Mapping the affective trajectories of young people into science

• In Event: STEM Education Across K-12 Contexts

Abstract

Scholars have long argued that emotions, or affect, are central to our lives but we still know little about how our pathways into science might be guided by our emotions. Situated within the field of science identity work, we here apply and expand the work of Holland and colleagues (1998) to examine the role of affect in 16 young people’s trajectories into science in Canada. Our analyses highlight how the emotions experienced by these young people were not simply ir/rational or private feelings, but were meaningful experiences that shaped their engagement with science. This work interrogates affect as entangled in figurings of science and self, and proposes a new lens with which to aid our understandings of participation in science.

Authors

• Emily MacLeod, McGill University

• Jrene Rahm, University of Montréal