The Complex Ecology of Racial and Learning Identities: The Consequences of Racial Stratification in Schools

• In Event: 52.029 - Race, Rights, and Rigor: Identity, Learning, and Motivation Among African American Youth

Abstract

Building on research on sociocultural approaches to learning and identity (Lee, 2008; Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Tejeda, 1999; Nasir, 2012), the learning sciences has begun to develop theoretical accounts for how race and power play into processes of learning (Esmonde & Langer-Osuna, 2013). This work argues that it is important to build on the cultural practices of learners (Bell, Tzou, Bricker, & Baines, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 2009) and to have approaches rooted in anti-racist and decolonizing pedagogies (Freire, 2000; Gutstein, 2006; Paris, 2012).The learning sciences have contributed to accounts of how inequities in STEM persist, and how underrepresented students are best supported in learning and identity development (Nasir & Hand, 2006; Medin & Bang, 2014). Such studies have been focused on classroom-level studies and have been less inclined to consider school-level processes.
Drawing on data from a study of learning and equity in an urban high school organized around learning academies, we examine how the design and organization of learning spaces influences students’ access to learning and identities. We present findings from two phases of the study. The first phase of the study consisted of a set of school case studies that highlighted the experiences of African American in schools. We focus on one of the case study sites, Bay Prep High School, which had several STEM-focused academies . Data collection in phase one included classrooms and school observations over a 6 month period, as well as interviews with teachers (n= 6), students (n= 20), parents (n=4), and other school staff and administrators (n= 8). The second phase was a design study, with the goal of teaching high school computer science in order to engage students in critiquing and addressing racialized and gendered inequities through the design and development of technological artifacts. We present a theoretical frame that theorizes racialized learning pathways, to highlight how the structure of the learning academies, and the racialized nature of student participation had consequences for the learning identities students were able to develop.
Our paper focuses on two key findings. The first is that designed STEM contexts carry with them affordances and constraints for racialization, and such environments can reproduce racial and gender inequality through the ways in which they provide access to different racialized learning pathways for students. The second finding, from phase two, is that intentionally-designed STEM contexts, can work to support the disruption of negative racialization that is reinforced by structural forces at the school level. Such contexts can constitute more expansive racialized learning pathways. This occurred through curricular and pedagogical opportunities for students to engage in structural critiques of their school within an introductory computer science course.
This paper contributes to an understanding of how learning and identity development are mediated by broader processes of racialization tied to schooling organization and access structures and how racial and gender inequities in STEM can be both reproduced and contested in large urban schools serving racially and socioeconomically diverse students.

Authors

• Nailah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation

• Sepehr Vakil, University of Texas at Austin