Figured Worlds of STEM in High Schools and Among Students in Buffalo

• In Event: STEM Policies and Pathways in Two Cities Differently Positioned in the Global Economy

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the figured worlds of schooling and STEM among students, parents, teachers, and counselors at each Buffalo school. In studying figured worlds, we were guided by Bourdieu’s theory of social action (1977) and Holland et al.’s (1998) theory of identity and agency in practice. Bourdieu has given direction to a number of scholarly projects focused on how social structures penetrate individual consciousness, thereby enabling greater understanding of how institutional constraints and/or opportunities may be experienced and internalized at the day-to-day level of the individual or group. A key tenet is that individual choices and strategies are not the outcome of either blind conformity to social expectations or individuals‘ utilitarian cost-benefit analyses but of bids to position oneself as an actor (take on an identity) in a certain symbolic (or ideological) universe. Holland et al. (1998) name these symbolic universes “figured worlds” and define them as socially and culturally constructed realms of interpretation, e.g., the figured world of science or engineering. In their theory, figured worlds mediate the relationship between structural opportunities and individual choices.

We hypothesized that figured worlds of STEM and college destination would be different in high schools with different opportunity structures for enacting and experiencing math and science. Within schools, we expected the construction of figured worlds to vary by student social characteristics, particularly race and gender.

Data were collected from focal student interviews, school-wide general observations, and math or science classroom observations (see details above). Figured worlds were inferred from the words and stories used to describe student types, academic strengths, STEM, and college at each school (Holland et al., 1998). A qualitative analysis software program was used to code and sort words, phrases, and stories by school and then compared across schools and cities.

Initial results suggest that opportunity structures constrain how figured worlds are constructed. Although individuals and collectives can always contest structural arrangements and imagine themselves other than might be predicted by structural constraints, opportunity structures create severe constraints within which such figured worlds can be constructed. Even when students start out imagining themselves in STEM fields, labels and descriptors used for the opportunities in the Buffalo schools confuse students and parents more often than they articulate and/or elaborate opportunities. Additionally, in the Buffalo schools there are extremely limited STEM course offerings. At the two so-called STEM schools, neither Chemistry nor Physics is offered. All four schools have very few AP offerings, with no AP courses in math or science. Although there is a Bioinformatics track in one of the STEM focused schools--considered an Academic track per district policy, this track was disbanded in June, 2011. Parents and students who may have chosen this school for this opportunity are not aware of the track’s fate. Most students in this track envision themselves in STEM, but in fact the track is now eliminated, and they have no chance of accumulating prerequisites to be successful in this field at a four-year college.

Authors

• Amy Elizabeth Stich, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Kristin Cipollone, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Andrea Nikischer, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Lois Weis, University at Buffalo - SUNY