Confining Curiosity: Whiteness as Property in a Behavior-Focused Science Classroom

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Theoretical Analyses of Learning Environments

Abstract

This critical ethnographic study investigates how science education is facilitated within a disciplinary alternative school and how Whiteness as property shapes that facilitation. Guided by Critical Race Theory and supported by Critical Discourse Analysis, the study examines how exclusion, surveillance, and carceral logics intersect with curriculum and student-teacher interactions to regulate students’ access to meaningful science learning. Data was collected through classroom observations, teacher interviews, fieldnotes, and school artifacts over an 18‑week semester. Findings, organized around Harris’s (1993) four property functions of Whiteness, reveal how racialized power operates to limit engagement and exclude students of Color from science. The study contributes to conversations on equity in science education, highlighting how student resistance serves as agency within restrictive learning environments.

Author

• Maizie Dyess, University of Rhode Island