Elder Black Women Science Teachers (Re)member: An Examination of Science Identity Formation for Curious Young Black Girls

Abstract

To specifically add to the literature on Black girls cultivating their science genius, Black women science teachers ‘talk back’ by sharing and developing their own narratives about being a science‐curious young Black girl and how they use that experience to actualize their vision for liberatory science teaching. This international, qualitative study centers the (re)flections and pedagogical practices of five “elder” Black women science teachers who have surpassed and live within some of the confines of “science as white property.” Utilizing an Endarkened Feminist Epistemology, participants engage in the art of (re)membering by writing poems to their former young Black girl self as a result of (re)flecting on creating the educational structures they wish they had experienced. The findings and discussion indicate that access to science professionals at home or a once‐in‐a‐lifetime scholarship gave the participants the privilege to be curious. Despite these privileges these women had to persist through the culture of science that told them they didn't belong. Yet and still, they speak back with power and a determination to be seen and heard. This study provides implications for the curricular shifts and ideologies that honor Black girls in K‐8 formal science spaces by merging liberatory teaching frameworks in science teaching and learning. Implications are also provided for professional development for Black women science teachers and other historically excluded groups, giving them space to (re)flect and to unearth their truth through reflecting on their history and collaborating with peers.

Full text

Science Education
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Elder Black Women Science Teachers (Re)member: An
Examination of Science Identity Formation for Curious
Young Black Girls
Alexis D. Riley
New York University, Steinhardt, New York, USA
Correspondence: Alexis D. Riley (ar5210@nyu.edu)
Received: 24 February 2024 | Revised: 9 November 2024 | Accepted: 3 December 2024
ABSTRACT
To specifically add to the literature on Black girls cultivating their science genius, Black women science teachers ‘talk back’by
sharing and developing their own narratives about being a science‐curious young Black girl and how they use that experience to
actualize their vision for liberatory science teaching. This international, qualitative study centers the (re)flections and peda-
gogical practices of five “elder”Black women science teachers who have surpassed and live within some of the confines of
“science as white property.”Utilizing an Endarkened Feminist Epistemology, participants engage in the art of (re)membering
by writing poems to their former young Black girl self as a result of (re)flecting on creating the educational structures they wish
they had experienced. The findings and discussion indicate that access to science professionals at home or a once‐in‐a‐lifetime
scholarship gave the participants the privilege to be curious. Despite these privileges these women had to persist through the
culture of science that told them they didn't belong. Yet and still, they speak back with power and a determination to be seen
and heard. This study provides implications for the curricular shifts and ideologies that honor Black girls in K‐8 formal science
spaces by merging liberatory teaching frameworks in science teaching and learning. Implications are also provided for pro-
fessional development for Black women science teachers and other historically excluded groups, giving them space to (re)flect
and to unearth their truth through reflecting on their history and collaborating with peers.
1 | Introduction
With current rates of Black scientists, 9% of the STEM work-
force is comprised of Black people (NCSES 2023), it is extremely
rare for Black children to have the privilege of having access to
people with science careers or science lessons that will affirm
and expand their curiosity since formal schooling prioritizes
conformity and silence instead (King 2020). Ridgeway and
McGee (2018) indicate that Black students are forced to learn
STEM in racist environments that dictate how Black people
should understand, engage, and exist within STEM contexts. To
specifically add to the literature on Black girls cultivating their
science genius, the participants in this study, Black women
science teachers, ‘talk back’by sharing and developing their
own narratives about being a science‐curious young Black girl
and how they use that experience to actualize their vision for
liberatory science teaching. Due to their past experiences of
being young Black girls fighting to maintain their science curi-
osity in formal learning spaces and their persistence as science
teachers, teaching for more than 15 years, these participants
provide necessary insight into what young Black girls today
need to learn, use, and own science in an authentic and
affirming way. The participants engage in the art of (re)mem-
bering (Dillard 2000) by writing poems to their former young
Black girl self as a result of (re)flecting on creating the educa-
tional structures they wish they experienced.
This international, qualitative study centers the (re)flections
and pedagogical practices of five ‘elder’Black women science
teachers who have surpassed and live within some of the
© 2025 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
1of18Science Education, 2025; 1–18
https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21936

confines of ‘science as white property’by looking back to when
they were young science‐curious Black girls themselves. The
participants in this study are affectionately referred to as “el-
ders”to signify both their years in the profession but also as a
Black tradition of honoring the aunties, mothers, cousins, older
sisters, and grandmothers that bestow wisdom within commu-
nity through their actions, their storytelling, their reflection and
their embodiment of love and their audacity to live despite the
psychological and physical threats they experience daily. In
affinity with Indigenous knowledge systems, ‘elders’not only
hold knowledge but are honored for the “the ways they live
their knowings, the ways they enact”systems of knowledge, in
these ways “knowledges come to life from within the spiraling
of the generations”(Holmes and Tolbert 2020, pp. 116–117). As
discussed by Lozenski (2017), eldership in the Black community
is more than just an age group, but fit within the following
descriptors: “active action in uplifting our people, over time”,
“humility with fearless courage, and “knows where we have
been, where we need to go, and has ideas about how to get
there”(p. 68). By foregrounding the memories and practices of
elder Black women science teachers and utilizing an En-
darkened Feminist Epistemology and intersectional feminist
methodology, this study positions Black women science teach-
ers as experts of their own lived experience and gives insights
into how the larger science education community can support
current and future generations of multiply‐marginalized stu-
dents, including Black girls.
In our schools, curriculum and instructional practices reflect an
“anti‐Black science epistemological perspective”(Morton
et al. 2022, p. 139) despite the genius they bring to science
learning spaces (Miles and Roby 2022). Due to the ‘hidden
curriculum’embedded in science teaching, i.e., lack of
reinforced positive role models and negative stereotyping, Black
students are often discouraged from enjoying science subjects
(Brand, Glasson, and Green 2006) and find that ‘band‐aid’
interventions such as mentoring do not mitigate the core issue
in the culture of science (McGee 2020). As a result of the ped-
agogical practices that still maintain the white status quo and
culture of power of Western Modern Science, when science is
taught “neutrally”and when Black students are not given the
freedom to question or speak (Miles and Roby 2022), science
maintains its culture of power as exclusionary for most (Mensah
and Jackson 2018). While they cannot become saviors of a
culture and system they did not create, Black women science
teachers are uniquely positioned as models for the general sci-
ence education community to learn from as they engage in the
work of dismantling the culture of exclusion in science for all
students by (re)membering their past racialized, classed, and
gendered experiences as young Black girls themselves, and
using their lessons to enact a better future for their students.
Science educators must put these lessons into practice to
decrease the invisible labor of Black women science teachers
and other science teachers of color.
Black girls' scientific brilliance can be stifled in formal science
learning spaces that heavily focus on rote memorization due to
low‐expectations for Black girls' ability in the discipline
(Hanson 2008). Unless Black girls are provided with humaniz-
ing spaces within and beyond the science classroom, it will be
difficult for them to maintain a science identity (King 2020) that
allows them to become Black women who are willing to pursue
careers to become Black women science teachers themselves
and/or Black women scientists (McGee 2020). Black women
science teachers can inform the structure of humanizing and
affirming spaces for multiply‐marginalized students broadly
and Black girls specifically. The false narrative that the parti-
cipants in this study know too well is that others believe that
‘Black kids from the projects’and other historically excluded
communities are not and cannot become scientists (Louis and
King 2023) but instead need learning spaces and opportunities
to fix them so that they can learn how to engage in real science
(Ridgeway 2019). Where one teacher might read a Black girl
asking a question as sassy, disruptive, aggressive or loud
(King 2020; Muhammad 2014), these women see, honor, and
hear curiosity and genius. Using the ‘theories of our flesh’,I
emphasize (re)membering as an act of decolonization (Moraga
and Anzaldȗa2002) and a form of resistance.
1.1 | Research Questions
To match the style of this empirical study that bridges two
separate data collection and data analysis processes, the
research questions below take shape and stand alone while
in conversation with one another. In the methods and
findings section of this manuscript, these research questions
will be considered separately and then discussed together as
a way to provide a full portrait of the implications for a
study that centers (re)membering for Black women science
teachers.
1. How do Black women science teachers describe their early
childhood experiences?
2. How does the act of (re)membering through poetry support
elder Black women science teachers make meaning of their past
experiences in and out of science spaces?
1.2 | Positionality Statement
In many ways this study has given me the opportunity to “(re)
search to find myself and my people within the walls of edu-
cation”(Dillard 2022, p. 28). As a Black woman, studying Black
women required that I (re)member myself, to reflect on who
I am and the experiences I brought to this study (Boylorn 2011).
Endarkened Feminist Epistemology “requires us to return to
our roots, to our communities, and to ourselves even when
we've been taught to leave our histories at the academic door of
no return”(Toliver (2021, p. xvii). For these reasons I share who
I am and my position in this work. I am a first‐generation
college student and Black girl from ‘the hood’, specifically South
Central Los Angeles, CA, who attempted to grasp at straws for
the opportunity to learn, use, and enjoy science. In elementary
and middle school, there were either no science lessons or the
few science classes where rotted by rote memorization. Yet and
still, I wanted to be a physician, and my parents and aunts made
sure to sign me up for a medicine and science magnet high
school in Compton, CA to help me cultivate my love for this
“science”I kept talking about.
2of18 Science Education, 2025

