What Future STEAM Education Should Take and Leave from the History of STEM Education

• In Event: Reckoning with histories of politics and racialization in STEM Education

Abstract

Set in a southern US district where Black children are overrepresented in the middle grades, this analysis explores middle school principals’ conceptualizations of STEAM education as a reform in their schools. I find principals’ conceptions reflected the racial ideological history of STEM education: from racial capitalist logics of workforce preparation to racial justice logics of social change. As an exercise in Black specificity, I discuss the limits of this history in charting the future, and instead propose Black Futurity STEAM, where the creative/inventive capacities of Black youth and cultures inform the design of interdisciplinary learning opportunities. I conclude with a discussion of principals’ polarized reactions to Black life as a viable starting point for instruction in the middle grades.

Author

• Tesha Sengupta-Irving, University of California - Berkeley