Polycultural and Polylingual STEM Education in Action: Generative Ideas and Selves Through Coding and Making

• In Event: The Power and Possibility of Science Education Research in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts: Unpacking Critical Issues

Abstract

Purpose & Theoretical Grounding: Grounded in sociocultural theory, we build on recent work of the Fifth Dimension afterschool programs and transworld pedagogy (Flores et al., 2014), by studying students’ meaning making and selves in science by attending to their voice and agency. We are interested in the ways students draw on their language repertoires and funds of knowledge (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2013; Lamarre, 2013), and their navigations of interculturality (Rosebery et al., 2010). The study took place in a high school in the context of an engineering and computer programing challenge of creating an ecological sound house over a 16-week time period, in teams of three to four students. The activity was assumed by two instructors from an NGO and a high school teacher.

Method: The data was collected in the context of a larger video-ethnography of educational activities of the NGO during the 2017-2018 academic school year (video data, fieldnotes, journal notes and interviews). Analysis implied a bricolage of data points, resulting in telling examples (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004). At the same time, we problematize our stance as researchers and critically engage with the role the camera and researcher presence plays in the interactions explored (Vossoughi & Escudé, 2016).

Results: Case 1 speaks to the polycultural in that a group of three girls are busy cutting the cartoon pieces for the ecological house they designed and which they will then outfit with the electrical circuit they programmed and crafted. As they work together, Dae, an Asian girl of the team notes: “People say that girls are not good at doing this.” Betha responds, “really”? Dae continues:”…like imagine machines, things like that, not sure what it’s called, that logic, just know there are people who say that.” Dae invoked a cultural narrative within which she saw herself entangled and positioned as a girl and outsider to technology, something she challenged by discussing it with her peers. It makes evident how a cultural fund of knowledge and identity (the invoked storyline about girls in computer science) was questioned and realigned through a brief social interaction in ways as not to close off their participation in the activity, making their identity as doers of coding legitimate (Nasir et al., 2012). Betha’s reply also attests to the affectively charged nature of that exchange (Vass et al., 2014). Case 2 speaks to the polylingual. Two girls from Rumania, who were friends and sat together, explored the materials of the project while continuously switching among multiple languages (Romanian, French & English). Those resources, however, were no longer available to them, once they worked in teams that did not share the same linguistic repertoires, possibly impacting their level of participation.

Scientific significance: The video camera helped us capture contentious moments we would have missed otherwise. The study also led us to deeply reflect on our role as researchers in “listening in” on contentious moments of meaning making and identity work in ways that are respectful, generative, and transformative of practice (Vossoughi, & Escudé, 2016).

Authors

• Jrene Rahm, University of Montreal

• Maria Grullon

• Ferdous Touioui

• Laurent Fahrni, Université de Fribourg