Crafting Futures: Making Space(s) and Making Time(s) Toward Justice-Centered STEM Education (Poster 33)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

Economic rationale for expanding STEM education shapes the design(s) of learning environments towards high-tech futures governed by specific industries’ imaginaries. Yet, these futures do not necessarily represent the values of marginalized communities. Countering hegemonic futures, I ask: How do youth of color in informal STEM programs make space and time for imagining more just futures? I present ethnographic work across two locales in the U.S.; a makerspace housed in a predominantly Black after-school center in the Midwest, and two informal programs in a predominantly Latinx region in the Southwest. Across these contexts, I bring into focus the relationship(s) between design, time, space, and STEM.

Author

• Melissa Perez, University of Michigan