Scientist Constructors: A Case Study of How Narratives Inform a Family's Conception of Their Connections to STEM

• In Event: 47.073 - Weaving Stories Into STEM Learning

Abstract

Introduction and Background
This case study investigates how one African American family with young children engages with the narratives of STEM professionals. The family participates in a program where diverse STEM professionals tell stories from childhood through current work experiences. Afterwards, families engage in hands-on making. Educational making environments that attend to equity and how families’ beliefs and histories may impact participation can offer flexible routes into STEM (Calabrese Barton, Tan, & Greenberg, 2017; Author, 2014; 2015; 2018), potentially off-setting the decline in STEM thinkability seen in children from families from traditionally underrepresented groups (Archer et al., 2012).

Methods
This case study includes a grandmother, mother, nine year old daughter and four year old son. We collected over 15 hours of observations and conducted nine semi-structured interviews (10 – 60 min) over one year. We studied the family’s interactions with five STEM professionals who varied in profession, age, gender and race/ethnicity. We selected this case from a larger design-based research study of family making (Authors, 2018) to study multi-generational sense-making of STEM narratives and how a family without college education or STEM professional backgrounds, from a traditionally underrepresented group in STEM, engaged with the narratives. Following Herman (2007), we see narratives as representational forms situated in particular discourse contexts that serve as tools to construct our own and others’ minds. Such narratives have been argued as a way to build interest in and understanding of science (Avraamidou & Osborne, 2009; Dahlstrom, 2014).
Our analysis linked narratives from STEM professionals with all instances in the observations and interviews of the family that referenced the STEM professional or their stories. Our analytic framework drew on theoretical constructs of narratives (Herman, 2007), and we used narrative analysis techniques to understand how family members made sense of their stories in relationship to those of the STEM professionals.

Findings and Conclusion
Our findings suggest that the stories mattered to the families: the daughter recounted detailed aspects of professionals’ jobs, and the mother described wrestling with one story for over a year as she wondered whether she, too, could pursue civil engineering. Second, we see different generations in the family drawing on the STEM professionals’ narratives for different purposes. For instance, the grandmother uses the narratives as a tool to reimagine African American women’s opportunities in STEM as she talks of her granddaughter’s future. The mother uses the story to revisit her past school story and to imagine a different route through enrollment in community college courses. The daughter uses a story to imagine more distant futures, posing the idea of becoming a ‘scientist constructor’ with her own lab. Taken together, our analysis suggests a dynamic, varying and ongoing role of STEM narratives in the “thinkability” of STEM education and careers.

Authors

• Kimberly Marie Sheridan, George Mason University

• Asia Williams, George Mason University

• Hyle Daly, George Mason University

• Christie C. Byers, George Mason University

• Abigail W Konopasky, George Mason University