Raising Our Voices: Using Informal Science Learning Spaces as a Venue of Counterstorytelling

• In Event: Reframing Informal Science Education in Light of Diversity, Equity, Democracy, and Critical Science Literacy

Abstract

This paper explores how participants in three informal science education programs used these spaces for counter-storytelling. Counter-storytelling is the sharing of perspectives by people whose experiences are often silenced and/or ignored (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). It is a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the stories of those in power which often control the dominant discourse (Delgado, 1995). Counter-storytelling is used as a primary tool in Critical Race Theory (CRT), which focuses on the experiential knowledge of marginalized people and how race and racism directly and indirectly impact ethnic minorities (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Yosso, 2005). CRT scholars also stress the need for ways to understand how issues of race and ethnicity intersect with class and gender (Ladson Billings, 1998). Additionally, scholars argue the need for venues that enable people from marginalized positions to lend their voices to new ways of understanding the challenges and possibilities experienced in educational settings (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). In this paper, the author employs the theoretical lens of CRT to understand how and when participants use counter-storytelling in informal science learning settings.

The three informal science programs discussed within this paper are distinct in design, population (Native Hawaiian, African American, Latino/a and high poverty youth), and geographic location (Bronx, New York City, and Honolulu, Hawaii). They are linked by the participants’ common bond of using counter-stories in the informal space to tell their science stories. The paper begins with the story of five high poverty African American and Latino/a youth from New York City who use an after-school science club to make movies about “what [they] bring to science”. Next is the story of Mika, a sixth grade Native Hawaiian girl, who uses her “Girls in Science” after-school program to explore and expose the connections between western science and Native Hawaiian indigenous science. Lastly, there is the story of Nanuku, a Polynesian voyaging expert, who seeks to make evidence the rich scientific history of the Polynesian community by training teachers in the indigenous Polynesian voyaging practices.

Data for this paper was collected as part of separate studies. At each site, data collection included observations, structured and semi-structured interviews, and review of student work/program artifacts. Using CRT, data analysis foregrounds issues of race and racism to confront conventional worldviews of what counts as science, who does science, and who knows science (Creswell, 2007; Calabrese Barton & O’Neill, 2008) and examines how participants use informal science settings as counter-storytelling spaces.

The study’s significance is that recognizing participants’ use informal science learning settings for counter-storytelling brings into focus the perspectives of those who are traditionally marginalized in science discourse and provides models for how other informal science settings can be used as venues that enable marginalized individuals to share new ways of understanding and interacting with science.

Author

• Tara O'Neill, University of Hawaii - Manoa