Project-Based Resistance and Transformation: A Case Study of an Urban STEM High School

• In Event: 25.042 - (Re)Considering STEM Education for Social Justice and Sustainability

Abstract

Question: STEM education has emerged as a salvation narrative among American policy elites, putting significant pressure on teachers to engage students with STEM. This pressure is particularly acute for teachers of low-income students of color, for whom engaging students with STEM means crossing intersections of race, class, and culture. Teachers in urban STEM schools have turned to project-based learning as a means of undertaking this work (Bell, 2010; Capraro, Capraro, & Morgan, 2013; Peters-Burton, Lynch, Behrend, & Means, 2014; Rhodes, Stevens, & Hemmings, 2011). How are these teachers interpreting and enacting STEM education and project-based learning? This paper uses case study data from an urban STEM high school to answer this question.
Framework: The conceptual framework of the paper argues that there are historical and philosophical tensions between different versions of STEM projects and that these tensions reflect different interpretations of the relationship between schooling, work, and society (Dewey, 1910; Drost, 1977; Kliebard, 2004; Knoll, 1997; Snedden, 1916; Stimson, 1915). The framework also reviews the differences between project-based schools and other project-based organizations (Sydow et al., 2004; Waks, 1997) and the difficulties of implementing projects in urban districts (Blumenfeld, Fishman, Krajcik, & Marx, 2000).
Methods: The paper combines phenomenological and ethnographic methods to capture the interactions among district policy, school culture, and teachers’ lived experiences (Spradley, 1979). Data sources include in-depth interviews, classroom observations, and project artifacts. Four teachers participated, including two from the school’s curriculum design team. Narrative analysis of the interview data (Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, & Bertsch, 2003) identified sections that are particularly salient (MacLure, M., 2013). Future ‘listenings’ to these sections, and the careful handling of project artifacts, will create additional spaces for linguistic/material meanings to emerge (MacLure, M., 2013).
Conclusions: An initial analysis of the data indicates that the participants used project-based learning to reframe STEM away from the culture and interests of policy elites and towards the culture and interests of low-income students of color, including students’ need to make autonomous career decisions (Brighouse, 2006). This process incorporated the school’s building and grounds, where teachers materialized their visions for what a project-based STEM school should look and feel like. It is also evident that the presence or absence of specific material features (e.g. glass classroom walls; sliding room dividers; a school garden) could make or break the projects teachers envisioned.
Significance: This paper is the first to use the educational foundations to frame an empirical study of a STEM school. President Obama has plans for 1,000 of these schools (President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010). Educational researchers should be troubled that STEM appears to be more rhetoric than reality in urban cases of these schools (Weis et al., 2015). By re-theorizing the role of STEM projects, and creating new knowledge about how STEM teachers use project-based learning, this paper offers educational researchers a leverage point for understanding and intervening.

Author

• Simon N. Jorgenson, The University of Vermont