As feminist chemistry educators engaged as (ill)disciplined researchers, scholars and teachers we position ourselves as reliable witnesses to the research and pedagogical practices in science education that undermine and counteract calls for equity and diversity. To this end we propose, by making a fuss, enacting matters of care and implementing slow education (Stengers, 2018; Stengers & Despret, 2014), are key steps in challenging the status quo in science education’s fast pedagogical and research practices. We illustrate how we are making a fuss through an examination of chemistry education research practices, the entanglement of emotions, the material and perspectives of undergraduate students in laboratory settings and education systems bogged down by beliefs of learning as a product to be consumed. We are looking to disrupt different aspects of science education and science by exploring "interstitial spaces where meaning resides" (Barad, 1995, p. 65) and that requires a slowing down. Slow education provides a space to re-think and re-examine practices with the intent of “opening up the possibility of new questions, new experimental settings and new puzzles” (Stengers 2018, p. 91-92). Our current slow science education research foregrounds matter and its entanglement with laboratory science and its research practices, undergraduate students’ laboratory experiences – the physical, emotional, and the socio-cultural. Through matters of care we identify the forms of exclusion, power and domination in science and science education, noting that care is an ethically and politically charged practice which allows us to engage in research that is outside the main and actively opening up opportunities for younger scholars in science education and science to have the space in research labs, undergraduate labs and when teaching science to pursue new theory, practices and method in science education. Using socially acute questions (Harraway, 2008) and socio-scientific issues as a basis provides the space and time to address wicked, ill-structured problems where context is key. For example, using a USA case study such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, USA where politically, racialized decisions on managing the town’s drinking water, combined with a series of chemical reactions caused major health problems for the populace (Authors, 2021a). We can enact slow education through asking students to make connections to the everyday through materials such as snaplogs (Authors, 2021b) which value students’ identifying diffraction and difference rather than an expectation that they would reflect back known facts.

Authors, 2021a; b Barad, K. (1995). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs, 28 (3), 801-831. Haraway, D. J. (2008). When species meet. University of Minnesota Press. Stengers, I. (2018). Another science is possible: A manifesto for slow science. Cambridge, Polity Press. Stengers, I. & Despret, V. (2014). Women who make a fuss: The unfaithful daughters of Virginia Woolf. University of Minnesota Press.