How STEM Learning Impacts Indigenous Students’ Use of Community in Self-Identification

• In Event: Community-Informed STEM Learning

Abstract

The growing population of American Indian students who attend off-reservation schools has been under researched. This absence in American Indian education research, their unique needs and their growing numbers warrant more attention. To address this absence in education research literature, this study captured the experiences of American Indian students in an off-reservation high school community. Participants described how their STEM learning had negatively impacted their identity.

Mainstream American public education has not embraced the foundations of Indigenous worldviews (Lomawaima, 1990). As described through Social Reproduction and Cultural Capital Theory, this qualitative study makes known the varying ways that American Indian students describe how they create community and demonstrate their identity as they navigate formal schooling.

Since time immemorial, Indigenous communities survived and thrived in part to a gifted cooperative relationship with the natural world. This gift of life manifests as an interdependent relationship with air, water, land, and the universe (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005). Indigenous communities exercised ‘systems of knowing’ that are central to community and individual longevity. These knowledge systems contribute to the long-term success in informal and formal STEM educational efforts – so long as local environment (e.g., natural world) and the community-based values are included to develop culturally relevant pedagogies to increase culturally relevant STEM education (Torso, Kern, & Meyer, 2021). Mainstream American public education has not embraced the foundations of this worldview

Through interviews and observations, I document and interpret their experiences. The data suggest that American Indian students strongly connect to and use their tribal community identities to negotiate school. By recognizing the rules of the school, participants employed different forms of cultural and social capital, specifically the importance of space and forms of communication. Even though their high school has a high population of American Indian students, participants continue to experience challenges in STEM learning through stereotypical assumptions, expected roles, and structural barriers. These formal school-based impediments complicate opportunities for students to fully participate and engage in their educational institutions. This study illustrates Indigenous identity as effects of the social reproduction process of resistance, compliance, and agency.

Author

• Victor Begay, Cascadia College