It requires relationships. It requires cultural grounding. It requires opportunities to think critically, solve problems, make decisions, exercise judgment, experience disappointment, recover from failure, and act with increasing independence.

It also requires adults who know when to intervene, when to guide, when to encourage, and when to allow a young person to work through a difficult problem.

Transformation is not brought about by eliminating every difficulty students encounter. Neither does it necessitate excessive hardship. Instead, transformation is made possible when we create environments in which challenge is accompanied by the resources, relationships, opportunities, and supports necessary for growth.

Transformation of What—and by Whom?

This brings me to an important distinction in how I think about educational transformation. Educational transformation is often discussed as though institutions themselves are the principal agents of change. I understand it very differently.

Education is transformative when it helps young people develop the knowledge, capacities, commitments, and agency needed to transform the conditions of their lives, families, and communities.

That distinction has shaped much of my work as a science education researcher. Throughout my career, I have been interested in questions about what Black children know, how they come to understand the natural and social worlds, what they are taught to believe about science and about themselves, and what kinds of educational experiences can prepare them not merely to succeed, but to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of their communities.

The distinction between success and transformation matters. A young person may learn how to perform well in school, earn credentials, enter a profession, and achieve considerable individual success. Those accomplishments are important. But socially transformative education asks an additional question: Success for what?

Are young people developing the capacity to understand the conditions around them? Can they recognize problems affecting their communities? Do they possess the knowledge and confidence to imagine alternatives? Can they work with others to create those alternatives?

A tree must eventually do more than survive a gust of wind. It must develop the strength necessary to stand. Likewise, our educational ambitions should extend beyond preparing young people simply to withstand difficult circumstances. The goal is not merely resilience. It is the development of people who can understand the world they inherit and who possess the capacity to act upon it.

Why Research Matters

This is where research becomes essential to educational transformation. If our purpose is simply to implement programs, we can ask whether a program was delivered as intended. If our purpose is simply to improve test performance, we can ask whether scores increased. But if our purpose is transformation, our questions become considerably more demanding. What educational experiences help young people develop transformative capacity?

• How do children come to understand the forces shaping their lives?
• What knowledge and cultural resources help them interpret those experiences?
• How do families, communities, educators, and institutions support children without either abandoning them to adversity or insulating them from the developmental work of confronting the world?
• What distinguishes education that produces individually successful people from education that prepares people to contribute to collective advancement?

These are research questions. Research allows us to move beyond what we assume works, what we hope works, and even what appears to work. It allows us to study more carefully how people develop, how educational experiences shape that development, and how those experiences might be designed more intentionally.

This is one of the things that excites me about joining the National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities at Morgan State University. Research can help us examine not only educational outcomes, but also the conditions, experiences, knowledge, relationships, and opportunities that make meaningful human development possible.

Biosphere 2 did not teach us because its designers created a perfect environment. Quite the opposite. It taught us because living systems responded in ways people did not entirely anticipate. Researchers observed those responses, questioned their assumptions, and learned something important about the conditions necessary for growth.

Education demands that same humility. We will not always know beforehand what young people need. We will not always correctly anticipate how an educational experience will affect them. And good intentions will never substitute for careful inquiry. But we can observe. We can ask better questions. We can listen. We can study. We can learn.

And with what we learn, we can become more intentional about cultivating young people who are not merely prepared to live in the world as they find it, but who possess the capacity and commitment to transform it.