79.019 - Disrupting "Truth": Theorizing the Cultural Politics of STEM Education Through a Plurality of Perspectives

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

As the number of scholars engaging issues of race, culture, and equity in STEM education grows, there remains a need to critically analyze its politics, policies, and practices that shape public life and in particular, the lives and futures of racially minoritized children. These papers address this need interrogating the “truth” of STEM education as promising political and economic enfranchisement “for all” from multiple perspectives. Through a diversity of theory, methodology and setting, these papers collectively theorize the ways in which racial capitalism, militarism, antiblackness and patriarchy operate within and through STEM education. This symposium thus incisively animates and contributes to the conference theme of how research can intervene to disrupt the resurgence of a “post-truth” paradigm in public discourse.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Chair

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University

Papers

• Racial Capitalism and STEM Education in Chicago Public Schools - Daniel Morales-Doyle, University of Illinois at Chicago; Eric Rico Gutstein, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Envisioning Black Space in Environmental Education for Young Children - Fikile Nxumalo, The University of Texas at Austin; kihana miraya ross, Northwestern University

• Not in Their Name: Reinterpreting Discourses of STEM Learning Through the Subjective Experiences of Minoritized Girls - Tesha Sengupta-Irving, Vanderbilt University; Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• "You're So Far Out, and You're Trying to Look In": Exploring Politicized Trust in a Racially Diverse Computer Science Classroom - Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University; Maxine McKinney de Royston, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Discussant

• Richard Ayers, University of San Francisco