Interrogating Learning and Identity in Science by Attending to Embodied, Affective, and More-Than-Human Entanglements (Poster 3)

• In Event: Reengaging (With) Care in Equity-Based STEM Research

Abstract

Purpose & Theoretical Grounding: How can education be reconfigured and reimagined to address contemporary societal challenges and prepare for life? That question calls for an interrogation of current notions of learning and identity in science and what we understand science literacy to mean (Avraamidou, 2020; Vossoughi & Vakil, 2018). That question also pushes boundaries in terms of methods that have failed so far to fully account for both, the entanglement of learning and becoming in science and its emergence in movement as life is lived (Ingold, 2011). Picking up on these issues we ask: How do we learn and become in science through relations and ongoing navigations of the complex educational landscape marked by historical, social, political, economic and cultural constraints and processes of power? How is such learning and becoming in science marked by the more-than-human but also embodied and affective (Ehret & Leander, 2019; Lloro-Bidart & Sidwell, 2020)? Once reconfigured, what do stories of science learning and becoming tell us about science in society, about entanglements, and about emergence in and through living?
Methods: We draw from two sets of qualitative data collected with youth in two different out-of-school science programs. Case 1 weaves together stories from Alexi and Bengali, two first year high school students with recent histories of immigration that we met in a maker project in 2017, that was co-led by a community organization and their science teacher. We draw on videotaped observations and individual interview data that we gathered at the time to document their involvement in the maker project. Analysis for this paper centers on moments that make evident entanglements of learning and becoming in more-than human relations, some of which they also articulated as shaping their figured selves in science. Case 2 hones in on a digital storytelling project within an afterschool science girls-group. Analysis focuses on conversations among the girls, next to Kelsey’s storywork in a poster and digital story project. We identified recurrent themes that make evident her affectively charged and complex entanglement with science.
Results: The kind of lived experiences the two cases center constitute more than the storyteller identities that the girls claimed and identified with. The case studies show that we yet have to embrace learning and becoming as fluid, emergent, and entangled with living, with the latter sometimes implying themes we leave out of our stories as they are challenging to talk about (body image, siblings in the justice system, sexual violence, blended families, marginalization in school, caring friendships in out-of-school science programs). By engaging deeply with the embodied, affective, and more-than-human entanglement, we also put to sleep ideas about identity in science as something we make and possess, and instead center a method that attends to multiple moments of its emergence.
Scholarly Significance: Guided by feminist and posthumanist theories (Lloro-Bidart & Sidwell, 2020; Taylor & Hughes, 2016), this paper interrogates learning and becoming in science both conceptually and methodologically and uplifts voices and frameworks still too often silenced in the field of informal science education.

Authors

• Jrene Rahm, University of Montréal
  Presenting Author

• Allison Gonsalves, McGill University
  Presenting Author