Emerging Issues and Trends in Education
236
Emerging Issues and Trends in Education
236eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628953114 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2017 |
| Series: | International Race and Education Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 236 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Richard Majors, a former Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School, is an Honorary Professor at University of Colorado–Colorado Springs. He is the coauthor of Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America, which is considered a classic in the field.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
STEM SISTA Spaces
Creating Counterspaces for Black Girls and Women
Shetay N. Ashford, Jessica Alyce Wilson, Natalie S. King, and Tiffany M. Nyachae
Some of the most fun people I know are scientists.
— Mae C. Jemison
Historically, in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, students of color and women, particularly Black women, have been underrepresented in the United States (National Science Foundation, 2015; White House Council on Women and Girls, 2014). As a result, an onslaught of K–20 STEM intervention programs have been implemented to retain these students in the STEM fields (Valla & Williams, 2012). However, the goal, to increase participation in the STEM fields among students of color and women, is embedded in maintaining U.S. global competitiveness and economic prosperity (Palmer & Wood, 2013; National Academy of Sciences, 2007), which carries a parochial, informed self-serving initiative rather than sincere moral concern or commitment to the well-being of these students (Martin, 2009). Further, the Census Bureau projects that by 2042, people of color will represent the majority population in the United States (Vincent & Velkoff, 2010), yet current trends in STEM education relative to achievement and persistence do not suggest that students of color will represent the majority population in the STEM fields (Fealing & Myers, 2012). The concern is that students of color endure a particular set of experiences in STEM fields as members of marginalized populations. Therefore, an evaluation of student STEM educational experiences, relative to their academic persistence and overall well-being, as contributors to the STEM fields, is significant in developing retention efforts that will influence students' interest in pursuing and persisting in STEM fields.
As a result, innovative solutions to broaden the participation of Black girls and women in the STEM fields must consider students' experiences, developing relevant interventions for members of marginalized racial and gender groups that challenge traditional power dynamics and seek to reclaim the voices of Black women and girls in STEM academic and institutional spaces.
Race and Gender
Martin (2009) highlights the need for future research in the field of mathematics education to understand race as a sociopolitical, historically contingent construct, since racism is endemic and embedded in the United States (p. 298). There is evidence of this approach in STEM educational research, since race is often listed as a factor when evaluating achievement and persistence; however, it is often used only to invoke simplistic categories (Martin, 2009). This often yields a deficit approach to understanding the experience of racial minority groups (Castro, 2014), because this research fails to link the meanings of the findings about race to larger societal structures in which racism is entrenched in the United States, adding another layer to how students of color experience education, particularly in STEM fields (Martin, 2009). As a result, we are left with research that does not address the everyday nature and experiences of racism, classism, and sexism that are embedded in students' STEM experiences.
Furthermore, gender is used to distinguish biological sex from performed identities of femininity and masculinity, which have been socially constructed (Cole, Manuh, & Miescher, 2007). African American girls and women have been socially constructed, depicted, and normalized as amoral, sexually promiscuous, exotic, presumptuously wild creatures (Stephens & Phillips, 2003). These descriptors are broadly accepted and socialized and shape ideologies about African American girls and women (hooks, 1992). Therefore, spaces are needed to address the everyday nature and experiences of Black women and girls as significant members and contributors to the STEM fields.