As someone who taught secondary science for almost a decade I
brought deep admiration for the participants in this study since
I was typically the one and only Black women science teacher
in professional spaces. As a way to acknowledge the sensitive
nature of our conversations of racialized and gendered
oppression I spoke about my practice, experience and beliefs
about education. Sharing how I related or differed to the nar-
ratives shared with the participants created possibilities to shift
the power dynamics in the research space because they had the
opportunity to analyze and interpret my own experiences along
with their own. Moreover, sharing my own teaching practices
and experiences as a young Black girl ensured personal
accountability for my ideas, an important facet of Black feminist
ways of being and knowing (Collins 2000). Crafting and sharing
their stories back to them has brought me personal pride and a
reinvigoration of what's possible for Black women and girls who
have STEM interests.
2 | Literature Review
Black girls who are science curious are rarely given the con-
sistent opportunity to wonder and explore that part of them-
selves due to Title I, public schools that focus more on
policing than joy and brilliance. Educators must become
“comfortable with where students' curiosities take them”
(Miles and Roby 2022, p. 195). Hanson (2008)opinesthat
“when gender and skin color are the major factors de-
termining who will do science, a considerable amount of
scientific talent is lost”(p. 6). There have been several, recent
studies that detail how some spaces support Black girls by
highlighting a different science epistemology for them, such
as transforming a class to be more inquiry based and im-
plementing culturally responsive strategies (Allen 2023;Buck
et al. 2014), creating self portraits to help them possess science
(D. Turner 2022), providing access to gifted instruction
(Young, Young, and Ford 2017), learning physics through
dance (Chappell and Varelas 2020; Solomon et al. 2022), using
quilt‐making and speculative design increase in positive self‐
perceptions about STEM (Shaw et al. 2023). Counterspaces
have been a major intervention strategy, reporting positive
results regarding decreasing the ideals of ‘science as white
property’(Mensah and Jackson 2018) by highlighting coun-
ternarratives, allowing space for communal dialog focusing on
difficult conversation regarding race and STEM to help Black
girls navigate these spaces in the future (King, Peña‐Telfer,
and Earls 2023). According to King (2022), counterspaces are
“places where deficit notions of people of color can be chal-
lenged and replaced with a positive and affirming climate”
(pg. 58), naturally giving Black girls ample space to test out
and maintain their science curiosity.
The following portion of the literature review helps us under-
stand how the field has discussed “curiosity”in general before
exploring how researchers have discussed the impact of learn-
ing spaces that do not cultivate the curiosity of marginalized
students, such as Black girls, especially those in inner‐city
schools. The literature review section will also discuss the
research on Black women science teachers, displaying how they
navigate their content‐specific expertise to support the curiosity
of all their students. This will paint a picture of the reality that
Black girls and women experience in science teaching and
learning spaces to encourage us to use the findings and impli-
cations to require a different pathway and future in the culture
of science.
2.1 | Curiosity
Curiosity is a core part of the human experience and has
inspired scientific explorations and advancements (Berlyne
1966; Dewey 1910). Curiosity in school‐aged children has been
defined as “a single type of behavior (e.g., novelty seeking or
asking questions) that varies in extent”(Luce and Hsi 2015,
p. 72) or “the threshold of desired uncertainty in an environ-
ment which leads to exploratory behavior”(Jirout and
Klahr 2012, p. 26). There is debate on whether curiosity is
“inherently individual”(Sinha, Bai, and Cassell 2017)orifitis
mediated by and fostered through social interactions with
caregivers and other children (Engel 2011). No matter the dis-
cipline of study, psychology or education, it is agreed that
curiosity is not a “fleeting moment of engagement with the
world”(Luce and Hsi 2015, p. 72), but put simply “the urge to
know more”(Engel 2011, p. 627).
Education researchers share that elementary school students
learn science best when they are able to ask their own ques-
tions, test out their hunches, and make mistakes (Cook,
Goodman, and Schulz 2011; Kuhn and Ho 1980; Wirkala and
Kuhn 2011), all facets of being curious. Unfortunately curiosity
in schools is not a priority and is absent from traditional
curricula (Engel 2011). According to Walls (2012), elementary
Black students “are eager to learn science and see themselves as
full participants in the enterprise of science”, and a failure to
capitalize on this enthusiasm through consistent quality
instruction may be the result of lowered engagement by the
time they are in secondary science classrooms (p. 29).
2.2 | Black Girls in Inner‐City Schools
WhileweknowthatBlackgirlsare“brilliant, creative, the-
orizers, and innovators”(Morton et al. 2022, p. 142), we also
know that systems of inequities are enacted in schools that
stifle the brilliance of them. Within and outside of schools,
Black girls must avoid or prevail over dangers which “pres-
ents a uniquely gendered challenge for girls who grow up in
distressed inner‐city neighborhoods”(Jones 2010,p.7).The
Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality reported
extensively on the adultification of Black girls in public
schools, exploring the ways Black girls experience “age
compression”which has stripped them of their innocence
and childhood freedom (Epstein, Blake, and González 2017).
In schools, this age compression sometimes results in push-
out through misunderstanding “when girls speak their
opinion, especially when it is unsolicited, or if they stand up
for themselves when they feel that they have been dis-
respected by peers or by adults”(Morris 2016,p.59).Dis-
parities as a result of punitive policies that Black girls face are
largely unrecognized in the discourse about public education
(Crenshaw, Ocen, and Nanda 2015).
3of18

Despite this adultification and over‐policing in inner city
schools, Black girls have an “inconsistent and dichotomous”
educational historical narrative—in the 1970s, only 33% of
Black women graduated with a high school diploma, yet by
2016, 90.5% of Black women graduated with a high school
diploma or higher (Morris 2016). However, this statistical por-
trait can shroud the other part of the narrative which reveals
that “poor, Black girls today are coming of age under economic
and social conditions that are far harsher than those experi-
enced by past generations”(Jones 2010, p. 158). Fordham (1997)
found that high‐achieving Black girls are often silent in class.
Success requires them to become almost invisible. While Black
girls are resilient and brilliant, they are still required to work
against systems of inequities that stifle their wholeness and
demand their conformity and silence to persist.
2.3 | Black Girls in Science Classrooms
According to Wade‐Jaimes, King and Schwartz (2021)while
informal science spaces have a positive impact on Black girls,
its impact on positive science‐identity formation is limited and
cannot “undo the cumulative damage caused by formal school
settings”(p. 20). The excessive attention of controlling Black
students' behavior and maintaining discipline is tied to chattel
slavery (Hines‐Datiri and Carter Andrews 2020;Morris2016),
with Black people not being viewed as brilliant human beings
capable of innovation and science inquiry (Morton et al. 2022,
p. 137), despite the fact that Black people have been pioneers
of agricultural and mechanical innovations in the United
States in spite of being enslaved (Frye 2018). Unfortunately,
science curriculum can be weaponized as a way to control
students (Riley and Mensah 2023) thus participating in the
distortion of Black girls' self‐perception and ability to use and
enjoy themselves. This distortion of self‐perception for Black
girls is not unique to science. Mims and Williams (2020)
shared that as Black girls develop their ethnic‐racial identity,
they make meaning about who they are within their multiple
worlds (i.e., schools, classrooms, families, and peers) while
learning history in a way that positions them as enslaved and
subversive. According to Joseph (2022), the standardization of
mathematics curricula is “full of signals that Black girls do not
belong”(e.g., tracking into low level math courses, students
questioning their math abilities, focusing on behavior vs. her
mathematics development), through “decontextualized cur-
riculum and gendered anti‐Black mathematics education
policies”(p. 3). Specific to science, we know that the dispari-
ties of achievement for Black girls in science majors and
careers is not due to lack of interest or skill (Hanson 2008;
Olitsky et al. 2010). Science curriculum perpetuates racism
with the use of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
by taking a colorblind approach to science (Parsons and
Dorsey 2015).
2.4 | Black Women Science Teachers
By exploring their past experiences, this study determines how
elder Black women science teachers (more than 15 years of
experience) have used their K‐12 experiences in science spaces
to influence their current pedagogical practices. According to
the literature, there are few Black women who persist in science
majors (Dortch and Patel 2017; Johnson et al. 2019; McGee and
Bentley 2017) and few studies that identify the pedagogical
practices that Black women bring to science education
(Despenza 2018; McMath 2015; Olitsky 2020; Riley and
Mensah 2023). Despite being rare in the science teacher edu-
cation workforce, Black women strive to stay in the classroom
due to a deep love of science and an understanding of the
impact they can have on their students.
Riley (2023) brought the Womanist Pedagogy framework
(Beauboeuf‐Lafontant 2002) to science education by explaining
that Black women science teachers identify with the long‐
storied history of how Black women have approached teaching
before, during, and after integration. Ranging from zero to
twenty‐one years of teaching experience, the teachers in the
study had not heard of Womanist Pedagogy, but were able to
identify how they brought their embrace of the maternal,
political clarity, and ethic of risk to their individual classrooms.
Black women science teachers use their lived experience as
racialized, classed, and gendered beings to transform their
‘soulless’curriculum (Riley and Mensah 2023) to give ample
space for the curiosity of their students and instructional
practices in a way that embodies the liberatory and antiracist
science classroom they would have wanted for themselves
(Riley and Mensah 2024).
Black women [science] teachers are also uniquely positioned
to support Black girls who might consider science teaching as
an option because they “represent and embody who Black
girls can become, displaying and enacting an array of com-
munity cultural capital”(Gist, White, and Bianco 2018, p. 58)
that can be applied strategically to steer Black girls away from
the pushout (Morris 2016)route,and“instead push them
along the route of intellectual potentiality via education”
(Gist, White, and Bianco 2018, p. 58). If Black girls are viewed
as ‘less innocent’, then it is also hard for some educators to
view them as curious and worthy of a curriculum that honors
their way of expressing their curiosity. Thus, it is imperative
that we identify which conditions encourage Black girls to use
and enjoy science so that they can one day teach science if
they choose.
3 | Theoretical Framework
Endarkened Feminist Epistemology was used to frame this
research to help center the praxis of (re)membering
(Dillard 2000) for Black women who exist within, beyond,
andoutsideoftheunsafespaceofscienceandscienceedu-
cation spaces (Mensah and Jackson 2018). An epistemologi-
cal perspective answers questions such as “how do we
know?”and “how do we know what we know?”Dillard
(2000) coined the term “Endarkened Feminist Epistemology”
and explained that it encapsulates how ways of knowing and
being are based in historical roots of Black feminist thought,
embodying a specific and complex cultural standpoint that
considers the historical and contemporary “matrix of domi-
nation”(Collins 2000) that Black women specifically ex-
perience. Matrix of domination refers to how intersecting
4of18 Science Education, 2025

