Counterstories for Learning and Engaging Meaningfully in Science in an Informal Setting

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

Abstract

Objectives. This paper uses critical race theory (CRT) to examine how and why youth of color participate in an after school green energy club and the impact their participation has on their science learning/engagement. Research questions include: How and why do urban youth of color engage in “green energy investigations” and in what ways does their participation and learning disprove the hegemonic assertion that youth of color are not interested or perform well in science? What counterstories do youth tell through their work regarding what it means to be scientific?

Theoretical Framing. CRT offers an analytic lens to make sense of youth participation in the green club. According to CRT, society permits the systemic marginalization of nondominant groups/cultures. Racism can work in subtle ways and build up across repeated incidents, such as not recognizing the contributions of students of color, or labeling one’s cultural practices as deficient. Recognizing oppressed youth’s counterstories can expose, analyze, and challenge the stories of those in power that are a central part of dominant discourse. They provide a tool to build community among those at the margins and a context to transform established belief systems (Solorzano & Yasso, 2001).

Context & Methods. The “green club” is an after school community-based science program for youth in Grades 6-9 located in a midwestern city. The club met weekly and engaged youth in authentic green energy investigations heavily aided by the use of digital technologies. We devised an analytic method to analyze student-generated digital video artifacts for a.) science learning and b.) counterstories. Then, we explored how the relationship between the two influenced the youth and their stories. Data sources include: youth-created digital video artifacts, video and observations of green club meetings, and periodic interviews. The youth created videos were the culmination of a year-long investigation on green energy intended to educate peers and members of the community.

Selected Findings. Our paper reports the counterstories of five youth for whom participation in science appears to be a source of power, knowledge, and tool for change in their community. Using CRT and endemic racism as a lens, we show, through the youth’s digital artifacts, the ways in which, for the five youth, the green energy discourse is part of their community (both supportive and critical), not separate from their community. We also focus on how they do not accept or portray science as “other” to their community or vice versa (community as “other” to science). The youth explicitly (i.e., looking for pictures of Black families for their videos) and implicitly (i.e., making complex ideas accessible to their community through language, image and music choices) challenge hegemonic ideas of who can do science and what it means to be scientific.
This investigation pushes on the need to understand how race and racism are real factors in student learning and participation in science despite race being a social construct. Furthermore, we cannot remove issues of race from understanding of how youth engage and learn in informal spaces.

Authors

• Takumi Sato, Michigan State University

• Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University