Reconceptualizing High School Science Curriculum: Using Storytelling and the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in Science Classrooms

• In Event: Pushing Methodological Boundaries and Performing Dissertation Writing

Abstract

Dana Compton McCullough explores the use of storytelling in the science classrooms to teach science objectives as well as teach students to develop a social consciousness and become activists for social justice. “Everybody has a story” (Baszile, 2008, p. 253). McCullough believes that by learning the stories behind the science, students will feel more connected to the required science curriculum. With many years of experience teaching science classes, she reports that students enjoy science more if they can get to know the people behind the facts. She found this connection to be even more powerful if the students connect their personal stories to the life stories of the scientists or the development of scientific information. She began her doctoral exploration with her ninth and tenth grade high school biology students specifically using the text, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot. She desires this reconceptualized curriculum to exhibit characteristics of “justice, democracy, and human rights” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 2008, p. 508). Students should be taught “in a manner that respects and cares for their souls as opposed to a rote assembly line approach” (Berry, 2005, p. 37). Teaching isolated scientific information will not prepare students to be members of society. McCullough seeks to create a space between the required science standards and the students themselves. In this space, students can engage in discourse concerning science, the relationships between science, culture, and society. This study involves collecting and analyzing narrative responses each time excerpts from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks are used in the classroom for science instruction. Additionally, written and digital narrative responses from school faculty, staff, and students have been collected during a school wide event to honor Henrietta Lacks. This ordinary woman, wife, mother of five children, sister, cousin, and friend, died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital on this day in 1951. Rebecca Skloot tells the incredible story in her award-winning book, which McCullough believes, will become a wonderful springboard for discussions concerning civil rights and medical ethics as well as the science behind Henrietta’s cells. Storytelling teaches students to look for new perspectives by distancing themselves “from the familiar… seeing something for the very first time” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 2008, p. 415). Haraway tells us “Stories are a core aspect of the constitution of an object of scientific knowledge” thereby giving them authority in the science classrooms (1991, p. 82). Can the use of storytelling create a third space come into existence allowing for discourse dealing with social justice concerning “culture, history, and race”, in a science classroom (Asher, 2009, p. 9)? McCullough seeks to create a science curriculum where all participants are privy to the social justice and desire to become activists for positive social and educational change.

Author

• Dana Compton McCullough, Georgia Southern University