Science as Thinkable and Doable: Elementary Teachers' Agency for STEM Instruction in Urban Emergent Schools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Agency for Instruction and Curriculum

Abstract

There is a lack of literature that takes a non-deficit view of teachers committed to teaching science and engineering in elementary classrooms, providing a robust view of agentic teachers. We asked: How do teachers with strong commitments to elementary STEM narrate the nature of their STEM-linked agency over a school-year? With STEM journey maps, this narrative inquiry explored the thinkability and doability of science and engineering instruction in 18 elementary classrooms. Teachers’ STEM-linked agency was visible when science and engineering were both highly thinkable and doable. Teachers narrated this as a fluid phenomenon that ebbs and flows when they dynamically and creatively work within the structures of schooling, creating change and aligning practice with vision in innovative and responsive ways.

Author

• Alison Mercier, University of Wyoming