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Black girls speak STEM: Counterstories of informal and formal learning experiences

DOI:10.1002/tea.21513
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Natalie King at Georgia State University
Natalie King
Rose M. Pringle
Rose M. Pringle
Rose M. Pringle
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Abstract

This study presents the interpretations and perceptions of Black girls who participated in I AM STEM—a community- based informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program. Using narrative inquiry, participants generated detailed accounts of their informal and formal STEM learning experiences. Critical race meth- odology informed this research to portray the dynamic and complex experiences of girls of color, whose stories have historically been silenced and misrepresented. The data sources for this qualitative study included individual inter- views, student reflection journals, samples of student work, and researcher memos, which were triangulated to produce six robust counterstories. Excerpts of the counterstories are presented in this article. The major findings of this research revealed that I AM STEM ignited an interest in STEM learn- ing through field trips and direct engagement in scientific phenomena that allowed the girls to become agentic in con- tinuing their engagement in STEM activities throughout the year. This call to awaken the voices of Black girls to speak casts light on their experiences and challenges as STEM learners—from their perspectives. The findings confirm that when credence and counterspaces are given to Black girls, they are poised to reveal their luster toward STEM learning. This study provided a space for Black girls to reflect on their STEM learning experiences, formulate new understandings, and make connections between the informal and formal learning environments within the context of their everyday lives, thus offering a more holistic approach to STEM learn- ing that occurs across settings and over a lifetime.
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King, N. S. & Pringle, R. M. (2018). Black girls speak STEM: Counterstories of informal
and formal learning experiences. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 1-31.
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... Informal STEM learning experiences, although disproportionately accessible, are also important opportunities to support Black and Latinx youth in developing and sustaining interest in STEM in ways that restructure the disciplines themselves (King and Pringle 2019). Youth's lives outside of school are influential on their science and STEM learning pathways (Bricker and Bell 2012). ...
... We thought with collected stories of STEM learning to identify pockets of resistance to problematic structures of schooling. Particularly, we took up notions of care to identify seeds of developing relationships as counterstories in the development of counterspaces (King and Pringle 2019). Following what is being cared for and how care is a political act of teaching and learning with youth of Color (Madkins and McKinney de Royston 2019), we identified spaces where learning was a bidirectional process of relationship building, where teacherlearners and learner-teachers were becoming, together. ...
... Analyzing data and developing counterstories is a critical research method of sharing the stories of those who have been marginalized to uncover and challenge forces of oppression and speak to change (King and Pringle 2019). Sketching these counterstories shares the experiences of youth of Color on Turing Robotics and at Turing High to expose the anti-dialogic structures and seed possibilities for making STEM education more just. ...
Sociopolitical solidarity in STEM education: youth-centered relationships that resist learning as just achievement data
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In this paper, we—a participatory action group—use the tenants of critical pedagogy to articulate how youths developed relationships for and with STEM disciplinary practices through participation in spaces outside of the official scripts of their high school STEM classrooms in the United States. Spaces included their robotics team, a hybrid digital collaborative space, and in an extra project with a teacher. Each of these cases surfaces youth’s ongoing orientation to the fact that STEM learning is relational, and political, exemplifying pockets of resistance against the structures of schooling that foreground learning as an act of individuals. These pockets of resistance take a certain sociopolitical solidarity between learners and educators that centers STEM education which has the possibility to remake power structures to center relations with worlds, human and non-human, and the futures they help learners imagine.
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... Some efforts have focused on creating interventions for Black women at various critical focal points of their careers through informal education. For example, some programs have focused on exposure to STEM fields for Black female students (King and Pringle, 2019), while some have focused on out-of-school interventions grounded in cultural practices that help Black girls thrive in STEM (Ashcraft et al., 2017;Scott, 2021). Other programs have focused on mentoring relationships between Black scientists and engineers with Black female students (Allen-Handy et al., 2020). ...
... Other programs have focused on mentoring relationships between Black scientists and engineers with Black female students (Allen-Handy et al., 2020). Finally, some programs that aim to increase the representation of Black females in STEM have focused on creating social supports that help Black women navigate their STEM careers (Allen-Handy et al., 2020; King and Pringle, 2019;Lane and Id-Deen, 2020;Levine et al., 2015). These efforts successfully support women and girl participants in expressing an interest in STEM and provide safe spaces where Black girls and women can flourish in STEM. ...
... We also have additional questions, such as "Why does AMP! draw more Black women teachers?" There is a great need to make more visible the science talents and proficiency of Black women and girls (King and Pringle, 2019). Does the program somehow provide Black female teachers with a context in which their STEM educational talents are recognized, elevated, and validated by the staff that delivers AMP!? ...
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... Four were long-term or longitudinal studies (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2018;Mark, 2018;Mensah, 2019;Pringle et al., 2012). Three others were conducted in science methods courses (Mensah & Jackson, 2018;Rivera Maulucci, 2013;Sparks, 2018); one was conducted in an advanced placement secondary biology class (Ryu, 2015); one, in a communitybased informal STEM program (King & Pringle, 2019); and one, in and outside science classrooms (Teo, 2015). The one quantitative study in this category used a national cohort of eighth-grade students to consider how diferent gender and racial/ethnic subgroups compared to white males in their aspirations for careers in science or mathematics (Riegle-Crumb et al., 2011). ...
... 798). King and Pringle (2019) also utilized intersectionality, and specifcally critical race feminism, in their work with K-12 Black girls to expose racial and gender essentialism as the girls navigated between formal and informal STEM learning spaces. Critical race feminism, like intersectionality, focuses on the lives of people who face multiple forms of discrimination based on race, gender, and class, for example, and reveals how these factors interact with a system of white male patriarchy and racist oppression (Wing, 1997). ...
... Critical race feminism, like intersectionality, focuses on the lives of people who face multiple forms of discrimination based on race, gender, and class, for example, and reveals how these factors interact with a system of white male patriarchy and racist oppression (Wing, 1997). Like Calabrese Barton and Tan's (2018) study of youth community science learning, King and Pringle (2019) used counterspaces, or "sites where defcit notions of people of color can be challenged and where a positive climate can be established and maintained" (Solórzano et al., 2000, p. 70). The researchers provided shelter from the "daily torrent of microaggressions" (Howard-Hamilton, 2003, p. 23) that people of color experience. ...
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... As Feminist Science and Technology Studies (Feminist STS) scholars have long argued, however, those marginalized by STEM possess a privileged vantage point from which to critique STEM fields [33]- [34]. Today, researchers are increasingly foregrounding marginalized students' perspectives (e.g., [4], [35]- [36]), but these perspectives have received limited attention in Canadian educational contexts. ...
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