oppressions are actually organized. Regardless of the partic-
ular intersections involved, structural, disciplinary, hege-
monic, and interpersonal domains of power reappear across
quite different forms of oppression (Collins 2013). Specifi-
cally, Black women science teachers are situated at the
intersection of multiple systems of oppression, including
systemic racism (e.g., poor K‐12 schooling, poor funding
for science major attainment and teacher preparation pro-
grams, teaching in overcrowded classrooms with minimal
resources), gendered racism (e.g., lower pay to men and
white women, minimal representation of Black women sci-
entists in public media and science curriculum), and exclu-
sionary practices in science teaching and learning (e.g.,
minimal mentorship in science college classes, anti‐Black
science epistemologies in teacher education programs and
curricular resources). These structures do more than make
up a system of ideas for Black women science teachers, these
oppressive structures create our “political and economic
reality”(Collins 2013, p. 107).
As summarized by Croom and Patton (2014), Dillard (2000)
outlines six beliefs with Endarkened Feminist Epistemology in
the context of self and knowledge production:
1. Self‐definition forms one's participation and responsibility
to one's community (p. 672).
2. Research is both an intellectual and a spiritual pursuit, a
pursuit of purpose (p. 674).
3. Only within the context of community does the individual
appear (Palmer 1983) and, through dialog, continue to
become (p. 675).
4. Concrete experiences within everyday life form the crite-
rion of meaning, the “the matrix of meaning‐making”
(p. 675)
5. Knowing and research extend both historically in time
and outward to the world: to
approach them otherwise is to diminish their cultural and
empirical meaningfulness (p. 676).
6. Power relations, manifest as racism, sexism, homophobia,
etc., structure gender, race, and other identity relations
within research (p. 677).
Knowing that I would be asking elder Black women science
teachers to (re)member required a framework that honored
that when “we [Black women] share stories of our past(s),
we know that we are potentially invoking our ancestors'
memories”(Evans‐Winters 2019, pp. 138–139). Endarkened
Feminist Epistemology gave room for the spiritual praxis
involved with the sensitive nature of poetry as an art of (re)
membering.
As a theoretical framework, Endarkened Feminist Epistemol-
ogy has been used broadly in the field of education, specifically
making sense of how Black women scholars in educational
leadership assert their ‘personhood’through their voice and
research as a way to demand a space for themselves
(Peters 2011), to understand how contemporary Black women
teachers use their thoughts about their sociopolitical context to
enact a politicized approach to care (Watson 2018), and to
justify the need for Sista Circles for the liberation and healing of
Black women teachers (Dunmeyer, Shauri‐Webb, and
Muhammad 2023). Endarkened Feminist Epistemology has
been used in a myriad of ways including as a way to transform
narrative inquiry methods to speak specifically to “Black
women‐centric theoretical frameworks”(McClish‐Boyd and
Bhattacharya 2021, p. 536), and used to urge education re-
searchers to consider their positionality when presenting their
work (Milner 2007).
This study examines how an Endarkened Feminist Epistemol-
ogy endarkens or deepens our gendered and racialized under-
standings of Black women science teachers' reflections through
discussions of their histories and experiences as former Black
girls trying to navigate science learning spaces. In challenging
what is deemed as acceptable in research, Endarkened Feminist
Epistemology requires space for a Black cultural way of
knowing and being. In (re)membering, the researcher and
participants, “return to that which was stolen, that which we
have been forced or seduced into ignoring. In (re)membering
we center our full selves, heal, and uplift our communities”
(Toliver 2021, p. xvi).
Writing poems to your younger self is spirit work (Dillard 2016).
Endarkened Feminist Epistemology provides a “discourse on
spirituality as it intersects with education”and “has the
potential of yielding understanding of the epistemological
foundations of successful African American female teachers”
(Dillard, Abdur‐Rashid, and Tyson 2000, pg. 449). I argue that
pursuing research agendas from a standpoint of Endarkened
Feminist Epistemology provides science education research
“opportunities to (re)examine scholarly topics that receive
limited attention, center the experiences of continually mar-
ginalized, and provide alternative theories and solutions to
address inequities”(Croom and Patton 2014, p. 68) across for-
mal schooling spaces.
4 | Methods
This study honors and gives voice to the complex experiences
of the participants as they navigate being ‘outsiders within’
(Collins 2000) historically marginalized science spaces, both
as young Black girls and women. By exploring their experi-
ences, this study sought to determine how Black women sci-
ence teachers with ‘elder’status (more than 15 years of
experience) have used their K‐12 experiences in science
spaces to influence their current pedagogical practices. Pre-
interview surveys and one‐on‐one virtual interviews were
used in this narrative study.
4.1 | Participants
At the time of this study, the range of teaching experience
ranged from 16 years to 22 years of experience. Also, four out of
five of the participants have doctorates in science education.
Displayed in Table 1, the participants are from and taught in
various places in the United States, with one participant
5of18

teaching internationally. Readers will notice that each pseudo-
nym ends with an ‘E’, matching the naming convention es-
tablished in the larger study this manuscript derived from
(Riley 2022) and to maintain consistency.
As discussed more in depth in the findings section, the five
elder Black women science teachers in this study come from
various states in America, coming from the Southern and
Northeast region. All participants spoke about a deep love and
curiosity for science by the time they got to elementary school,
most of the participants had this love cultivated by their parents
at home who had science careers. All earned a bachelor's or
master's in a science discipline, except one of the participants
did not due to a math disability that was not properly addressed
by her college program, she instead earned her degrees,
including a doctorate in STEM education. At the time of the
study, all participants taught in either racially diverse schools,
schools that predominantly served Black and Brown students,
and/or schools that predominantly served white students. All of
the participants spoke intimately about their visions for science
education and hope for a more inclusive and just future.
4.2 | Study Design
This study is an exploration in the meaning‐making of elder
Black women science teachers as they reflect on their K‐12
science‐identity formation, how their science learning ex-
periences influenced their teaching, and poetry as a method
of (re)membering. The methodological approach to this study
is presented in two parts to honor the process of collecting
data and presenting data. The first part presents the data
through biographies and the second part through poems.
Specifically during Summer 2020 all of the elders engaged in
one‐on‐one interviews that resulted in the biographies for
part one of this study and during Winter 2022 all participants
verified the biographies through member‐checking (Harvey
2015). As well, member‐checking four out of five additionally
agreed to participate in a second round of interviews that
included the poems for part two of this study. Holistically,
this study honors and gives voice to the complex experiences
of the participants as they navigate being ‘outsiders within’
(Collins 2000) historically marginalized science spaces, both
as young Black girls and women. By exploring their biogra-
phies and poems, this study sought to provide a full‐circle
narrative about what young Black girls curious about science
need and how Black women science teachers use their lived
experiences to cultivate spaces of learning and joy by cen-
tering those who have persisted in these marginal spaces:
elder Black women science teachers.
For Black women “the power of our biographies and experi-
ences convinces me that poetry is a way to affirm our lives and
that it embodies our theory”(Dillard, 2014, p. 254).
Giving the participants, elder Black women science teachers,
the opportunity to verify their biographies and write their own
poems was necessary to maintain their self‐definitions which is
especially important for Black women in research (Collins
2000). Writing poems as a creative inquiry allowed me as the
researcher to write with and about people that honored their
styles of words and rhythms (Richardson 2003). Also, writing
poems was “encouraged because Black women and other
minoritized groups have had to develop a distinct standpoint by
using alternative ways of producing and validating knowledge
(Corley 2020, p. 1028).
4.3 | Poetry Inquiry
A part of this qualitative research study was to present poems
written by participants as a method of storytelling beyond my
interpretations as the researcher. Facets of poetic inquiry, “an
alternative form of representing research material that com-
bines the art of poetry with tenets of qualitative research”
(Corley 2020, p. 1023), were used in this study as poems from
the participants are presented in the findings as a result of a
dialog between them with their younger selves and with me as
the researcher. One of the functions of poetry for this study was
for participants, elder Black women science teachers, to share
their sense‐making of their world. Since poetic inquiry recog-
nizes that our body and emotions play an integral part to un-
derstanding our experience (Vacchelli 2018) poems were used
for participants to engage in storytelling more authentically
than solely relying on the interpretation of the author.
For the Black women teachers in this study who have persisted
through spaces and places not made to honor their full selves as
science‐curious people e.g., elementary and middle schooling,
science college majors, science education doctoral programs,
and science teaching spaces, poetry writing served as an
“introspective, interpretive act of critical thinking that foster
[ed] the structure necessary for liberationist dialog”
(Davis 2021, p. 115). The poetry writing, reciting, and doc-
umenting process has endarkened the participants' under-
standing of themselves as multidimensional beings. Spoken
powerfully from Corley (2020):
Poetry tells the truth in ways that other forms of verbal
and written expressions do not. Poems go straight to the
heart because they are an extension of the heart. They
TABLE 1 | Displays the pseudonyms, years of teaching experience, places the participants have taught, and highest level of educational
attainment at the time of the study.
Carter Erasme Elder (19 Years) New York City Master's degree
Dr. D'Vona Edwards Elder (17 Years) Pittsburgh, New Orleans, DC Doctoral degree
Dr. Sandra Eaton Elder (20 Years) North Carolina Doctoral degree
Dr. Zubaidat Evans Elder (22 Years) Texas, Qatar Doctoral degree
Dr. Ar'Sheill Everett Elder (16 Years) New Jersey Doctoral degree
6of18 Science Education, 2025

expand us and create spaces where both the poet and the
reader can be real and honest (p. 1025).
Representing the research for this study in poetic form not only
brought myself and participants in closer relationship but it also
served a liberatory function that freed the voices of participants
(Colby and Bodily 2018).
4.4 | Part I. Data Collection
As a part of a larger study (Riley 2022), Black women science
teachers were recruited for semi‐structured one‐on‐one inter-
views for about 90 min each. During the interviews, those who
qualified as elders (more than 15 years of science teaching ex-
perience), were asked around 13 questions. For this study, only
two of the question sets were used to develop the biographies
developed for the findings: “(1) As a K‐12 student, what did you
enjoy about science, did science play a role in your student
identity? and (2) As a science teacher, how do you bring your
content expertize to the classroom? How do you make the
content of your classroom come to life and understandable for
your students?”.
4.5 | Data Analysis
The Google Docs software and OneNote software was used for
data analysis. First, to develop initial themes, the author put the
responses to the interview questions in separate Google docs,
one per participant. Codes were developed by writing com-
ments on each Google doc, a sample of this phase can be found
in the Appendix A(sample has been anonymized), the author
pulled out events that participants discussed regarding their
science identity development and their motivations for helping
their students understand science content in their classrooms.
4.6 | Selective Coding
After responses were coded, the Google doc information was
transferred over to the OneNote software where all of the
comments were compiled at the bottom of the software inter-
face (sample found in Appendix B). In this phase of coding,
selective coding, the author used an intersectional feminist
methodology to make sense of the comments (Hamilton 2020).
An intersectional feminist methodology pays attention to “the dif-
ferent and sometimes contradictory or unexpected ways in which
race, gender, social class, national origin, marital status, employ-
ment and other social categories manifest themselves in narratives
of lived experience”(Hamilton 2020, p. 3). While reading through
the initial codes (comments), I made sense of how various social
categories and systems of oppression impacted their lived experi-
ence. For instance, when talking about formal science learning
before high school, participants said things like “I cannot for the life
of me remember any formal experience that had science until about
ninth grade”(Dr. Eaton) or “it was just normal at home discussion
wherewetalkaboutcircuitry”(Ms. Erasme). Due to attending
under‐funded public schools, four out of five of the participants
discussed how they were able to rely on science‐careered family
members since school did not make room for science learning for
them as Black children. Also when discussing their motivations as
teachers, they spoke about the intention of ensuring their students
had a science learning experience based in exploration, questions,
and curiosity. For example, Dr. Everett heavily relied on Do-
norsChoose to ensure that her public school students had access to
“live, exploratory science”.Also,Dr.Edwardsconsideredherown
experiences of being ostracized in science education programs. She
spoke about the importance of her students seeing themselves as
science knowledge producers, that it was important for her students
who had given up on science as a field of interest to know that they
can find their own answers using science.
After developing the five biographies, the author realized that
initial themes were starting to take shape regarding (a) the integral
part the ability to be curious either at home or in school was to
their science identity and persistence, (b) the fact that most of the
participants heavily realized on the gaps in their formal science
schooling experience to dictate how they constructed their own
classrooms, and (3) the role of parents with a science career at
home. Continuing to utilize an intersectional feminist methodol-
ogy, I considered the rarity of Black children having science‐
careered professionals at home due to systems that exclude Black
people (socioeconomic status), the fact that despite this unique
home experience the participants were not given a chance to be
science curious in their public schools (racialization), and that
being gendered as ‘girl’was not a deterrent for their family
(gendered experience), allowing them to be science curious at
home. The initial themes here were presented at AERA's annual
meeting in 2022 by the author on a panel and audience discussion.
During this panel and audience discussion, the importance of the
themes and the desire to learn more became evident. Inspired by
the AERA discussion and upon developing the biographies and
considering initial themes, the author reached out to each of the
elder Black women science teachers for a meeting with two pur-
poses: a member‐checking process and for them to participate in
asecondsemi‐structured interview where they would write and
recite a poem they wrote to their younger selves as a process of (re)
membering.
4.7 | Data Collection
Upon completion of the biographies, the author developed the
initial themes (discussed above)anddecidedtousethemember‐
checking meeting as a time to read the biographies back to the
elders and collect data on that experience while also asking the
participants to write poem to their past selves inspired by Dillard
(2022)book,The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teacher (Re)
member and her 2016 publication, (Re)membering the grand-
mothers: Theorizing poetry to (re)think the purposes of Black
education and research. The author corresponded with each elder
through email, asking them if they were willing to engage in
member checking (verifying that their biography was accurate)
and engaging in another interview. All participants agreed to
verify that their biography was accurate, one of the participants
declined to participate in the semi‐structured interview.
The four participants who agreed to participate in the semi‐
structured interview were given the interview protocol via email
7of18

