Collaborative Flourishing: A Decolonizing Framework for Entangling Human and Nonhuman Agencies in STEM Education

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Learning With New Qualitative Methods in the Posthuman Turn

Abstract

Purpose: This paper builds on our previous work to explore decolonizing frameworks for thinking about and engaging with material agencies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education (Eglash et al. 2020). In it we address how posthumanist research and theory often discusses material agencies, there has been little attention to the fact that Indigenous communities and the field of Indigenous studies have long understood and engaged with collaborative entanglements of human and nonhuman relationships (Rosike et al. 2020). From educational technology co-design projects with Adinkra artisans in Ghana, Anishinaabe scholars in the U.S., and rural teachers in Ecuador, we have found that Indigenous concepts of material agency are not only generative for teaching and learning but also for sustaining and restoring local cultural wealth.

Methodology: We use the term “collaborative flourishing” to frame a methodological syncretism between organic, technical, and decolonizing components. The two design-based case studies we present are focused on educational applications to aquaponics: systems that combine aquaculture (i.e. raising fish and other aquatic animals) and hydroponics (i.e. growing plants in water). It is the symbiotic relationship between organisms, technologies, and Indigenous knowledge that helps to show how collaborative flourishing provides unique opportunities to demonstrate the importance of human/nonhuman collaborations in decolonizing approaches to STEM. To support this claim, we triangulated multiple sources of data (i.e. lesson materials, youth created artifacts, and pictures and videos) from two aquaponics workshops that engaged human and nonhuman collaborations in the context of larger justice projects: Indigenous food sovereignty and the African American natural hair movement.

Results: In the first workshop, students studied the history of colonization and how food sovereignty can be part of decolonizing projects for Anishinaabeg, Mayan, and other Indigenous communities. To explore one path toward food sovereignty, students’ designed aquaponics systems that were intended to meet local community food needs based on their research about daily caloric intake, climate, environment, and culture (figure 1). In the second workshop, students studied the history of Black hair care and the African American natural hair movement in the U.S. before working with a cosmetologist and an entrepreneur to create natural hair care products of their own. To explore methods for accessing natural ingredients in sustainable ways, students proto-typed aquaponic systems where they could grow their own plants and herbs to support their natural hair product businesses (figure 2).

Significance: The collaborative flourishing framework offers new opportunities for engaging with material agencies in STEM education; allowing students to learn the means of moving between Indigenous, biological, and technological understandings of a human/nonhuman symbiotic relationship. It can provide hands-on methods to learning about justice projects where human and nonhuman collaborations are central, such as Indigenous food sovereignty and the African American natural hair movement. This makes material agencies relevant beyond just designing more dynamic STEM education. It motivates STEM to work in service of sustaining and restoring local cultural wealth.

Authors

• Michael L Lachney, Michigan State University

• Ron Eglash, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

• Audrey Bennett, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

• Martin Reinhardt, Northern Michigan University

• William Babbitt, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

• Deborah Hammond-Sowah, University of Ghana