I Need My Space: STEM Counterspaces
A primary contributing factor to the lack of students enrolled in STEM disciplines is their diminished interest in science and mathematics while pursuing secondary education. This negatively affects students' interest in pursuing STEM majors upon entering college (NACME, 2008), which has been verified by the data presented by the National Science Foundation's evaluation of freshmen intentions in 2012. Of the Black women assessed by the National Science Foundation (2015), 35.4 percent intended to major in science and engineering fields, which was slightly lower than Black men (37.8 percent). The majority of these Black women entering are interested in the biological and agricultural sciences (15 percent) and social and behavioral sciences (14.3 percent), and these numbers drop significantly when looking at intentions to major in engineering (3.2 percent) or mathematics, statistics, or computer sciences (1.4 percent) (National Science Foundation, 2015). Furthermore, Black girls and women have reported feelings of isolation and a lack of support from teachers and peers in their secondary and postsecondary STEM schooling experiences (Ashford, 2016; Borum, 2012; Borum & Walker, 2012; Bush, 2013; da Rosa, 2013; Espinosa, 2011; Frillman, 2011; Gibson & Espino, 2016; McPherson, 2012; Robinson, 2012; Rodriguez, 2015; Somerville-Midgette, 2014; Smith-Evans & George, 2014), which may further dissuade them from pursuing and persisting in STEM disciplines upon entering college. STEM intervention programs, such as service-learning projects, summer bridge programs, undergraduate research programs, and summer enrichment programs, have traditionally been developed to meet the needs of majority students, as they offer effective programmatic components to improve targeted students' retention in STEM education (Geisinger & Raman, 2013; Veenstra, Padró, & Furst-Bowe, 2012). These are viable options to implement STEM counterspaces to support the distinct needs of marginalized students. Since these programs are most prevalent in postsecondary education, we find relatively few programs that expose girls and people of color, particularly Black girls, to STEM disciplines in secondary education and that operate from social justice and culturally relevant perspectives to help students of color succeed in the STEM fields (King et al., in press; Wilson, Gaines, & Cooper, 2015). Moss (2010) implements a SISTA (Sisters Informing Sisters about Topics on AIDS) space in the context of literacy, defined as a
space where they come together as Black women to act as a group and on behalf of their community — for their own cultural enrichment, as a way to strengthen their shared community ties, as a way to teach each other, and to teach other women. (p. 5)
Moss describes the importance of a SISTA space that provides a viable framework for culturally relevant programs that target Black girls and women. As a result, this chapter builds on Moss's work to propose a STEM SISTA space, which is a model for providing meaningful and positive STEM learning experiences (e.g., mentoring and Black women as role models) that embraces the strengths of Black girls and women and encourages their participation in STEM.
According to Barton et al. (2003), "Spaces are defined by the individuals who come together for particular reasons ... and are shaped by the rules and expectations for participating together" (p. 39). The capital that individuals bring to the space frames the patterns and assumptions that guide the social interactions within that space (Barton et al., 2003). Furthermore, administrators and educators have proposed counterspaces in social and academic settings to shield African American women (Howard-Hamilton, 2003) and African Americans in general (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000) from microaggressions and negative racial climates. In this chapter, we will propose a STEM counterspace for Black girls and women that is undergirded by our conceptual framework (i.e., critical race theory, intersectionality, critical race feminism, and culturally relevant pedagogy), and supported by a review of relevant literature. The theoretical underpinnings in our conceptual framework will serve as recurring themes as we connect existing bodies of knowledge to our proposed model.
Our Motivation
In STEM education, the push to increase the participation of students of color and women can fail to acknowledge the concerns that negatively influence their academic persistence and overall well-being as students in the STEM fields. Essentially, those of us who want to encourage girls and women of color in these fields must focus our efforts on understanding and supporting the needs of these historically underrepresented populations, particularly Black girls and women, if we seek social justice in STEM education. Furthermore, retention efforts must consider the experiences that present challenges to students every day by developing spaces that confront racism and sexism, critiquing power structures so as to empower the experiences of Black women and girls in STEM academic and institutional spaces (Martin, 2009). It is then that STEM intervention programs can provide a culturally relevant space for students. Therefore, through this research, we advocate for equitable opportunities to encourage and support Black girls and women to persist, endure, and thrive in the K–20 STEM education pipeline. Furthermore, as educators, program developers, and evaluators, we reference our practical experiences of implementing and evaluating culturally relevant programs for women and students of color to inform our research.
The purpose of this chapter is to propose a new STEM SISTA space that targets Black girls and women in K–16 (i.e., elementary, secondary, and postsecondary) STEM education. Our goal is to offer a model that is grounded in existing research and builds upon our experiences as program directors, evaluators, and scholars. As Black women scholars with significant relevant experiences, we provide a "unique angle of vision" that informs our proposed model. Three of us are STEM degree holders in computer science, mathematics, or applied physiology and kinesiology. We are Ph.D. holders or candidates in curriculum and instruction with emphases in career and workforce, mathematics education, science education, or reading education and science of learning. Collectively, we have taught STEM subjects at the secondary and postsecondary education levels, and we have past experiences with program design, development, implementation, and management of culturally relevant programs for girls and students of color. These experiences inform our research and motivation for this study. In this chapter, we first define the conceptual framework that undergirds our model, followed by a review of relevant literature. Next we describe our recommendation for a STEM SISTA space, and then close with discussion and implications.