and we scheduled for a Zoom interview. The following senti-
ment from Dillard (2016) inspired the structure of the interview
protocol: “The power of our biographies and experiences con-
vinces me that poetry is a way to affirm our lives and that it
embodies our theory”(p. 254). While not grandmothers per se,
these women, elder Black women science teachers, are theory
personified and my hope was that by giving them the space to
theorize through poetry as a process of (re)membering would
give us all, the science education community and beyond,
plenty to learn from and work with. For this reason, the
interview protocol asked the participants to review my inter-
pretation of their biography, to read the Dillard (2016) text and
consider responses to the interview questions that included
them responding to the three powerful calls for educational
change (data that will be reported in a future publication). Each
interview lasted about 90 min. After the interview concluded, I
asked each participant to share the written version of their
poem to ensure that their intended style remained the same.
4.8 | Data Analysis
Mirroring the seminal work of Dillard 2000 text, the poems
were not altered during the data analysis process, instead “I first
examined patterns and themes which were found in common
between the [four poems] and placed those in the context of the
literature on Black feminist/womanist thought”(Dillard 2000,
p. 670). Using the Notability app on my iPad, I physically
annotated each poem separately. In view of the six beliefs of
Endarkened Feminist Epistemology [outlined earlier], I con-
sidered how each poem, standing alone and in conversation
with one another, were ‘self‐definitions’that allowed each
women the space to name herself for herself to herself, a core
standpoint in the Black feminist tradition.
During the data analysis process, I pulled out how each poem
provided “concrete experiences within everyday life”
(Dillard 2000, p. 675) that formed meaning for the participants.
For example, Dr. Everett wrote about the “The plates as they float
below you. The stars as they twinkle above”as a way to hold onto
times when she felt safe in exploring and observingscience.Ialso
pulled out concepts of “power relations”(Dillard 2000,p.677)that
the participants (re)membered through poetry. For instance, Dr.
Edwards referred to science professionals who tried to “deter”her,
and Dr. Evans wrote about feeling ‘othered’, a Black feminist
standpoint, due to the lack of representation she experienced in
schools. After coding each poem alone, I reread each poem
keeping the other in mind and annotated for emergent themes
that connected and distinguished each, resulting in the summary
of the findings section. Endarkening the analysis of Black women's
science teachers' experiences as young girls themselves led to
unearthing the possible healing and restorative powers of speaking
and acknowledging our biographies and writing poems to our-
selves as a form of (re)membering.
5 | Findings
To match the two modes of data collection, there are three parts
to how the findings are presented, their biographies and their
poems, then the descriptions of the themes. Each participant
will have their own section with “Part A”, their biography, and
“Part B”, their poem, except Ms. Erasme who declined to write
a poem. This will help the reader see the full portrait of how
each participant wanted their story to be told. This presentation
of the poems preserves the contextual richness of the partici-
pants' (re)membering as inspired by Dillard (2000) who teaches
us that:
Poetry from an African woman's perspective is a ‘revel-
atory distillation of experience, not the sterile wordplay
that white men distorted the word to mean to cover a
desperate wish for imagination without insight’
(Lorde 1984, p. 37).
“Poetry is not a luxury. Our poetry is our theory; our
poetry is our life.”
(p. 255).
After the biographies and poems have been shared, the readers
will find a section that discusses the themes embedded in the
biographies that answer the first research question: ‘How do
Black women science teachers describe their early childhood
experiences?’. The second section of themes will be in response
to the research question: ‘How does the act of (re)membering
through poetry support elder Black women science teachers
make meaning of their past experiences in and out of science
spaces?’. This entire findings section helps us understand what
elder Black women science teachers say about their lives and
what they want their inner Black girl to know about who she is.
5.1 | Dr. Edwards
5.1.1 | Findings Part A—Biography
Dr. Edwards came from a middle‐class background and always
had a love for science. Her curiosity about science was ex-
pressed mainly at home where her mother, a teacher, and
father, a veteran turned tech manager, encouraged their chil-
dren to like and enjoy science at home by doing projects. As a
result, 3 out of 4 of Dr. Edwards' siblings pursued science
careers and one has a women's studies degree. Dr. Edwards
doesn't cite any formal science experiences as influencing her
science identity until high school. While in high school, Dr.
Edwards' teacher sparked a deep love for chemistry. While
loving science, Dr. Edwards always knew she wanted to be a
teacher, specifically a science teacher. When pursuing a
science degree at her HBCU, the science professors saw so
much talent in her science abilities that they attempted to dis-
suade her desire to teach. When choosing a graduate program,
she ensured that her professors were specifically trained in the
sciences so she could obtain the best possible training.
Unfortunately, as the only Black student in her cohort, the
majority of her classmates refused to work with her. Coming
from an HBCU herself, she was struck by her peers feeling
unsafe working with her, knowing that in fact, she was the one
isolated and in potential danger. Dr. Edwards positions her
mother (a teacher herself) as the main reason she made it out of
a science teacher education program. Her peers and professors
8of18 Science Education, 2025

in the science ed program did not support her. Once Dr. Ed-
wards finally fulfilled her dream of becoming a chemistry
teacher, she chose to focus on re‐igniting the flame of her high
school students who had lost interest in science as a general
field, typically her Black and Brown students. In her teaching,
she focused on making her lessons intriguing for students
who've lost interest in science prior, students who had been
forgotten in their previous science classes. For her students who
were already interested in science were not the target audience.
This also pushed her to ensure that her lessons were fun and
accessible. In targeting students that weren't necessarily inter-
ested in science, she engaged in project‐based learning where
all students benefited. Although there was some initial resent-
ment from students who were used to being the main focus in
science classrooms, students started to appreciate the project‐
based approach as a different way to explore and think about
science by the end of the year. From engaging with science
projects with her siblings at home to bringing project‐based
teaching to all her science students, Dr. Edwards has sparked
curiosity and joy for science in students who had previously
given up.
5.1.2 | Findings Part B ‐Dr. Edwards' Poem
a thank you to my younger self…
i know it doesn't always seem like it, but i owe you a big
thank you.
Thank you for loving science even when people outside of home
tried to deter you.
Thank you for believing that work with students is powerful.
This year i've gotten the opportunity to do something I never
thought I would be able to do, teach my own child.
When you were in the same grade, you had a science teacher who
would make you watch countless bill nye videos. I can't remember
onescienceexperimentfromthatyear,ifwedidoneatall.
He wont have that experience, well at least not from the first
10 weeks. Although it will change very soon, i have to say
thank you.
Thank you for believing in yourself,
thank you for not giving up
and thank you for continuing to walk toward the path that i am
still on now.
If we weren't talking about science ed, i would likely have a lot
to tell you to do differently,
but when it comes to this,
you made a lot of good choices
and so for now and forever, it's thank you.
5.2 | Dr. Eaton
5.2.1 | Findings Part A—Biography
Dr. Eaton's connections from her childhood science identity to her
approach to teaching were fairly straightforward; connect every-
thing to the everyday, simple nature of the world. As a child, Dr.
Eaton loved to explore the woods with friends, and in reflection,
her mom would always say, “Iknewyou'dbeascientist!”.She
would go out in nature and climb and crawl about. In school, she
felt like her job was to just be present, “we were just there”,where
the woods had connections to something real. This developed a
natural curiosity for caterpillars and an interest in learning how
they operated in nature. Dr. Eaton has no memory of formal sci-
ence before 9th grade, before high school she was only required to
perform rote memorization, no thinking. She does remember
always having scientific questions and having the liberty
(permission from family) to go out and explore hypotheses in
nature to answer some of them. In her teaching, Dr. Eaton con-
nected complex phenomena to the simple everyday experiences of
herstudents.Likeherexertionsin the woods, there is so much to
understand in the things her students saw daily, such as con-
necting the greenhouse effect to the fogging of windows in the
summer months versus the winter months. Dr. Eaton realized that
all students experience scientific phenomena every day and her
main job was to ensure that students were able to connect those
everyday, ordinary experiences to more complex ideas.
5.2.2 | Findings Part B—Dr. Eaton's Poem
The depth of curiosity that no one knew how to nurture, but
you were allowed to explore.
The heart that beat for humanity, that no one taught you all the
way to connect.
The passion for justice that no one told you was not for you.
The love of history that no one explained to you was not real.
The appreciation for education that no one wanted you to lose.
The idealistic view that you could change the world, that no one
knew how you would do.
The persistence of your will that no one knew how to pay.
The support of those beside you, behind you that no one knew
where you would go, but guided you.
The path of those who prepared the way that did not know
your name.
5.3 | Dr. Evans
5.3.1 | Findings Part A—Biography
Dr. Evans did not have a direct route to teaching, although that was
her passion from childhood. Although there was limited access to
9of18

