Expansive Learning Through Counternarratives in Co-Constructed Multimodal Cases of Engineering Work Over Time

• In Event: 25.045 - Creative Resource Leveraging and Critical Mobilities in Equity-Oriented Makerspaces

Abstract

Objectives
This paper reports on a youth participatory action research study (Cammarota & Fine, 2008) developed over two years with three researcher-makers (2 African American/1 Latinx) from an equity oriented makerspace in Great Lakes City, MI. The youth developed online multimodal cases with researchers using online digital media tools to discuss critical understandings of science & engineering learning based on engineering designs they created for sustainable communities (duct-tape thermometer tie/anti-bully phone app/solar panel fan-hat). The multimodal artifacts produced include videos, audio recordings, pictures, and text. The research questions under investigation are:
What counternarratives about learning and engagement in engineering design do the co-constructed cases say about meaningful STEM learning?
How and in what ways do these counternarratives of STEM learning support learning/meaning-making in other areas of their life?
Perspectives / Theoretical Framework
Our work is grounded in how youth employed a range of counternarratives (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002) in our co-constructed cases of their engineering design work, while also supporting expansive learning (Engestrom & Sannino, 2010) in other areas of their life. Using counternarratives, minoritized communities uphold their experiential knowledge as a strength, by drawing on lived experiences to make sense of the ways they have been silenced, racialized, gendered and classed by others (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). Through this same end, expansive learning allows us to see how individuals involved in these sensemaking activities take action to transform the system through reconceptualizing motives of activity, and embracing new possibilities for those activities through the vertical (disciplinary knowledge) and horizontal (space/time) movement of resources (Engestrom & Sannino, 2010). Counternarratives provide a source of strength for making sense of what youth think is important in their learning.
Method / Data Sources
The data included multimodal artifacts produced for online cases, fieldnotes from yearlong co-participation with youth (225 hours), and group/individual interviews (40 hours). Analysis involved movement between a grounded approach in dialog with youth and an expansive learning framework.
Results
In our findings, youth went through multiple iterations of identifying problems and designing solutions in the engineering design process, centralizing community members’ needs and experiences. By employing counternarratives of these meaningful learning opportunities, youth challenged dominant ideologies of engagement in science/engineering work. They legitimized their participation by questioning for whom is science, and for/what purposes. For example, one youth used her experience in understanding community perspectives to create beauty products from coconut oil for her friends and family to reduce their dependency on commercialized hair products created without their unique community perspectives.
Significance
Making for the public good supports leadership, confidence and agency-building by integrating science and technology literacy practices in the creation of their multimodal cases (Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010) allowing for understanding how STEM resources can move across their lives, while increasing agency and identity in STEM. These expansive learning outcomes were ongoing, over-space/time and often multi-layered in how youth chose specific multimodalities to explain their community-based engineering learning, and also how their knowledge of science and engineering can be used in other areas of their lives.

Authors

• Christina Restrepo Nazar, Michigan State University

• Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University