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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

As Black women educators committed to social justice, our scholarship and teaching interrogate silencing, marginalization, and forced invisibility inside and outside academia. We argue for the connections between Black feminist pedagogical strategies and fostering a learning environment focused on developing interests and skills related to the science, technology, art + design, and mathematics (STEAM) field. We argue Black feminist pedagogical strategies can be utilized with and by teachers, K-16 students,and community members in order to expand the classroom and recognize more authentic learning environments. This broadening of the physical and psychological “space” for educating the Black community, which has been historically marginalized in the STEAM field, allows for a discussion focused on asset based strategies for addressing this education debt.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chairs

• Tamyka Morant, University of Maryland

• Ebony Terrell Shockley, University of Maryland - College Park

Papers

• Examining the Alignment Between African American and Latino Parents' Math Homework Assistance Practices and the Common Core - Charmaine Mangram, Stanford University

• Critical Genes, Critical Theory: Creating a Critical Genetics Curriculum as a Counternarrative to/in the Urban Imaginary - Kerrita K. Mayfield, Holyoke Public Schools

• Let Black Girls Lead: Self-Guided STEAM in Communities and Beyond - Tamyka Morant, University of Maryland

• "Play Like a Girl": Playing With Girlhood in the World of Pixie Hollow - Maria Inez Velazquez, Bucknell University