Developing Learning Assistants’ Critical Consciousness and Racial Noticing Lens through a Justice-Oriented STEM Fellowship

• In Event: Mapping Racial Projects in Postsecondary STEM: Interrogating Scripts, Schemas, and Structures for Justice

Abstract

--Objectives
Despite their role as near-peer educators, undergraduate Learning Assistants (LAs) often receive minimal pedagogical training in racial equity and justice (Barron et al., 2021). As a result, LAs, like STEM faculty (Author, 2022), may adopt color-evasive narratives that obscure structural inequities and hinder their ability to notice and respond to racialized events. This study examines the impacts of a year-long justice-oriented fellowship on LAs’ development of critical consciousness and racial noticing, exploring how they came to recognize, interpret, and challenge dominant racial narratives in STEM classrooms (Freire, 1970; Shah and Coles, 2020).
--Theoretical Framework
We drew on critical consciousness as operationalized by Carlson et al., which outlines four developmental stages: passive disengagement, emotional engagement, cognitive analysis, and intentions to act (Carlson, et al., 2006). It informed both the design of the fellowship and our analytic lens. While additional frameworks such as racial noticing and color-evasive racism were introduced to participants as a core part of the curriculum, critical consciousness served as the core structure for interpreting learning and transformation (Shah and Coles, 2020, Bonilla-Silva, 2021).
--Data Sources and Methods
Data sources included pre- and post-interviews focused on participants’ conceptions of success, equity, and the role of race in STEM; written reflections and in-session artifacts from the fellowship. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we engaged in inductive open coding to trace how participants made sense of equity and racialized experience in their classrooms. The four stages comprised our initial codebook, we examined how dimensions of critical consciousness manifested in evolving language, tensions, and shifts. Emergent codes included “recognizing silence as racialized,” where students began to see classroom disengagement as a product of racialized dynamics rather than individual disinterest; and “challenging individualist explanations,” as LAs moved away from deficit narratives and toward structural framings.
--Results
Participants entered the fellowship with largely race-evasive or meritocratic explanations of equity. Over time, many began to reframe prior assumptions, use more structural language, and recognize how systemic exclusion shaped classroom dynamics. All participants demonstrated some movement in how they interpreted equity and the role of race in STEM, though they varied in the depth, pace, and consistency of this shift. Some showed a growing awareness of how their own pedagogical decisions shaped inclusion and participation, while others wrestled with contradictions, at times challenging dominant narratives, and at other times reverting to individualist framings. These tensions illustrate the nonlinear and iterative nature of developing critical consciousness and the sticky, slippery nature of the dominant racial ideologies and narratives that participants were working to unsettle. Moments of disruption, peer dialogue, and guided reflection played key roles in helping participants surface, interrogate, and rework inherited narratives.
--Significance
This study challenges the assumption that undergraduate LAs are naturally inclusive, showing they require intentional, justice-focused training to recognize and disrupt systemic racism in STEM. By integrating critical consciousness into LA preparation, we offer a replicable model for cultivating equity-minded educators within complex and often resistant undergraduate contexts.

Authors

• Regan Levy, Michigan State University

• Shahnaz Masani, Michigan State University