Critical Genes, Critical Theory: Creating a Critical Genetics Curriculum as a Counternarrative to/in the Urban Imaginary

• In Event: Let Girls Lead: Girls as Critical Thinkers, Designers, and STEAM Researchers

Abstract

Urban adolescents occupy public “greenspace” differently than their suburban counterparts (Alkon & Agyeman, 2012). Developed from a qualitative curriculum study of four years of an extrascholastic urban youth program in a major urban center, the neologisic Critical Genetics connects urbanity to a standards-based science curriculum by utilizing the learners’ lived experiences and various forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1963; Brayboy, 2005; Solozarno & Bernal, 2001; Yosso, 2005). While denaturing the othering that historically codes whiteness as central to science knowledge production (Guthman, 2012), despite the institutional racism that currently plagues such academic enterprises (Alkon & Agyeman, 2012). The contexts for this critical science work is framed by a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) report encompassing three decades of data which states, in part, that women from underrepresented minority groups (Hispanic, Native American and black) are less likely to attend colleges and universities than their Asian and white counterparts and that nine out of every ten working scientists and engineers employed in the United States as of 2010 are white and male (2013).
Genetics was a platform for exploring constructed identities used to negotiate the multiple worlds of: community, home schools and the academic program (Gergen, 1994; Moll & Greenberg, 1990). Further, as non-white researchers and learners our phenotypes are contested sites that reflect interactions between ourselves and our environmental conditions: substandard food choices in poor urban communities of color; high rates of lead deposition in the urban environment from auto traffic and industry; early menstruation and the development of secondary sex characteristics like increased breast size in girls and early growth of body hair in boys; fat deposition in both sexes; and food swamps that offer a plethora of high fat/low nutrient foods (Alkon & Agyeman, 2012; Deardoff, Fyfe, Ekwaru, Kushi, Greenspan, & Yen, 2012; Herman-Giddens, Steffes, Harris, Slora, Hussey, Dowshen, Wasserman, Serwint, Smitherman, & Reiter, 2012; Kolata, 2012). Phenotype is at its simplest the physical expression of genes (Schraer & Stoltze, 1991).
This work is based on a social constructivism Shaw (1994) in Gergen (2001) that recognizes embodiment of place. While Critical Education Theory (CET) contextualizes school and its curricula as sites of critical interrogation that trouble the interactions between constituents like parents and children and the content delivered by the process of being educated. Gaze encompasses the public’s role in reinforcing socialization and dominance by looking upon brown bodies, and to use that view/vision/perspective/power to be deterministic about role and agency in (educational) spaces (McRobbie, 1994, 2004).

Figure 1: Explication of Critical Genetics Curriculum in the Urban Imaginary

Data is derived from student self reports of curricular aspects that resonated with them, that troubled their constructs of various scientific learning communities, or that were linked to their lives outside the program. As well, students completed midterm reports about the impact and quality of the critical genetics curriculum, assessed their home schools’ science programs and teachers, and competed self-assessments of their genetics knowledge.

Author

• Kerrita K. Mayfield, Holyoke Public Schools