formal science learning, as a young girl, Dr. Evans, fed her hunger
for a science identity by watching the show Quincy (a drama that
premiered in 1976, lasting 8 seasons) as a child and listening to her
father, a chemist, and uncle talk about their experiences as scien-
tists. Dr. Evans was encouraged by the stories and the problems
solved in the show. This curiosity about science continued on into
middle school when Dr. Evans would write book reports about
residency doctors and ‘played teacher’to her stuffed animals at
home. After being discouraged from being a teacher by her dad who
shared the reality of teachers making little money, Dr. Evans set
aside her passion for teaching and followed her science passion up
until a critical moment. While sitting for the MCAT, Dr. Evans
came to the realization “Idon'twantthis”. After 6 years working in
hospitals (and loving it!), Dr. Evans jumped at the opportunity to
teach high school science. In her classroom, she reached back to
move forward by fully connecting with her own curiosity and en-
couraging (rather insisting) that her students also tap into their
ability to take risks. Dr. Evans was very transparent and clear about
herapproachtoteachingwhenspeakingwithparents,“Iamhereto
help your child learn how to think”, science just happens to be the
mechanism by which she helps students think, and think critically.
The act of thinking is not taken lightly, although Dr. Evans does
make sure that students are having fun. As a child and adult herself,
science was always fun because it allowed her to be curious. When
watching the show Quincy, she was able to explore and help solve
(in her mind, at least) these scientific problems. Working in hos-
pitals, she was enthralled by the daily rush of trying to keep people
alive. None of this curiosity as a child and young adult depended on
her ability to memorize science facts. Instead she tapped into her
curiosity and desire to think scientifically to solve problems. This
became a critical piece of her science teaching. Her extended
journey into teaching, though, helped inform how she eventually
chose to approach teaching.
5.3.2 | Findings Part B ‐Dr. Evans' Poem
Young Black girl full of wonder
determination and grit
You are valued, gifted, and worthy
to be seen, heard, and respected.
Keep questioning ‐Keep pushing ‐Keep challenging!
You persevered when your teachers did not
look like you ‐‐ Bravo!
You came from strong stock and
your ancestors were always behind
pushing you all the way‐‐
If you could see how things play out…
Don't give up now
5.4 | Dr. Everett
5.4.1 | Findings Part A—Biography
Dr. Everett's teaching career mirrors her experiences as a young
Afro‐Latina student in New York City. As a child, despite a later
diagnosed math‐learning disability (dyscalculia), she was natu-
rally curious about science. With little access to schools with
robust science programs in public schools, Dr. Everett's mom was
fortunate enough to find a program that accepted her two
daughters to attend a private school through a scholarship. In this
elementary private school, Dr. Everett was able to tap into her
curiosity in the formal learning space with her white peers. In this
private school, Dr. Everett visited the night sky daily by crawling
into an inflatable igloo called a Star Lab. Formal elementary and
secondary science experiences were keenly connected to Dr.
Everett's science identity. This influenced how she taught both at
a public school in her hometown and while teaching in a white‐
dominated, overly‐resourced school setting. No matter the eco-
nomic background of her students, her science teaching was
hands‐on/minds‐on. In the public school, with limited resources
(unlike in the schools she attended), she made sure to use services
such as DonorsChoose to ensure her students had access to live,
exploratory science, such as having a fish tank in the classroom
and participating in a grant‐funded, year‐long program. Later,
while working at an overly‐resourced, predominately white
school, she took full advantage of the 128 acre on‐campus farm.
5.4.2 | Findings Part B ‐Dr. Everett's Poem
Don't. Give. Up.
When that problem mixes itself up in your head
When the numbers don't make sense
When none of it makes sense
Don't. Give. Up.
Remember the stalking cat in the jungle
The hikes in new lands
Swooping birds traveling far
Don't. Give. Up.
When the professor doesn't support you
And it feels like the group keeps going without you
Don't. Give. Up.
Remember the plants, trees, and water
Your feet sinking into the Earth
The plates as they float below you
10 of 18 Science Education, 2025

The stars as they twinkle above
Don't. Give. Up.
5.5 | Ms. Erasme
5.5.1 | Findings Part A—Biography
As a child, Ms. Erasme did not build a science identity while at
school. With a mother that was a hematologist and a father who
was an electrician, she was exposed to STEM early on and was
given the liberty to play, explore, and own science as a part of
her identity. At home, as a child, Ms. Erasme explored tech-
nology and engineering. She broke down and rebuilt machines
with her older brother and engaged in coding. Her parents were
not apprehensive about their daughter engaging in science,
instead her mother brought her to work and allowed her
to observe her test blood for antibodies and when the conver-
sation of AIDS naturally came up during one of these
observatory days, there was blood containing AIDS in a lab
refrigerator, Ms. Erasme's mom met the moment with
knowledge‐building. With her parents' support, Ms. Erasme
earned a degree in science. Upon becoming a teacher (before
the NGSS' focus on scientific skill‐building), she innovated by
prioritizing scientific skill development such as analyzing and
interpreting graphs, predicting a hypothesis through reading
scientific scholarly articles, and engaging in case studies.
6 | Part A Findings: Summary of Biographies
Four of the five elder Black women science teachers in this
study were afforded the consistent opportunity to further
develop their science identities and cultivate their curiosity
through having scientists in the home. Their biographies are
beautifully connected and summarized by Dr. Evans' following
sentiments (shared in her one‐on‐one interview) about her
childhood:
I was always outside. I was always into something in the
dirt, playing with the frogs, playing with worms. And my
dad being a scientist, I guess it was natural to be curious,
and he allowed for that curiosity to develop. I can't
remember anything about school that cultivated that
curiosity.
Within this group of four elder Black women science teachers,
none of them can attribute their long‐standing science identity
to formal schooling. In fact, they spoke specifically about
desiring inquiry‐based science teaching during their time in K‐8
experience but it never came. Their parents, scientists by
training, were excited to use their skills with their daughters at
home, allowing for a lifelong commitment to science teaching.
The only participant that discussed formal science teaching as a
site of engagement was Dr. Everett. As a result of her parent's
enrolling her in a lottery to get a scholarship into a majority
white private school, Dr. Everett has a plethora of memories
and experiences that cultivated her curiosity as a young girl. She
speaks specifically about how her experiences in this private
school gave her few inhibitions to explore and see herself as
someone who could use and enjoy science.
All five of the elder Black women science teachers spoke about
their intentionality to teach science in a way to develop critical
thinking, curiosity, and authentic access to enjoying science. In
part due to the lack of interesting and inquiry‐based science
teaching they received in elementary and middle school, these
teachers have made sure to exemplify exemplary science
teaching practices. Whether they are helping their students
make connections to everyday life and science phenomena,
engaging in project‐based teaching, or exploring on a farm,
these teachers are taking a beacon of hope for what every child
should experience in a science classroom.
7 | Part B Findings—Themes Among Poems
Themes across all 4 poems include: being othered, curiosity,
and familial support. Table 2displays which excerpts from the
poems best fit within each theme so that readers may better see
alignment across how the elder Black women science teachers
chose to speak back to their inner Black girl self.
7.1 | Being Othered
All four of the participants spoke in some way to the idea of
being othered and holding an outsider‐within status in (science)
education spaces, and felt it necessary to discuss this with their
inner Black girl. The outsider‐within position, a unique stand-
point of marginality filled with contradictions and exaggera-
tions, situates Black women in places where we are othered,
such as schools, and requires us to neglect our particular raced,
classed, and gendered reality to survive in structures of single‐
axis ways of knowing (Dillard 2000; Collins 1986; hooks 1984).
Exemplified by Dr. Edwards' forthcoming words, it was important
for these Black women science teachers to speak back, to call out
this position of outsider within to thrive within and outside of it.
First we understand that we were not meant to survive.
We understand the paramount need to define ourselves
for ourselves, or not to do so is to be defined by others,
their use, and to our demise.
Dr. Everett and Dr. Evans specifically referenced school (K‐12 and
college) as sites of resistance with their younger science self.
During the one‐on‐one interviews and in her poem, stating “When
the professor doesn't support you”,Dr.Everettspokeaboutthe
gatekeeping nature of her science professors (Brown 2005;
Moore 2007) who refused to help her address her dyscalculia math
disability and instead told her she didn't belong. Dr. Evans felt
ostracized and othered by her teachers who “did not look like”her
anddidn'tfosterspiritfullof“wonder, determination, and grit”.
She speaks to her younger self about the need to persevere and
find a place in this world not made for her, she must “keep
questioning ‐keep pushing –keep challenging”.
11 of 18

The source of othering is not centered on one specific place for
Dr. Edwards and Dr. Eaton. Dr. Edwards demonstrated appre-
ciation for her home family who helped her cultivate her love of
science, which was a stark contrast to those outside of her home
who attempted to “deter”this pursuit. Dr. Eaton recalls with
her younger self that she had big dreams for her life, with goals
to “change the world”. Dr. Eaton speaks to being othered
through being left to figure out the world.
Due to understanding that they were othered in science learn-
ing spaces, they wanted their younger selves to not be deterred.
Dr. Evans specifically says it was important to share “that she
understood her value and that even when the odds may have
been stacked against her, she persevered and she kept going”.
For Dr. Everett, writing poetry as a way of (re)membering
helped her reconcile the errors of her schools and their lack of
response to her math learning disability. For her, writing the
poem was her “trying to give that information to my younger
self of like, look for support or get an accommodation…that's
been something that could have helped me”.
7.2 | Curiosity
When speaking to their younger selves through poetry and in
the one‐on‐one interviews, Dr. Everett and Dr. Eaton reflected
specifically on the role curiosity played for them and their love
of exploration. Dr. Everett (re)members by taking her younger
self back to the location of curiosity by stating, “remember the
stalking cat in the jungle. The hikes in new lands. Swooping
birds traveling far”. As a young girl from NYC with a scholar-
ship to a private school, Dr. Everett was afforded the opportu-
nity to tap into her curious spirit with institutionalized support.
As an adult now, Dr. Everett continues to explore as a birder
and leads her school in giving her students ample opportunities
to explore the acres of farmland in their community. Dr. Everett
covets these private school memories in helping her science‐
identity journey.
Contrary to Dr. Everett, Dr. Eaton's curiosity was supported by
her home family and not supported in schools. For her poem,
she wanted her younger self to understand that her curiosity
was a source of personal pride, that “curiosity [was my first
line] because I have that curious spirit and as a science educator
that's important to have that and promote curiosity”. In her
own words, she (re)members “talking about [science] all the
time. I would do stuff and it's like they'd allow me to do it …So
they allowed me to explore”. Dr. Eaton had lots of questions
and her proximity to the woods and for her “the ability to ex-
plore”was paramount for her science identity formation.
7.3 | Familial Support
Dr. Eaton and Dr. Evans specifically connected with their an-
cestors and family as a support system. Their poems and (re)
flections allowed them to speak to their younger selves about
being grounded by familial support, both spiritual and physical,
when things seem too hard. Dr. Eaton called on her spirit
guides to help her younger self to persist and reach her dreams
stating: “The support of those beside you, behind you that no
one knew what you would do, but guided you. The path of those
who prepared the way that did not know your name”.
In her (re)flection, Dr. Evans shared that as a young girl she would
routinely run to her parents when she wanted to quit so they could
fill her cup so she could face the world again. She shared:
That's my way of protecting my little Black girl self and
saying, “Okay girl, we're going to do this. We can cuss
TABLE 2 | Thematic connection among poems.
Poet Theme Excerpt
Dr. Everett Being othered When the professor doesn't support you
Curiosity Remember the stalking cat in the jungle
The hikes in new lands
Swooping birds traveling far
Dr. Eaton Being othered The idealistic view that you could change the world,
that no one knew how you would do.
Curiosity The depth of curiosity that no one knew how to nurture,
but you were allowed to explore.
Familial support The support of those beside you, behind you that no one
knew where you would go, but guided you.
The path of those who prepared the way that did not know your name.
Dr. Evans Being othered You persevered when your teachers did not look like you—Bravo!
Familial support You came from strong stock and your ancestors were always
behind pushing you all way‐‐
Curiosity Young Black girl full of wonder determination and grit
Dr. Edwards Being othered/Curiosity Thank you for loving science when people
outside of home tried to deter you.
12 of 18 Science Education, 2025

