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1. Reauthoring STEM Narratives Towards Black Joy

   Frierson, M. (January 2023, ProQuest dissertations theses global)

   Despite an increasing understanding of how underlying systems of oppression show up and operate in STEM classrooms, little is known about how Black joy and reauthoring can be utilized in supporting Black youths’ navigation of oppressive, anti-Black systems as STEM learners. Partnering with community educators, scholars, and middle and high school teachers collectively called the Black Joy Group, this study conceptualizes the role of joy in Black youth’s STEM identity development. Further, this study examines salient narratives of STEM, which often exclude Black joy and frame Black youths’ STEM participation from deficit perspectives. The Black Joy Group sought to develop a framework for reauthoring to support Black youths’ negotiation of dominant STEM narratives. Reauthoring was investigated from a decolonial perspective, centering embodied learning as a sensemaking strategy. For this participatory model, the Black Joy Group conceptualized Black joy in STEM classrooms through body mapping, drawing, collaging, and by setting intentions to better notice and honor the feelings and sensations of the body. Data sources include interviews and artifacts from Black Joy Group meetings and student reauthoring sessions with Black youth. Data were analyzed thematically to identify instances of STEM reauthoring, classroom practices that best support STEM reauthoring, and abolitionist strategies to support students in expressing joy as an act of reauthoring within a white-dominated space. Results from this study suggest that the constraints of Black joy often stem from whiteness and capitalist pressures that shape how both Black youth and educators of Black youth show up and engage in STEM spaces. Additionally, results suggest that students perceive their belonging in STEM as contentious since they view themselves as STEM people both inside and outside of traditional STEM domains. These findings may support education researchers in continuing to challenge dominant deficit narratives that negatively portray Black youth. Finally, these findings may support educators in providing opportunities for Black youth to exercise their agency to reauthor in STEM classrooms and positively renegotiate their identities in relation to STEM. 

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2. Community Epistemologies and Equitable and Consequential Making. Paper presentation at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences.

   Greenberg, D. (January 2020, International Conference of the Learning Sciences)

   Drawing upon critical justice studies and critical ethnographies in two community- centered makerspaces, we build an argument for how designing for expanded iterations that repeatedly draw from community cultural wealth, supported youth-makers and communities in co-creating an expansive, locally-grounded maker culture. We conjecture that this community- anchored iterative making process is productive in historically underrepresented youth and communities establishing a more rightful presence in STEM-rich making. Two related-foci are unpacked: First, we examine how youth engage in an “expanded” iterative process across the making cycle – what this expanded iterative process is, and how it takes shape as youth move from collaborative ideation through to the afterlife of a maker project. Second, by delving into “moments of expanded iterations” we examine how youth articulate ownership of their making: what that means, how and why, and the subsequent generative spaces that resulted. 

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3. “The Work I Do Matters”: Cultivating a STEM Counterspace for Black Girls through Social-Emotional Development and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

   https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13070754  

   King, Natalie S.; Peña-Telfer, Laura; Earls, Shaeroya (July 2023, Education Sciences)

   Foster, Michele; Mark, Sheron; Baize, Jonathan (Ed.)

   Central to culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is the notion that we sustain what we love by decentering the white gaze. Elevating CSP and the five core social-emotional learning competencies, we honed in on how Black and Brown girls developed knowledge and skills to manage their emotions, achieve goals, show empathy, and maintain healthy relationships within the context of a single-gender summer STEM program. These opportunities to engage in critical conversations to learn, unlearn, and relearn, while showing up as their full and authentic selves, are not often afforded in traditional STEM classes. This paper focuses on dialogue and interactions amongst four program participants—Samira, Rita, Brandy, and Joy. Critical discourse analysis was employed to challenge the dominance and reproduction of discourses by examining social contexts and systemic structures that they addressed in conversation. Findings revealed the importance of cultivating trusting and intentional learning spaces for Black and Brown girls to engage in open dialogue and critique oppressive discourses. It also displayed the significance of leaning into difficult conversations and pluralism to help adolescent girls realize the complexities of culture while also promoting joy and social-emotional development. Creating spaces that affirm Black and Brown girls matter; their contributions and work that they do matter. 

