Context-Dependent Expressions of STEM Identity-Related Behaviors

• In Event: Consequential Arrangements for Becoming: Considering Identity Work in STEM Across Social, Institutional, and Practice Spaces

Abstract

Purpose
We examine how social group composition and institutional, social, and historical context intersect to influence expressions of STEM identity across spaces.

Theoretical Grounding
We consider a STEM learning ecosystems model, which articulates that learning takes place through experiences across spaces, and learners develop personal STEM affiliations as a product of these unique sets of experiences (Dierking et al., 2021). Immediate and distal contexts, including familial, political, and historical, influence how experiences affect development (Hecht & Crowley, 2020). We focus on how shifting formal and informal learning contexts produce different expressions of STEM identity and shape identification with STEM according to ecologically derived perceptions of the kinds of identities nurtured (i.e., valued) in STEM spaces (e.g., Authors, 2022; Dawson, 2019).

Methods and Methodology
This research takes place in a Latine- and immigrant-majority city. We conducted phenomenological interviews (van Manen, 2014) about childhood STEM interactions with 20 college STEM students and fifteen children (aged 7-12) and their caregivers. We observed three family pairs as they engaged in two separate informal STEM learning experiences together. In analysis, we attended to how STEM engagement and expression of STEM identities varied across contexts.

Findings
The context of the learning experience fostered divergent opportunities for enacting STEM related conversations, which highlighted different aspects of what it means to be a STEM person. The mother in one of the families we observed reiterated the significance she placed on her children learning to think critically. However, when we observed the family at an aquarium, she asked questions that required factual responses rather than in-depth thought, taking cues from aquarium signs. Yet, when the family did a science experiment at home, she asked her children questions about scientific processes. Moreover, experiences differed depending on the social group composition across experiences. This was particularly noted in comparing interaction patterns–expressed both by college students and children–with their maternal and paternal caregivers, whereas the latter was more attendant to science as a set of facts and the former to probing thinking and interest expression.
College and child participants expressed that they understood “STEM” to be what they experienced in more formal learning spaces, not what they did at home with their families, even when engaging in similar tasks. Many dismissed their parents’ knowledge–formal or otherwise–due to a discrepancy between what they learned in school or their perception of the contemporary relevance of their parents’ prior knowledge. This was especially expressed by children of immigrant parents.

Significance
The discursive presentation of “STEM” in learning spaces is shaped by the sociocultural contexts of these spaces. Thus, learning unfolds according to contextual cues of what is recognized as STEM knowledge and behavior, even if contrary to STEM behaviors recognized and/or enacted in different settings. This may be especially consequential for learning in spaces explicitly identified as “STEM”. It may present a unique challenge for youth and families who experience cultural conflicts with institutional authorities that present STEM in sociocultural contexts and forms not afforded them, particularly for immigrant families.

Authors

• Heidi Cian, Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance
  Presenting Author

• Remy Dou, Florida International University
  Presenting Author