and fuss and scream behind closed doors, but when we
face that world, we're going to take that mask off…You're
going to do the thing.
To honor her fullness while still protecting herself in science
learning spaces, Dr. Evans (re)minds herself “you came from
strong stock and your ancestors were always behind pushing
you all the way”.
8 | Discussion
Curiosity was a privilege afforded to the Black science women
teachers in this study because of their proximity to scientists in
the home or proximity to scholarships to attend majority‐white
schools. In some ways, most of the participants in this study
experience a type of reverse science ‘border crossing’(Costa 1995),
for them school was not the place valued science for them in
elementary and middle school, but they were able to go home and
ask science questions, code, engage in engineering, and observe
science careers in the field. Young Black girls in American science
classrooms are often expected to be seen and not heard (Ashford
et al. 2017), and fortunately the participants were given another
worldview for science learning and enjoyment.
For the majority of Black children, curiosity is a privilege af-
forded to few because ‘science is white property’(Mensah and
Jackson 2018). Those who pursue science disciplines learn that
there is a defined culture of science with norms and beliefs
(Parsons and Carlone 2013) that favors and privileges white
male students thereby fostering alienating and isolating learn-
ing environments for Black students (Mutegi 2013) through
structures to exclude the majority. Unfortunately, the partici-
pants in this study still had obstacles to face as they pursued
science and science education careers. In this way they are like
other Black girls who must employ immeasurable resilience to
“merely consider themselves as worthy of pursuing a science or
engineering career”(Wright and Riley 2021, p. 497).
In this study, the participants prove to be successful cultural
brokers since they are able to guide students between their life‐
world culture and the culture of science and help students to
resolve conflicts (Jegede and Aikenhead 1999). Morton et al.
(2022) speak truth to what most of the participants experienced in
their formal science classrooms: the exclusion of their Black
voices and perspectives in “supporting fundamental conceptions
of science content”which was “an attempt to foster Black suf-
fering and death”(p. 138). As a way to right this wrong from their
lived experience, the participants have been able to reconcile this
attempt at silencing their scientific curious spirit by engaging in
innovative, fun and student‐driven science teaching. But Black
women science teachers are a rarity (Riley 2023), let alone one
with 14+ years of teaching experience. We can not continue to
reserve the opportunity to use and enjoy science to the few Black
children who may have the odds played in their favor.
8.1 | Science Identity Formation
The participants spoke about their science identity formation,
as the participants have attempted to maintain and build their
science identity from child to teacher they have experienced
conflicts, affirmations, and negotiations. For instance, Dr.
Everett spoke about how her science identity was affirmed
while learning in the Star Lab, but her identity was also con-
flicted because she was othered as the only Afro‐Latina in her
class. This negotiated identity continued as she attempted to
obtain a science college degree, and to teach in her home
community. Both resulted in countless hours of trying to
overcome a system that functioned to fail her (e.g., minimal to
no special education services, and under‐resourced and some-
times violent classroom environment in Title I, public schools).
Black women do not become completely removed of our
racialized and gendered identities and histories as we acquire
and maintain our science identity. Assimilating to a structure
requires a level of negotiating of one's identity (Agee 2004).
Negotiating one's identities to fit into the culture of science and
in schooling spaces, both as a student and teacher, is dehu-
manizing. Negotiating presumably conflicting identities
(science and Black/woman) is an act of spirit‐murder
(Love 2014; Morton et al. 2022), thus Black women science
teachers deserve a space to recover the negotiated portions of
their identity in safe spaces that recognizes our unique and
necessary position in schools (Riley and Mensah 2024), while
also centering our well‐being.
9 | Implications
Maintaining today's culture of science will come at a great cost
to the individuals and communities of people from historically
excluded backgrounds. As a society we all suffer when there is
minimal diversity of thought or worldview to help us solve the
very real and scientific problems of today and tomorrow. I urge
the science education community to consider the following
implications.
9.1 | Curricular Shifts and Ideologies That Honor
Black Girls in K‐8 Science Spaces
While reflecting on a racist experience that young Black girls in
a public school experienced, Dr. Miles wrote “why must in‐
school time lack joy?”out of frustration of witnessing the
opportunity to express curiosity be taken away and replaced
with discipline (Morton et al. 2022, p. 132). This is an
unfortunate common practice. Relegating the curiosity of young
Black girls to home experiences and informal learning spaces is
a systemic failure. Schooling structures, such as curriculum and
ideologies, must recenter those who are historically excluded.
Specifically in science, where interest diminishes in elementary
school if not actively fostered (Walls 2012), curricular ap-
proaches must give ample space for young Black girls and other
minoritized groups to explore their curiosity and communicate
their thoughts, questions and ideals without punishment.
Teachers must learn to hear what young Black girls are saying
in science spaces and not focus on how they are communicating
it. Young Black girls and all groups who are historically mar-
ginalized and excluded deserve teachers who understand that
“rationalizing the status quo through either antagonistic actions
or by‐stander mindsets normalizes and perpetuates oppression”
(Morton et al. 2023, p. 7).
13 of 18

An opportunity to make curricular and ideological shifts is
found in the novel ‘Historically Relevant Science Pedagogy’
framework (Riley 2022). Historically Relevant Science Peda-
gogy is an antiracist and liberatory approach that merges and
distinguishes three differential antiracist educational frame-
works: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson‐Billings 1995),
Liberatory Pedagogy (hooks, 2015), and Culturally and His-
torically Responsive Education (Muhammed, 2020/2022) in
the context of science teaching and learning, illustrated in
Figure 1.
For elementary and middle science teachers who desire to
help their students be seen within the science content and to
express themselves in the science learning process, they must
consider frameworks of liberation and antiracism such as
Historically Relevant Science Pedagogy. Considering the his-
tories and endeavors of science teaching and learning for
Black people is not one a learning experience, but one of
thriving and liberation, linked to Afrofuturistic possibilities of
being (Mutegi 2011). Historically Relevant Science Pedagogy
is exemplified in four themes: (a) bringing something new to
the community they are serving while also honoring the
norms and culture that is already present, (b) using NGSS
standards within the context of the community, (c) teaching
at the intersection of history, culture, and science learning
and teaching, and (d) building critical consciousness in the
science classroom as discussed by Riley and Mensah (2023).
As shared by Roby and Calabrese Barton (2019), embracing
Blackstudentsasbrilliantrequiresscienceteachersand
teacher educators to enact practices that cultivate the bril-
liance students bring to the table rather than try to deject
them from it in and through science inquiry.
9.2 | Professional Development for Black Women
Science Teachers
While it has been proven that Black women teachers have been
successful teaching students who otherwise have been dis-
carded by some other teachers (Farinde, Allen, and Lewis 2016;
Gist, White, and Bianco 2018; James‐Gallway and Harris 2021;
McKinney de Royston 2020), Black women teachers do not have
“mystical powers”(Acosta 2019). Black women teachers must
be given the opportunity to (re)flect on their practices in various
ways “if students are to achieve more than marginal progress in
our schools”(Sims 1992, p. 342). Black women deserve a
framework that centers (re)flection as they consider their gen-
dered racial identity development (Williams and Lewis 2021)as
a way to persist and thrive in the field of education. Specifically
in science education, it is important to retain Black women
teachers since they are uniquely positioned and qualified to link
content and curriculum with students who have shared cultural
understandings, content expertize and pedagogical training
(Riley and Mensah 2023).
Creating liberatory science spaces looks like science teachers,
science teacher educators and science education structures em-
bodying Black cultural perspectives regarding identity, thoughts,
behaviors, and performance that honor rather than dispute, en-
courage rather dissuade, and empower Blackness (Mutegi 2013;
Mutegi, Morton, and Etienne 2019). Creating these liberatory
spaces is that much harder when some of the leaders in the effort,
Black women science teachers, are not given space to attend to
their needs. Professional development spaces for Black women
science teachers must give space for them to consider how their
racialized and gendered position impacted their past and current
science learning experiences. Looking back to move forward can
be done through (re)membering through poetry (as discussed in
this paper), through sharing examples and philosophies of ex-
emplary Black women teachers throughout history (Riley 2023)or
engaging in Sista Circles (Riley and Mensah 2024)thatallowfor
unearthing truth and sparking collaboration. Texts to consider for
professional development tailored for Black women science
teachers might include:
a. texts about Womanist Pedagogy (Beauboeuf‐Lafontant 2002)
as exemplified in the Womanist Pedagogy and Black Women
Science Teachers manuscript (Riley 2023),
b. texts about Black women teachers act of (re)membering
(Dillard 2022),
c. texts about the culture of science and it's specific impact on
Black women in science education (Mensah 2019; Mensah and
Jackson 2018),
d. curricular handbooks such as Cultivating Genius and Un-
earthing Joy (Muhammad 2020; Muhammad 2023) where they
create lessons together using the framework.
While engaging with these texts that honor the legacy, inno-
vations, and healing of Black women teachers, these profes-
sional development spaces must ask participants about their
personal professional goals and help them build towards
developing the science classroom that matches their vision. In
FIGURE 1 | Displays how the three aforementioned approaches to
teaching come together to inform a specified pedagogical framework for
science teaching and learning that centers critical consciousness, called
Historically Relevant Science Pedagogy (Riley 2022; Riley, under
review).
14 of 18 Science Education, 2025

