Chin Refugee Youth Constructing Hybrid Spaces in STEM

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Building on Students' Funds of Knowledge in the Classroom

Abstract

In this paper, we illustrate how refugee youth from Chin State, Burma, make use of their funds of knowledge in science learning to construct hybrid spaces. We analyzed interviews conducted during an afterschool STEM program by engaging in an iterative qualitative analytic practice that drew upon techniques from grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) and phenomenology (van Manen, 2016). We present three stories from an 11th grader Lautu boy to show how he constructed hybrid spaces across different social settings to position himself, his funds of knowledge, and Chin State as indispensable to scientific exploration. The results of this study demonstrate how refugee youth are empowered to transform polycontextual tensions into hybrid spaces and make contributions to scientific discourse.

Authors

• Margaret Inah Jeong, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Minjung Ryu, University of Illinois at Chicago