Back to the Earth: A Culturally Intertwined STEM Learning Experience

• In Event: 70.055 - Toward Social Justice Through Expansion of STEM Opportunities: The Influence of After-School and Summer Programs

Abstract

The Back to the Earth (BTTE) program is an NSF ITEST project with the project goal of developing, delivering, and conducting research on a culturally-rich STEM curriculum that focuses on “place” for youth living on Native American reservations. Youth, grades 4-9, live on and attend schools that are on or near neighboring reservation communities in the Inland Pacific Northwest. Currently in the third year of a three-year funded project, the emerging research demonstrates the need to build positive and trusting community relationships, engage community partners in the development and implementation of the STEM learning events, and consider new ways to think about and deliver curriculum that is steeped in culture and focused on STEM.

Drawing on the curricular frameworks of Place-Based Pedagogies (Semken & Freeman, 2008) and critical pedagogies of place (Gruenewald, 2003) this project aims to develop a curriculum that engages youth in a culturally relevant educational experience that enables them to build connections in their community to make sense of their Indigenous Knowledge as well as the more global western ways of knowing. The place contextualizes the curriculum through a shared watershed, which is a life source that connects the tribes both physically and culturally. The watershed has endured political and environmental challenges over the last century that have tested the connections established by these communities. In this respect, water quality, natural resources, and restoration through engineering provides the STEM content for the BTTE curriculum, which enables engagement through hydraulics, the ecosystem and natural resources.

Through the implementation of a community-based participatory (Hacker, 2013) methodology we hoped to engage the community and tribal interests throughout the length of the project: in the planning phases, embedded in the delivery of the project to students, and in the final celebration and debriefing at the end of the work.

The data sources for this complex and varied informal learning events is two years of developed curriculum, field notes and observations from community planning meetings and curricular events, as well as participant surveys.

We began the project with the intent of creating a collaborative network among the researchers, community stakeholders, and STEM experts; however we soon discovered that the platform for a truly equitable partnership did not exist (Burhansstipanov, Christopher, & Schumacher, 2005). Through a process of building trust and relationship, that was at times disorienting and uncomfortable for those of us trained within a Western paradigm, we were forced to build a foundation for communication, shared goals, and a grounded approach for working in partnership with our partners. It is through this relationship we could more respectably immerse ourselves in the work while honoring an equitable and valued research project.

For those intending to develop a truly culturally rich STEM learning experience for tribal youth, and subsequent research, building an authentic collaboration with the community and tribal partnerships are significant. One must be willing to spend time developing trust and shared knowledge of historical/cultural norms and values.

Authors

• Anne L. Kern, University of Idaho

• Melinda Howard, University of Idaho

• Sameer Honwad, University of New Hampshire

• Laura Anne Laumatia, Coeur d'Alene Tribe