Race as ideological practice in biology teaching

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

Abstract

In biology education, Students of Color contend with racialized narratives about science success, policies and practices that normalize whiteness in the STEM system, and disciplinary learning opportunities that invoke racial meaning-making without accounting for race and racism. This critical race qualitative study examines how biology teaching, in the context of science ideologies, professional expectations of science education, and sociohistorical power relations, recreates race and racial difference. The findings demonstrate that while teachers and students routinely negotiated racial meanings, three ideological practices of race upheld whiteness as a norm of academic science. This analysis has implications for engaging with the diversity and unity of life that accounts for structural relationships between biology and U.S.-based racial hierarchies.

Author

• Manali J. Sheth, University of Illinois at Chicago