creating these professional development spaces, eventually they
could lead professional development for others (with financial
support for their time and expertize), broadening the impact
and helping to structurally shift the landscape of science
teaching and learning to be more inclusive. The call to action
for Black Liberatory K‐12 Science Education (BLKSE) requires
that the larger field make amends for “existing damage that has
been done”by calling out “existing anti‐Black nature of K‐12
science education and challenges those operating within sci-
ence, science education, and science teacher education to work
collectively toward Black liberation”(p. 133). Tailoring profes-
sional development and financially and structurally supporting
Black women science teachers as they make curricular changes
and mentor others is necessary to answer this powerful call.
10 | Conclusion
In this study, Black women science teachers with more than
15 years of teaching experience spoke back to themselves, their
inner Black girls as an act of (re)membering and resistance.
Through their biographies we learn that access to science
professionals at home or a once‐in‐a‐lifetime scholarship gave
them the privilege to be curious about science: ask critical
science questions, get lost in the wonder of the stars, break
down and rebuild machines, and make sense of nature.
Through their poems written to their inner Black girl, we learn
that even despite these privileges these women had to persist
through the culture of science that told them they didn't
belong. Yet and still, they speak back with power, en-
couragement and a determination to be seen and heard. These
elder Black women science teachers also speak back to their
current students by creating an oasis of wonder, a space to fall
in love with science again through inquiry and projects, a
place of resistance where science attainment is not an obstacle,
but a right to pursue.
Black girls, which includes ‘ghetto’Black girls, deserve the
opportunity to be science curious, to be able to use and enjoy
science in any way they so choose. One of the many ways to
dismantle science as white property and foster change for Black
girls is to bring life to how we support Black women science
teachers on their quest to (re)member and transform science
teaching and learning spaces. While structural change through
addressing anti‐Blackness in K‐12 science is an imperative, we
must also learn from Black women to meet the needs of Black
girls in our learning spaces.
Dr. Terri Watson (2019) tweet encapsulated what Black women
know about Black girls:
Black girls are not loud—they want to be heard.
Black girls are not seeking attention—they are seeking a
connection.
Black girls are not aggressive—they know what they want.
Black girls are not bossy—they are leaders.
Last, Black girls are not adults.
I might add, Black girls are not disruptive—they are curious.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Dr. Felicia Moore Mensah for being a
thought partner and for encouraging her to continue to conduct
research that she, herself, would want to read. Thank you for being my
#scholarmentor!
Data Availability Statement
The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study
are available within the article and/or its supplementary materials.
References
Acosta, M. M. 2019. “The Paradox of Pedagogical Excellence Among
Exemplary Black Women Educators.”Journal of Teacher Education 70,
no. 1: 26–38.
Agee, J. 2004. “Negotiating a Teaching Identity: An African American
Teacher's Struggle to Teach in Test‐Driven Contexts.”Teachers College
Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education 106, no. 4: 747–774.
Allen, M. M. 2023. “High School Black Girls' Experiences in a Stem
After‐School Program: A Qualitative Case Study.”School Science and
Mathematics 124: 146–158. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12624.
Ashford, S. N., J. A. Wilson, N. S. King, and T. M. Nyachae. 2017.
“STEM SISTA Spaces.”Emerging Issues and Trends in Education 3.
Beauboeuf‐Lafontant, T. 2002. “A Womanist Experience of Caring:
Understanding the Pedagogy of Exemplary Black Women Teachers.”
The Urban Review 34: 71–86.
Berlyne, D. E. 1966. “Curiosity and Exploration: Animals Spend Much
of Their Time Seeking Stimuli Whose Significance Raises Problems for
Psychology.”Science 153, no. 3731: 25–33.
Boylorn, R. M. 2011. “Gray or for Colored Girls Who Are Tired of
Chasing Rainbows: Race and Reflexivity.”Cultural Studies ↔Critical
Methodologies 11, no. 2: 178–186.
Brand, B. R., G. E. Glasson, and A. M. Green. 2006. “Sociocultural
Factors Influencing Students' Learning in Science and Mathematics: An
Analysis of the Perspectives of African American Students.”School
Science and Mathematics 106, no. 5: 228–236.
Brown, B. A. 2005. “‘It Isn't no slang That can be Said About This Stuff’:
Language, Identity, and Appropriating Science Discourse.”Journal of
Research in Science Teaching 43, no. 1: 96–126.
Buck, G. A., K. L. Cook, C. F. Quigley, P. Prince, and Y. Lucas. 2014.
“Seeking to Improve African American Girls' Attitudes Toward Science:
A Participatory Action Research Project.”The Elementary School
Journal 114, no. 3: 431–453. https://doi.org/10.1086/674419.
Chappell, M. J., and M. Varelas. 2020. “Ethnodance and Identity: Black
Students Representing Science Identities in the Making.”Science
Education 104, no. 2: 193–221.
Colby, S. R., and B. H. Bodily. 2018. “Poetic Possibilities: Exploring
Texts With Ricoeur's Hermeneutics.”International Review of Qualitative
Research 11, no. 2: 162–177.
Collins, P. H. 1986. “Learning From the Outsider Within: The Socio-
logical Significance of Black Feminist Thought.”Social Problems 33,
no. 6: S14–S32.
Collins, P. H. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness,
and the Politics of Empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge.
Collins, P. H. 2013. “Black Feminist Epistemology and Toward a Politics of
Empowerment.”In Social Work: A Reader,editedbyV.Cree,107–114.
Cook, C., N. D. Goodman, and L. E. Schulz. 2011. “Where Science
Starts: Spontaneous Experiments in Preschoolers' Exploratory Play.”
Cognition 120, no. 3: 341–349.
15 of 18

Corley, N. A. 2020. “Exploring Poetry as Method: ‘Representing Faith-
fully’the Narratives of African American High School Students and
Their Mothers.”Qualitative Social Work 19, no. 5–6: 1022–1039.
Costa, V. B. 1995. “When Science Is ‘Another World’: Relationships
Between Worlds of Family, Friends, School, and Science.”Science
Education 79, no. 3: 313–333.
Crenshaw, K. W., P. Ocen, and J. Nanda. 2015. Black Girls Matter:
Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected. New York, NY: African
American Policy Forum.
Croom, N. N., and L. D. Patton. 2014. “Using Endarkened and Critical
Race Feminist Perspectives to Question and Analyze Knowledge
Production Narratives.”In Black Faculty in the Academy, edited by F.
A. Bonner II, A. F. Marbley, F. Tuitt, et al., 67–78. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Davis, C. 2021. “Sampling Poetry, Pedagogy, and Protest to Build
Methodology: Critical Poetic Inquiry as Culturally Relevant Method.”
Qualitative Inquiry 27, no. 1: 114–124.
Despenza, N. 2018. Missing in Action: A Critical Narrative Study of the
Absence of Black Female Secondary Science Teachers. Doctoral disser-
tation. Los Angeles, CA: Loyola Marymount University.
Dewey, J. 1910. How We Think. Lexington, MA: D.C. Health and CO,
Publishers.
Dillard, C. 2022. The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)
member. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Dillard, C. 2000. “The Substance of Things Hoped for, the Evidence of
Things not Seen: Examining an Endarkened Feminist Epistemology in
Educational Research and Leadership.”International Journal of
Qualitative Studies in Education 13, no. 6: 661–681.
Dillard, C. 2016. “(Re)membering the Grandmothers: Theorizing Poetry
to (Re)think the Purposes of Black Education and Research.”In Qual-
itative Inquiry Outside the Academy, 253–267. New York, NY: Routledge.
Dillard, C. B., D. Abdur‐Rashid, and C. A. Tyson. 2000. “My Soul Is a
Witness: Affirming Pedagogies of the Spirit.”International Journal of
Qualitative Studies in Education 13, no. 5: 447–462.
Dortch, D., and C. Patel. 2017. “Black Undergraduate Women and Their
Sense of Belonging in STEM at Predominantly White Institutions.”
NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education 10, no. 2: 202–215.
D. Turner, J. 2022. “We See the Stars: Young Black Girls' Creative
Imaginings of Intersectional STEM Futures Through Art.”The
Educational Forum 86, no. 4: 396–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/
00131725.2022.2101827.
Dunmeyer, A. D., K. R. Shauri‐Webb, and G. E. Muhammad. 2023. “‘We
Are not Broken’: Using Sista Circles as Resistance, Liberation, and
Healing.”International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 36,
no. 7: 1248–1265.
Engel, S. 2011. “Children's Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools.”
Harvard Educational Review 81, no. 4: 625–645.
Epstein, R., J. Blake, and T. González. 2017. Girlhood Interrupted: The
Erasure of Black Girls' Childhood. Georgetown Law Center on Poverty
and Inequality.
Evans‐Winters, V. E. 2019. Black Feminism in Qualitative Inquiry: A
Mosaic for Writing Our Daughter's Body. New York, NY: Routledge.
Farinde, A. A., A. Allen, and C. W. Lewis. 2016. “Retaining Black Teachers:
An Examination of Black Female Teachers' Intentions to Remain in K‐12
Classrooms.”Equity & Excellence in Education 49, no. 1: 115–127.
Fordham, S. 1997. “Those Loud Black Girls: (Black) Women, Silence,
and Gender ‘Passing’in the Academy.”In Beyond Black and White: New
Faces and Voices in U.S. Schools, edited by M. Seiler and L. Weis.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Frye, B. L. 2018. “Invention of a Slave.”Syracuse Law Review 68: 181.
Gist, C. D., T. White, and M. Bianco. 2018. “Pushed to Teach: Peda-
gogies and Policies for a Black Women Educator Pipeline.”Education
and Urban Society 50, no. 1: 56–86.
Hanson, S. 2008. Swimming Against the Tide: African American Girls
and Science Education. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Hamilton, P. 2020. “‘Now That I Know What You're About’: Black
Feminist Reflections on Power in the Research Relationship.”
Qualitative Research 20, no. 5: 519–533.
Harvey, L. 2015. “Beyond Member‐Checking: A Dialogic Approach to
the Research Interview.”International Journal of Research & Method in
Education 38, no. 1: 23–38.
Hines‐Datiri, D., and D. J. Carter Andrews. 2020. “The Effects of Zero
Tolerance Policies on Black Girls: Using Critical Race Feminism and
Figured Worlds to Examine School Discipline.”Urban Education 55,
no. 10: 1419–1440.
Holmes, A., and S. Tolbert. 2020. “Relational Conscientization Through
Indigenous Elder Praxis: Renewing, Restoring, and Re‐Storying.”In
Towards Critical Environmental Education. Critical Studies of Educa-
tion, edited by A. S. Gkiolmas and C. D. Skordoulis, 14. Cham: Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50609-4_8.
hooks, b. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge,
MA: South End Press.
James‐Gallaway, A. D., and T. Harris. 2021. “We Been Relevant: Cul-
turally Relevant Pedagogy and Black Women Teachers in Segregated
Schools.”Educational Studies 57, no. 2: 124–141.
Jegede, O. J., and G. S. Aikenhead. 1999. “Transcending Cultural Bor-
ders: Implications for Science Teaching.”Research in Science &
Technological Education 17, no. 1: 45–66.
Jirout, J., and D. Klahr. 2012. “Children's Scientific Curiosity: In Search
of an Operational Definition of an Elusive Concept.”Developmental
Review 32, no. 2: 125–160.
Johnson, I. R., E. S. Pietri, F. Fullilove, and S. Mowrer. 2019. “Exploring
Identity‐Safety Cues and Allyship Among Black Women Students in
Stem Environments.”Psychology of Women Quarterly 43, no. 2: 131–150.
Jones, N. 2010. Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and
Inner‐City Violence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Joseph, N. M. 2022. Making Black Girls Count in Math Education: A
Black Feminist Vision for Transformative Teaching. Boston, MA: Har-
vard Education Press.
King, N. S. 2022. “Black Girls Matter: A Critical Analysis of Educational
Spaces and Call for Community‐Based Programs.”Cultural Studies of
Science Education 17: 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-
022-10113-8.
King, N. S., L. Peña‐Telfer, and S. Earls. 2023. “‘TheWorkIDoMatters’:
Cultivating a STEM Counterspace for Black Girls Through Social‐
Emotional Development and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies.”Education
Sciences 13, no. 7: 754. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13070754.
Kuhn, D., and V. Ho. 1980. “Self‐Directed Activity and Cognitive
Development.”Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 1, no. 2:
119–133.
Ladson‐Billings, G. 1995. “But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.”Theory Into Practice 34, no. 3: 159–165.
Lorde, A. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA:
Crossing Press.
Louis, V. N., and N. S. King. 2023. “‘Each Day I Find Ways to Fight for
My Students’: Black Science Teachers as Advocates and Abolitionists.”
Equity & Excellence in Education 56, no. 4: 608–621.
Love, B. L. 2014. “‘I See Trayvon Martin’: What Teachers can Learn
From the Tragic Death of a Young Black Male.”The Urban Review 46:
292–306.
16 of 18 Science Education, 2025

