STEMalicious: A Visual Frame Analysis of Education Discourses on the "Girl Crisis" in STEM

• 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 reports on the findings of a study employing frame analysis and visual frame analysis to uncover how selected news media and STEM policy documents frame the crisis and solution of too few women in STEM fields. Given the international importance placed on the subjects of mathematics, science, technology, and engineering (STEM), it is essential that education researchers pay close attention to the explicit and implicit objectives behind these policies and how they are communicated to the public at large. Employing the theoretical and methodological framework taken from Altheide’s (1997) “the problem frame” and Entman’s (2007) frame analysis, the paper sets out to discuss how normative views about the crisis of women in STEM are disseminated publicly in the sense that it explains how a, “perceived reality [is made] salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (p. Entman, p. 52). Incorporating visual frame analysis, this paper uncovers the way in which ameliorate efforts to get girls in STEM programs represent their objectives through explicit visual imagery (McChesney, 2004; Goldstein, 2010). The knowledge generated by this study can help researchers, educators, and learners understand the present conditions, assumptions, and rationales that influence the way in which heteronormative biases are perpetuated in STEM education policy discourses, particularly those spread out to influence public opinion and ensue a growing crisis regarding the U.S.’s lack of global economic dominance and the persistent myth that jobs in the 21st century will demand technological expertise, leaving those that do not acquire such “competitive knowledge” to fend for themselves. The findings of this study hope to move the conversation past the superficiality of economic and corporate objectives of STEM education to question if empowerment and equity can be achieved through these means given the Western patriarchal society that continues to pay women less for equal work and experience, refuse paid maternity leave, and ignore divergent voices on key women’s rights issues such as abortion.

Author

• Nataly Z. Chesky, SUNY - College at New Paltz