Shifts in Black Girls’ Perceptions of Self Through Lotions and Potions: Science Through Hair Care

• In Event: A Methodological Renaissance: Expanding Intersectional Approaches for Black Girls in Education

Abstract

Purpose
Many Black women and girls operate as kitchen beauticians, people who make, use, and supplement products using materials typically found in the kitchen, as they navigate ways to care for their hair. However, the way cultural activities like Black women and girls doing hair and making hair care products, and those impacts on learning have not been central to science learning experiences regardless of how science is a part of their daily lives (Grant, et al., 2015). Lotions and Potions situates cultural practices such as hair care as a part of Black girlhood within the design of a science curriculum to challenge settled hierarchies, irrelevance, and disinterest within STEM experiences.

Theoretical Framework and Methods
Using a culturally sustaining framework (Paris & Alim, 2014), Lotions and Potions: Science through Hair Care is a Next Generation Science Standard-based curriculum that centers and celebrates Black hair and DIY making practices as science content in an informal learning setting. This research untangles traditional experiences for Black girls within STEM learning spaces toward expanding culturally inclusive curricular activities to provide opportunities for students to think, behave, and talk like scientists and engineers (Aikenhead & Elliott, 2010; Brown, 2021). This research investigates the question In what ways did the Lotions and Potions curriculum impact Black female girls’ perceptions themselves as doers of science?
35 girls participated in a semi-structured interview before and after the class. Ten girls participated in the curriculum through an afterschool program and 25 girls participated with the curriculum in a summer camp. 30 of the 35 students self-identified as Black girls. Five girls identified as Hispanic. The interview protocol was informed by research that incorporated students’ pre and post drawings of their participation in science practices as a primary interview component (Tucker-Raymond, et al., 2007).
Findings and Discussion
The comparison of pre and post interviews showed the students perceived a shift in where science practices can happen, in-school versus out-of-school. Each of the students then explained their drawings indicating whether or not the activity happened at school or out of school.
Regarding the pre-interviews, all of the students indicated that their experience being a scientist was part of their in-school science experience. For the post-interview drawings, 28 of 30 Black girls their experience being a scientist was part of their in-school or out-of-school science experience. The students overall had broad shifts in their perceptions of themselves as science doers and what is science content after the Lotions and Potions: Hair Care curriculum was implemented. The traditional classroom is where a majority of the students recalled themselves being a scientist and discussing science doing. After the hair care class, all but one student indicated an out-of-school time experience where they were being science doers.
These shifts suggest students perceived science to be able to happen beyond the classroom, discussing their experience from passive to active science doing. STEM experiences beyond the formal classroom aid in increasing interest and participation of students in STEM subject areas (King & Pringle, 2019; Ortiz, et al., 2019).

Author

• Rasheda Likely, Kennesaw State University