Lozenski, B. D. 2017. “Pedagogies of Black Eldership: Exploring the
Impact of Intergenerational Contact on Youth Research.”Multicultural
Perspectives 19, no. 2: 65–75.
Luce, M. R., and S. Hsi. 2015. “Science‐Relevant Curiosity Expression
and Interest in Science: An Exploratory Study.”Science Education 99,
no. 1: 70–97.
McClish‐Boyd, K., and K. Bhattacharya. 2021. “Endarkened Narrative
Inquiry: A Methodological Framework Constructed Through Improvi-
sations.”International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 34,
no. 6: 534–548.
McGee, E. O. 2020. “Interrogating Structural Racism in STEM Higher
Education.”Educational Researcher 49, no. 9: 633–644.
McGee, E. O., and L. Bentley. 2017. “The Troubled Success of Black
Women in STEM.”cognition and Instruction 35, no. 4: 265–289.
McKinney de Royston, M. 2020. “Black Womanist Teachers' Political
Clarity in Theory and Practice.”Theory Into Practice 59, no. 4: 379–388.
McMath, C. S. 2015. Promoting the Interest of African American Teenage
Girls in Science: What can we Learn From an Exemplary African
American Science Teacher? Mississippi State University.
Mensah, F. M. 2019. “Finding Voice and Passion: Critical Race Theory
Methodology in Science Teacher Education.”American Educational
Research Journal 56, no. 4: 1412–1456.
Mensah, F. M., and I. Jackson. 2018. “Whiteness as Property in Science
Teacher Education.”Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship
in Education 120, no. 1: 1–38.
Miles, M. L., and R. S. Roby. 2022. “Black Liberatory Science Education:
Positioning Black Youth as Science Learners Through Recognizing
Brilliance.”Cultural Studies of Science Education 17, no. 1: 177–198.
Milner, H. R. 2007. “Race, Culture, and Researcher Positionality:
Working Through Dangers Seen, Unseen, and Unforeseen.”
Educational Researcher 36, no. 7: 388–400.
Mims, L. C., and J. L. Williams. 2020. “‘They Told Me What I Was
Before I Could Tell Them What I Was’: Black Girls' Ethnic‐Racial
Identity Development Within Multiple Worlds.”Journal of Adolescent
Research 35, no. 6: 754–779.
Moore, F. M. 2007. “Language in Science Education as a Gatekeeper to
Learning, Teaching, and Professional Development.”Journal of Science
Teacher Education 18: 319–343.
Moraga, C. and Anzaldúa, G., eds. 2002. This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Morris, M. 2016. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools.
New York, NY: The New Press.
Morton, T. R., W. Agee, K. C. Ashad‐Bishop, et al. 2023. “Re‐
Envisioning the Culture of Undergraduate Biology Education to Foster
Black Student Success: A Clarion Call.”CBE—Life Sciences Education
22, no. 4: es5.
Morton, T. R., M. L. Miles, R. S. Roby, and N. A. Ortiz. 2022. “‘All We
Wanna Do Is be Free’: Advocating for Black Liberation in and Through
K‐12 Science Education.”Journal of Science Teacher Education 33,
no. 2: 131–153.
Muhammad, G. 2014. “Focus on Middle School: Black Girls Write!: Literary
Benefits of a Summer Writing Collaborative Grounded in History: Detra
Price‐Dennis, Editor.”Childhood Education 90, no. 4: 323–326.
Muhammad, G. 2020. Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for
Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. New York, NY: Scho-
lastic Incorporated.
Muhammad, G. 2023. Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and His-
torically Responsive Teaching and Learning. New York, NY: Scholastic
Incorporated.
Mutegi, J. W. 2011. “The Inadequacies of ‘Science for All’and the
Necessity and Nature of a Socially Transformative Curriculum
Approach for African American Science Education.”Journal of
Research in Science Teaching 48, no. 3: 301–316.
Mutegi, J. W. 2013. “‘Life's First Need Is for us to be Realistic’and Other
Reasons for Examining the Sociocultural Construction of Race in the
Science Performance of African American Students.”Journal of
Research in Science Teaching 50, no. 1: 82–103.
Mutegi, J. W., C. H. Morton, and L. Etienne. 2019. “Reconceptualizing
Science Education for Learners of African descent.”In Centering Race
in the STEM Education of African American K‐12 Learners, edited by G.
Prime, 71–93. Lausanne, Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishing Group.
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). 2023.
“Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons With
Disabilities.”Special Report NSF 23–315. Alexandria, VA: National
Science Foundation. https://ncses.nsf.gov/wmpd.
Olitsky, S. 2020. “Teaching as Emotional Practice or Exercise in Mea-
surement? School Structures, Identity Conflict, and the Retention of
Black Women Science Teachers.”Education and Urban Society 52,
no. 4: 590–618.
Olitsky, S., L. L. Flohr, J. Gardner, and M. Billups. 2010. “Coherence,
Contradiction, and the Development of School Science Identities.”
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47: 1209–1228.
Palmer, P. M. 1983. “White Women/Black Women: The Dualism of
Female Identity and Experience in the United States.”Feminist Studies
9, no. 1: 151–170.
Parsons, E. C., and H. B. Carlone. 2013. “Culture and Science Education
in the 21st Century: Extending and Making the Cultural Box More
Inclusive.”Journal of Research in Science Teaching 50, no. 1: 1–11.
Parsons, E. C., and D. N. T. Dorsey. 2015. “The Race Problem: Its
Perpetuation in the Next Generation of Science Standards.”In The Race
Controversy in American Education, edited by L. D. Drakeford, 2,
215–235. Prager.
Peters,A.L.2011.“Black Women Faculty in Educational Leadership: Un-
packing Their Silence in Research.”In Women of Color in Higher Education:
Turbulent Past, Promising Future,editedbyG.Jean
‐Marie and B. Lloyd‐
Jones, 147–167. Leeds, England: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Richardson, L. 2003. “Poetic Representation of Interviews.”Postmodern
Interviewing: 187–201.
Ridgeway, M. L. 2019. “Against the Grain: Science Education Re-
searchers and Social Justice Agendas.”Cultural Studies of Science
Education 14: 283–292.
Ridgeway, M. L., and E. O. McGee. 2018. “Black Mathematics Educa-
tors: Researching Toward Racial Emancipation of Black Students.”The
Urban Review 50: 301–322.
Riley, A. D. 2022. Lifting as we Climb: Womanist Pedagogy and Anti‐
Racist Teaching as Discussed by Black Women Science Teachers. New
York, NY: Columbia University.
Riley, A. D. 2023. “Womanist Pedagogy and Black Women's Science
Teaching.”Race Ethnicity and Education:1–20.
Riley, A. D., and F. M. Mensah. 2023. “‘My Curriculum Has No Soul!’:A
Case Study of the Experiences of Black Women Science Teachers Working
at Charter Schools.”Journal of Science Teacher Education 34, no. 1: 86–103.
Riley, A. D., and F. M. Mensah. 2024. “‘Things Your History Teacher
Won't Teach You: Science Edition’: Black Women Science Teachers as
Anti‐Racist Teachers.”Journal of Research in Science Teaching 61:
809–840. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21912.
Roby, R. S., and A. Calabrese Barton. 2019. “Historical Exclusion as an
Onus for Inclusion and Home in STEM.”In Essays on Exclusion: Our
Critical, Collective Journey Toward Equity in Education, edited by P.
Boda. DioPress.
17 of 18

Shaw, M. S., J. J. Coleman, E. E. Thomas, and Y. B. Kafai. 2023. “Re-
storying a Black Girl's Future: Using Womanist Storytelling Method-
ologies to Reimagine Dominant Narratives in Computing Education.”
Journal of the Learning Sciences 32, no. 1: 52–75. https://doi.org/10.
1080/10508406.2023.2179847.
Sims, M. J. 1992. “Inquiry and Urban Classrooms: A Female African‐
American Teacher in Search of Truth.”Theory Into Practice 31, no. 4:
342–349.
Sinha, T., Z. Bai, and J. Cassell. 2017. “Curious Minds Wonder Alike:
Studying Multimodal Behavioral Dynamics to Design Social Scaffolding
of Curiosity.”In Data Driven Approaches in Digital Education: 12th
European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC‐TEL 2017,
270–285. Tallinn, Estonia: Springer International Publishing.
Solomon, F., D. Champion, M. Steele, and T. Wright. 2022. “Embodied
Physics: Utilizing Dance Resources for Learning and Engagement in
Stem.”Journal of the Learning Sciences 31, no. 1: 73–106. https://doi.
org/10.1080/10508406.2021.2023543.
Toliver, S. R. 2021. Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research:
Endarkened Storywork. New York, NY: Routledge.
Vacchelli, E. 2018. “Embodiment in Qualitative Research: Collage
Making With Migrant, Refugee and Asylum Seeking Women.”
Qualitative Research 18, no. 2: 171–190.
Wade‐Jaimes, K., N. S. King, and R. Schwartz. 2021. “‘You Could Like
Science and not be a Science Person’: Black Girls' Negotiation of Space
and Identity in Science.”Science Education 105, no. 5: 855–879.
Walls, L. 2012. “Third Grade African American Students' Views of the
Nature of Science.”Journal of Research in Science Teaching 49, no. 1:
1–37.
Watson, T. 2019. Black Girls Are not Loud—They Want to be Heard.
Black Girls Are not Seeking Attention—They Are Seeking a Connection.
Twitter.
Watson, W. 2018. “We Got Soul: Exploring Contemporary Black
Women Educators' Praxis of Politicized Care.”Equity & Excellence in
Education 51, no. 3–4: 362–377.
Williams, M. G., and J. A. Lewis. 2021. “Developing a Conceptual
Framework of Black Women's Gendered Racial Identity Development.”
Psychology of Women Quarterly 45, no. 2: 212–228.
Wirkala, C., and D. Kuhn. 2011. “Problem‐Based Learning in K–12
Education: Is It Effective and How Does It Achieve Its Effects?”
American Educational Research Journal 48, no. 5: 1157–1186.
Wright, C., and A. Riley. 2021. “Mitigating the Need for Resiliency for
Black Girls: Reimagining the Cultural Brokering Through a Lens of
Science as White Property.”Cultural Studies of Science Education 16:
495–500.
Young, J. L., J. R. Young, and D. Y. Ford. 2017. “Standing in the Gaps:
Examining the Effects of Early Gifted Education on Black Girl
Achievement in STEM.”Journal of Advanced Academics 28, no. 4:
290–312.
Supporting Information
Additional supporting information can be found online in the
Supporting Information section.
18 of 18 Science Education, 2025