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Nuestra Ciencia: Transforming Science Experiences for Latinx Undergraduate Students Through Asset-Based Spanish-Language Microbiology Instruction

Sun, April 16, 9:50 to 11:20am CDT (9:50 to 11:20am CDT), Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, Chicago, Floor: 1st Floor, Atlantic E

Abstract

Critical scholars call for new, equitable approaches to conducting research and teaching in partnership with communities (Bang & Medin, 2010; Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Penuel, 2017). Nuestra Ciencia (NC) addresses this call, as a new university-school program run by an interdisciplinary team of students and faculty in California. In this presentation, we describe the co-design process of developing and teaching science lessons in Spanish and the impact on undergraduates’ views on research, scientific content in Spanish, and sense of belonging to higher education.

We draw on the notion of ‘figured world’, a socially and culturally constructed space, that outlines what it means to participate, definitions of science, and who is considered a science person (Calabrese Barton et al., 2012; Holland et al., 1998). We examine the standpoint of NC undergraduates toward Spanish and science, or how they see the ‘world’ of science and scientists as they work collaboratively with PIs. NC undergraduates participate in every aspect including topic selection, experiment development and troubleshooting, lesson development, teaching, data collection and analysis, conference presentations and publications.

To understand the process of co-design, we focus on two teams of seven Latinx undergraduates as they developed and taught lessons about vaccines, the immune system, and herd immunity to fourth graders at a bilingual elementary school from 2021-2022. Our analysis unpacks how students initiated the focus on vaccines due to challenges as their communities were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and grappling with vaccine hesitancy (Andrasfay & Goldman, 2021; Khubchandani et al., 2021; Tirupathi et al., 2020). To leverage assets while countering barriers, students advocated for developing lessons and outreach videos in Spanish about COVID-19.

A participatory design-based research (DBR) approach was used to collect and analyze data in collaboration with researchers, participants, and practitioners (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). We examined program processes and products to understand the effect of design decisions and program components. We performed multiple rounds of emergent coding on three undergraduate focus group interviews (Saldana, 2009). The codes from interviews were triangulated with text from the analytic memos, planning meeting notes, and teaching artifacts.

Our findings reveal undergraduates felt more belonging toward the university and surrounding community as they embraced positions as teachers and role models, “learning to be” rather than “learning about” (Brown, 2006). In particular, the use of Spanish to teach everyday science content was transformative for undergraduate learners. Undergraduates shifted from viewing Spanish as a home language for “day to day things” to valuing its role as “a tool” for expressing self, being a role model, and connecting with family. One student reported, “It really felt like I was doing a service to my younger self like I would have loved to have this experience as a child and literally be able to show my parents what I did, and not having me like translate.”

By outlining our project design and documenting our undergraduate students’ experiences, we hope to provide recommendations for educators and policymakers on how to better support Latinx undergraduates in STEM.

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