Media Narratives About STEM Education: Reframing Racism and Crisis in a Title I School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Framing the Crisis of Education in the News: The Hidden Curriculum and Pedagogies of Neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper raises critical truths about the detrimental impacts of Eurocentric, Patriarchal, and Capitalistic emphasis on the nature of STEM and STEM education (Harding, 1998), along with the media’s neoliberal emphasis on testing accountability and measurement of rote STEM knowledge (Giroux, 2005). These narratives have detrimental impacts on schools serving communities of color who struggle with poverty, particularly those students who want to learn science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in engaging and authentic ways. Analysis of narratives of ten students and a teacher of color at a Title One school illustrates how the narratives inherent in media portrayals of STEM advancement and STEM education reform frames STEM as a tool for economic gain and STEM learning as quantifiable; employing behaviorist notions of "intelligence" and “success” and assessment in the name of "accountability." In this study, critical ethnography (Madison, 2011), narrative analysis, and Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) ground how students and their teacher note the disparities between their exposure to narratives of STEM success for purposes other than financial gain, and the dearth of narratives from/about people who look like them, all the while critically noting issues of access to STEM learning resources and quality hands-on instruction juxtaposed with those available at predominantly White schools serving affluent communities. Students testify to struggling with racism, classism, and neoliberal educational policies that assess worth via test performance, and critique the injustice inherent in science instruction based on rote memorization of canonical scientific factoids that are "drilled and killed" to increase the school’s test performance. Students identify a disregard of curiosity and desire to wonder, create, and explore ideas at deeper levels. Students also share feelings of disassociation with STEM due to its portrayal as something that does not represent them or their interests in the media and in the narratives this media propagates into our daily culture. The teacher highlights how her worth as teacher is determined by her students’ scores and the likelihood of students passing future tests. Students concur that their worth is also measured by test performance and regurgitation of rote STEM facts, and not as whole human beings. They raise critical questions about whom STEM educational "reform" and the narratives of STEM “success” in the media truly serves when schools in communities of color are reduced to "information dispersal and testing factories" for the sake of "accountability," while students' desires for authentic forms of STEM education are ignored and misrepresented.

Author

• Jean Rockford Aguilar-Valdez, Portland State Univeristy