Paradoxes of Inclusion in STEM Education: Making Up Cultural Others Through “Natural” and “Neutral” Spaces

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium will problematize how STEM education reforms are discursively located outside of culture, and as such, appear key to solving problems associated with the “increased cultural diversity” ascribed to (im)migrants, minoritized groups, and refugees. The papers analyze reforms traveling across the United States, Europe, and China to demonstrate how universalized spaces of STEM education—such as nature, health, and mathematical models—are neither natural nor neutral. The papers highlight how such spaces contain normative principles about the desired student and future citizen that marginalize those classified as outside these cultural norms. The session’s purpose is to make it possible to question unintended effects of recent STEM education reforms seeking to promote physical well-being, social equity, and cultural inclusion.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Division B - Section 1: Culture and Commentary (The Readings/Makings of Curriculum)

Chair

• Paola Valero, Stockholm University

Papers

• Prioritizing Their Health: Historicizing the Making of Others in U.S. Colonial and Metropolitan Science Education - Kathryn Lewkowicz Kirchgasler, The University of Kansas

• The Making of Problems and Possibilities Within Educational Integration Projects in Swedish Nature - Camilla Safrankova, Malmö University

• The Performativity of the Global Future: Denaturalizing the Imperative of STEM for Solving Common Problems - Lei Zheng, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• PISA, the "Global Mathematics Regime," and the "New Mental Hygiene" - Ryan Ziols, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Discussants

• Jesse Bazzul, University of Regina

• Erika C. Bullock, University of Wisconsin - Madison