Who Pays the Price? Democratization and STEM Education Reform

• In Event: Do Current STEM Education Reforms Increase Equity?

Abstract

Objectives
This analytic paper draws upon data from a three-year longitudinal ethnographic study to discuss and illustrate the unintended consequences of the democratization of STEM education. As powerful national discourses continue to push STEM education forward as a reform initiative that promises to broaden access and provide pathways toward social mobility for underrepresented students, recent evidence suggests this “democratizing” effort can in fact lead to greater inequality. The purposes of this paper are to illustrate the ways in which well-meaning STEM reform efforts can function to undermine progress toward a more democratic education; to challenge our conception of democratization itself; and to re-consider the ways in which STEM education reform is both conceptualized and enacted.

Theoretical Perspectives
This paper is largely informed by the authors’ conception of “shadow capital” (Authors, 2017), an extension of Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital. Shadow capital is a distinctive form of cultural capital that “visibly reflects traces of dominant cultural capital…but in composition, it is independent of other dominant forms of capital and dominant class habitus,” and does not possess the same exchange value as dominant capital in the educational marketplace (Authors, 2017, p. 334). Shadow capital provides a useful lens to examine the democratization of education. Specifically, we demonstrate the ways in which STEM-focused schools in our study produce and disseminate shadow capital in order to challenge and re-think what it means to democratize STEM education.

Methods and Data Sources
This presentation is informed by data collected between 2010-2013 from four urban, non-selective schools serving non-dominant students in Buffalo, NY, USA. For our purposes here, we focus upon two of the four schools in the study because of their explicit STEM designation. Data sources include: in-depth, semi-structured interviews at each school, and observations in schools and homes. All data were analyzed using HyperResearch following open and focused coding procedures.

Results/Substantiated Conclusions
Despite aggressive, well-intended attempts to establish STEM opportunity structures, both schools undermined STEM opportunity, reinforcing inequality. Relying upon models that sought to emulate practices in more elite school spaces, schools were unable to provide the types and amounts of capital needed to enact the high-level STEM majors and careers to which students were encouraged to aspire. High-achieving STEM interested students were left to pursue fields other than STEM, if they pursued higher education at all, or channeled into low-wage STEM pathways (e.g. certified nursing assistant tracks). Students’ aspirations and their ability to enact them were circumscribed by contextual factors—factors made glaringly visible through the application of shadow capital.

Significance
As demonstrated by our study, STEM reform resulted in the reproduction of the very inequities democratization aims to reverse. It is imperative that we complicate conversations about STEM reform given its predominance as a successful policy solution to increase access for non-dominant students and mitigate inequality. Efforts to democratize must focus on more than simply providing non-dominant students with access to dominant capital.

Authors

• Amy Elizabeth Stich, University of Georgia

• Kristin Cipollone, Ball State University