Conceptual Framework
Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Feminism
In this section, we describe critical race theory (CRT) in education as our main framework, intersectionality as an outgrowth, and critical race feminism (CRF) as an extension, foregrounding the STEM SISTA space we propose. During the 1980s, legal scholars Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlé Crenshaw responded to critical legal studies' absence of race with CRT (Tate, 1997). Building from their work, educational scholars Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate IV developed CRT in education in the 1990s (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). CRT recognizes race as a social construction and racism as an ever-present aspect of life in the United States. CRT challenges colorblind beliefs and mainstream ideologies through activism and a social justice agenda (Ladson-Billings, 1998). As with counterspaces and our proposed STEM SISTA space, CRT centers the voices of racialized people (Ladson-Billings, 1998). Crenshaw (1989) introduced the concept of intersectionality in response to CRT's inability to address the unique locations of Black women, and in response to the women's rights and feminist movements' fight for women as a homogenous group of elite White women, erasing color and class. Intersectionality considers the nexus of race, gender, and class in how women of color experience the world based on structures, politics, and representation (Crenshaw, 1991, 1993).
Bell (1980), through his principle of interest convergence, argued that African Americans only experience social, political, and economic gains when their interests match the needs of the White elite. With this in mind, Evans-Winters and Esposito (2010) urged educators and developers of intervention programs for Black women and girls to consider the following:
If a young Black woman's worth is measured through her aptitude for reproducing the next generation's labor (i.e. capital), what would be the interest of the privileged class in assisting in the development of her educational well-being through self-empowerment or social and financial support? Once more, where does the interest of the White middle class converge with the interest of young women of African descent? (p. 18)
SISTA spaces are interested in the interests of Black women and girls, and the intersectionalities that they experience (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010). As we consider counterspaces for Black women and girls in STEM, we must take care to center their needs and interests.
CRF explicates the relationship between CRT and intersectionality. CRF argues that the experiences of women of color are different from White women and Black men because they face multiple oppressions due to race, gender, and class (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010). In terms of critical consciousness, CRF does not essentialize consciousness, but instead acknowledges the multiplicity of consciousnesses and identities among Black women (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010). Similar to CRT, CRF calls for interdisciplinary approaches when working with Black girls and women; however, these approaches must take on gender, race, and class oppressions directly (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010).
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
As an African American women researcher, Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) advocates a culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), using the work of Collins as a resource to validate the credibility of "individuals who have lived through the experiences about which they claim to be experts" as more believable than that of those who simply read and think about such experiences (Collins, 1991, p. 209). Additionally, Ladson-Billings (1995) links the tenets of Black feminist thought to the context and methodology of the study she conducted with successful teachers of African American students. The work of Collins and Ladson-Billings foregrounds the double oppression Black girls and women may encounter in educational settings. To promote the success of Black girls and women in STEM education, we referenced CRP's three primary tenets to describe culturally relevant practices that should be exhibited in counterspaces: (1) students must achieve academic success, (2) students must maintain their cultural competence, and (3) students must develop critical consciousness. Ladson-Billings also draws upon Freire's (1970) definition of critical consciousness and learners' power to transform their reality. In particular, we believe Black girls must develop critical consciousness early in their schooling experiences to establish a strong sense of belonging in STEM education.
To foreground our proposed STEM SISTA space, we have defined its theoretical underpinnings based on critical race theory, intersectionality, critical race feminism, and culturally relevant pedagogy. Our next task is to conduct a review of literature of existing STEM intervention models that specifically provide counterspaces for Black girls and women in elementary, secondary, and undergraduate (i.e., K–16) STEM education.
Review of Literature
The literature on existing K–16 STEM intervention programs that operate from a critical and culturally relevant perspective, developed for Black girls and women, is scarce. Moreover, existing programs that fit this description may not be documented in peer-reviewed literature, due to their infancy (Valla & Williams, 2012). In this integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005), we first conducted a broad search of peer-reviewed literature on K–16 STEM intervention programs that targeted Black girls and women and, in most cases, included culturally relevant and social justice practices (e.g., Lindsay-Dennis, Cummings, & McClendon, 2011; Patton, 2009; West, 2011). Because literature on K–16 STEM intervention programs for Black girls and women is limited, we borrowed literature from other non-STEM disciplines to identify effective programmatic and instructional practices. Next, we describe our literature search process.
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