Designing STEM Classrooms for Racial Equity: A Tale of Two Academies

• In Event: Equity and Access in Science: Understanding Pathways Frameworks for Youth Learning and Development

Abstract

Drawing on data from a study of learning, race, and equity in an urban high school organized around small learning communities or “pathways,” we examine the ways in which the design of STEM learning spaces deeply influences students experiences. We take up the issue of how we can intentionally design for positive racialization. We contribute to the literature on equity in STEM by attending to the racialization processes that we argue are always at work in urban schools, and particularly so in schools that are organized into “pathways” demarcated along racialized lines.

The notion of learning pathways allows us to jointly analyze the opportunities of learning and identity on a microgenetic time scale (Saxe, 2002; Nasir, Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003) with the way that these micro-environments are embedded within sociopolitical processes (Nasir, Scott, Trujillo, & Hernandez, forthcoming). We also attend to the specific issues of racialization within and between learning pathways. Thus we use the term racialized learning pathways to highlight how race frames access to learning pathways as well as defines interactions within them.

The two learning communities we focus on are a prestigious (but mostly white and Asian) Engineering academy, and a less prestigious (but much more diverse) Computer Science Academy (CSA). In the first phase of the study, using ethnographic approaches, we engaged in participant-observation of the two learning communities and conducted semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and counselors. Our focus was understanding how various stakeholders were experiencing issues of race and equity across the two STEM-focused learning communities. In the second phase, we collaborated with the CSA director to design and teach a mini-unit focused on utilizing computer science practices to address educational equity issues at the school. The curriculum was designed to provide opportunities for students to connect their racialized experiences in the school to the learning of computer science related concepts and practices.

Data from the first phase of this study includes 7 teacher, 12 student, and 5 school administrator interviews, and field note observations gathered twice weekly over an academic year. From the design study, data includes student artifacts including final project portfolios, over 30 hours of class video recordings, and pre and post surveys to understand how students identify with computer science, how they view the purpose of the discipline, and how they think about equity issues at their school.

As we elucidate findings from the two phases of the study, we organize them into two key themes: 1) Designed STEM contexts carry with them affordances and constraints for racialization, and such environments can reproduce racial inequality, and 2) But designed intentionally, they can also disrupt negative racialization and inequality.

As discourses around expanding STEM opportunities gains increased attention on a national scale, it is critical these spaces are designed to afford positive racialization experiences for all students. Our findings 1) illuminate characteristics of STEM spaces that can be racially oppressive, and 2) has implications for the design of STEM spaces that may afford positive racialization experiences for students from historically non-dominant groups.

Authors

• Nailah Suad Nasir, University of California - Berkeley

• Sepehr Vakil, University of California - Berkeley

• Emmanuel Onyeador, Oakland Technical High School