STEM Education Reimagined: The scholar-activists tool for societal change

• In Event: Roundtable Session 8
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Disruption and Contestation in Higher Education: Language, Politics, and Activism

Proposal

How are women scholar-activists in Ghana’s higher education (HE) challenging existing educational frameworks through STEM education to reimagine funding streams in higher education? How do women scholar-activists use STEM education to promote stronger ties between their institutions and the local community?

In 1994, Ghana became the first West African nation to be connected to the Internet, with cyber cafes found in some of the smallest villages. The Data Development Group of the World Bank reports that, Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in Ghana is progressively on par with other low-income countries, but above the 1.1% average for the Sub-Saharan Africa region. The Ghanaian government has supported various initiatives, including the establishment of model Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) high schools to advance the ICT infrastructure. The Bosomtwe Girls STEM High School in Deduako, Ashanti region was purposely built to further science education among young girls. However, the tech scene in Ghana is male-dominated and women’s presence has remained largely invisible.

Educational research on women’s activism in HE often focuses on women’s marginality and not so much on their resistance, a development that inadvertently portrays women as powerless and negligible change agents. Therefore, I have embarked on a dissertation journey to explore women’s activism in HE, to accentuate women’s agency and etch their contribution into the historiography of activism. For about a year, I have begun data collection for my dissertation, with a goal to systematically trace women’s contribution to the HE landscape through their activism. Through a qualitative exploratory multiple case design, I draw upon the lived experiences of 38 women and 10 men at two public universities in Ghana, utilizing three data collection methods: interviews, observations, and document analysis. Conceptually, it is grounded in Post-colonial Feminism, Activism Leadership Model, and Critical Social Movement theories. The analysis is situated in sociological literature to capture socio-cultural contexts that inform women’s level of involvement with civic engagement.
With education policy implication for gender equity and civic education, one of the major findings that has emerged in my study is how women scholar-activists are using STEM education to reimagine solutions to prevailing challenges in higher education settings. In the context of Ghana’s higher education, scholar-activists have mounted various initiatives to bridge the digital divide along the dimensions of gender, socio economic, and community settings.
To carefully map out the significance of these contributions, I categorized them under two dimensions. The first dimension, Tangible Effects Dimension (TED) classifies outcomes that are verifiable with currently existing structures and operations. Aspirational Intervention Dimension (AID) connotes immediate intervention with no structural system and/or mechanism in place to institutionalize the outcome or replicate the temporal measured success. Based on participants’ responses, I have documented about 19 outcomes. For the purposes of my paper, I will present emergent themes that relate to educational technology from the standpoint of STEM education. My contribution offers empirical data on gender justice activism in technology and education from a Global South perspective, and education policy implication for civic engagement in higher education settings.

Author

• Theresa Cann, Columbia University Teachers College