Linguistic Queering to Disrupt Normative STEM Disciplinary Practices in a Kindergarten Classroom

• In Event: Interaction as a Site for Ideological Negotiation and Transformation in Science Teachers' Learning

Abstract

Objectives.
The early childhood classroom serves as a child’s first experience of institutionalized learning, subsequently shaping their learning of ideologies. Early childhood educators' explicit and implicit interactions with children can form patterns of inequity and injustice within the classroom and society at large (Philip, 2011; Philip, 2018; Philip & Gupta, 2020).
Moment-to-moment interactions can co-construct a geopolitical matrix of power for language minoritized learners in STEM disciplines (Author, 2021). Teachers’ ideological assumptions about the STEM learning potential of historically marginalized learners in the early years constrain those students’ experiences in a way that requires further attention (Gagen & Getchell, 2006). We queer the conception of language towards creating new learning spaces for students who are identified as “ELLs” and “girls” and investigate the moment-to-moment influence of teachers’ ideological sensemaking (Philip, 2011) in a kindergarten STEM class.

Theoretical framework.
Our theoretical framework employs transdisciplinarity (Sengupta et al., 2019; Author et al., 2020) to queer the “purity” of classroom discourse. Drawing from Ahmed’s (2006) conceptualization of queer phenomenology, we “disorient” (p. 11) pure spoken language by opening the notion of language to include the communicative capacities of embodiment (Author & colleague, 2019), new materialism (Martin, 2019), more-than-human life (Marin & Bang, 2018), and the environment as the third teacher (Edwards et al., 2011). Queering language disrupts the foundation of the term “ELL,” in turn reorienting how teachers communicate with their students. This creates space for girl-identified ELLs’ heterogeneous meaning making (Rosebery et al., 2010; Sengupta et al., 2019) within the subtle, nuanced moments of early childhood STEM education.

Methods and data.
The present study was conducted in racially and linguistically diverse kindergarten classrooms in Canada. Over the course of six months in 2019-2020, videos and field notes were taken during regular classroom instruction and co-designed STEM-focused explorations and activities (totaling 162 hours of classroom observations). Each video was examined using critical interactional analysis (Philip & Gupta, 2020), and we inductively identified moments where ideologies around language (e.g., English monolingualism, normalizing multimodality and STEM participation) were co-constructed between teachers and students. Our analysis focused on in-class interactions surrounding two ELL and girl-identified students, which involved teachers.

Results and significance.
Our findings demonstrate linguistic queering, wherein the purity of language is queered in moment-to-moment teacher-student interactions. When linguistic queering happened, analysis indicated that the participation and agency of girl-identified ELLs increased during STEM lessons, furthering their exploration of STEM concepts across instructional settings. Girl-identified ELL children gained autonomy by using technology and coding, embodiment, materials, and more-than-human life to mediate their learning and disrupt language norms. Our study suggests that teachers’ tendency to attribute deficits to linguistic diversity and gender can be reoriented within moment-to-moment teacher-student interactions to support the agency, participation, and access of historically marginalized children in STEM. Teachers’ awareness of co-constructed ideological sensemaking (Philip, 2011) will further disrupt the category maintenance work of children (Davies, 2003) around the purity of language and gendered discourses and make way for a more equitable and just STEM early childhood education.

Authors

• Luke Muscat, University of Calgary

• Xiao Wang

• Sophia Thraya, University of Calgary

• Miwa Takeuchi, University of Calgary