Not "Real" Science Education Research: The Systematic Silencing of a Latina Science Education Scholar

• In Event: 32.075 - Emerging Critical Voices in the Field of Science Education: Sharing Narratives of Hope, Struggle, and Learning

Abstract

My counterstory is presented as a testimonio of my experience as a Latina doctoral student and assistant professor in science education, in Teacher Education departments and Science Education conferences that are dominated by white and middle/upper class academics. Testimonio is described by The Latina Feminist Group (2001) as a “crucial means of bearing witness and inscribing into history those lived realities that would otherwise succumb to the alchemy of erasure” (p. 2). I use testimonio methodology (Delgado Bernal, et al., 2012) to tell my counterstory to the dominant narrative in academia that would have me domesticated. As a Latina from a working class background, I often find myself out of sync with and ostracized by the culture of academia in general and science education academia specifically. In my testimonio, I aim to wind my herstory of trauma, silencing, invisibility, and frustration into a narrative of determined survival.
My scholarly work critically examines the structure of science education through highlighting the voices of those traditionally marginalized, using Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) and Chicana Feminist frameworks, especially the work of Goria Anzaldúa. My frameworks underscore the colonizing nature of science education as it is often practiced, and advocate for anti-oppressive, decolonizing methods. My resistance to mainstream narratives of science education research (which paint this field as colorblind, objective, and meritocratic) not only ostracized me from the “in crowd” within dominant structures of science education, but justified their continual abuses and oppressions of my voice, by body, and my research. My testimonio is intended to expose the racist, sexist, ethnocentric abuses of power underlying academia within science education, often shrouded under a patriarchal and “white savior” lens of tokenism at best, and forced assimilation and gatekeeping at worst.
Through my narrative, I will share my experiences as a doctoral student and later an assistant professor, and one of very few Latinas entering the field with years’ experience as a scientist (in physics) and science teacher to groups of low-SES Latin@ middle school students. I brought into my research a passion for teaching science in ways informed by my own working class upbringing and ethnic identity. The message I continually receive from many scholars in science education is that my research and identity is offensive and contrary to “real” science education and “real” education scholarship, which they claim to be objective and without the influence of white supremacy, patriarchy, ethnocentrism and classism.
I hope that in telling my counterstory, others from historically marginalized backgrounds who have been oppressed and abused by the status quo within the academic world of science education, will feel solidarity, will empathize with shared patterns of oppression, and will feel compelled to speak out in chorus with me against the traumas we’ve endured. I also hope that those involved in science education research will take note of these experiences in order to raise awareness that this climate exists, and work together with the marginalized and historically looted, to change it.

Author

• Jean Rockford Aguilar-Valdez, Portland State Univeristy