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4. Applying a Transformative Justice Approach to Encourage the Participation of Black and Latina Girls in Computing

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3451345  

   Erete, Sheena; Thomas, Karla; Nacu, Denise; Dickinson, Jessa; Thompson, Naomi; Pinkard, Nichole (December 2021, ACM Transactions on Computing Education)

   Global protests and civil unrest in 2020 has renewed the world’s interest in addressing injustice due to structural racism and oppression toward Black and Latinx people in all aspects of society, including computing. In this article, we argue that to address and repair the harm created by institutions, policies, and practices that have systematically excluded Black and Latina girls from computer science, an intersectional, transformative justice approach must be taken. Leveraging testimonial authority, we share our past 8 years of experience designing, implementing, and studying Digital Youth Divas, a programmatic and systemic approach to encouraging middle school Black and Latina girls to participate in STEM. Specifically, we propose three principles to counter structural racism and oppression embedded in society and computing education: computing education must (1) address local histories of injustice by engaging community members; (2) counter negative stereotypes perpetuated in computer science by creating inclusive safe spaces and counter-narratives; and (3) build sustainable, computational capacity in communities. To illustrate each principle, we provide specific examples of the harm created by racist policies and systems and their effect on a specific community. We then describe our attempt to create counter structures and the subsequent outcomes for the girls, their families, and the community. This work contributes a framework for STEM and computing educators to integrate transformative justice as a method of repairing the harm that both society and the field of computing has and continues to cause Black and Latinx communities. We charge policy makers, educators, researchers, and community leaders to examine histories of oppression in their communities and to adopt holistic, transformative approaches that counter structural oppression at the individual and system level. 

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5. Youth-Community Invention: Community Epistemologies and Expansive Iterative Design

   Calabrese Barton, A. (January 2020, American Education Research Association)

   Objectives We examine the community epistemologies in youth’s iterative refinements of STEM-rich inventions across settings and time. Iteration in STEM-rich engineering/invention work refers to re-thinking ideas/designs within prototyping processes (Cunningham & Kelly, 2017). The objective of this paper is to examine the political dimensions of iteration through a) how iteration involves pre- and post-design “lives” of inventions especially towards new social futures, and b) the intentional incorporation of cultural epistemologies towards advancing new forms of legitimate inventor knowledge/practice (Yosso, 2005). Framing We draw from critical justice and consequential learning studies. Critical justice focuses on recognizing diversity and addressing structural inequalities perpetuated through systemic racism and classism. It seeks re-shifted relations of power and position within multiple scales-of-activity in learning, intersected with historicized injustices in learning environments. Consequential learning examines what matters to people, and how associated values and practices, when coordinated through social activity, allows for imagining new social futures (Gutierrez, 2012). Viewing the iterative process of inventing through a justice-oriented consequential lens calls into question traditional modes of knowing, and challenges/expands who and what areas of expertise are recognized and valued. Methods Our study takes place in two community makerspaces in mid-sized cities. Both center community engagement and support youth in designing/inventing to address problems they and their communities care about. Both also support minoritized youth in inventing through engagement with a wide range of community/STEM stakeholders. In researcher-educator roles, we collaborated with both makerspaces to establish programs supporting youth in sustained engagement in STEM and making/inventing in culturally-sustaining ways. In our two-year, longitudinal critical ethnography, data were generated in weekly community making sessions between 2016-2018. Data include artifacts, youth conversation groups, and videos capturing youth interaction with STEM and community experts at various stages in their design process. Analysis involved multiple stages and levels of coding based on open-coding and constant comparison procedures. Findings We ground our paper in four in-depth longitudinal cases of youth’s iterative design work: Nila’s light-up #stopracism sign; Su’zanne’s massaging slipper, Sharon’s geodesic play dome, and Jazmyn’s portable fan. Across cases, we illustrate three findings. First, youth located broader injustices within local making/inventing discourses with support from community and STEM allies, suggesting youth drew from multiple epistemologies, some grounded in community cultural wealth, others in STEM. For example, Su’Zanne drew from a familial culture of care and resistance in recognizing injustices nested in homelessness while iterating a way to make her slipper “more massaging.” The geodesic dome youth-makers drew from collective solidarity/resistance in making a structure for younger peers due to unjust lack of play infrastructure. Second, iterative engagement involving community wealth afforded further design and inventing experiences and expanded ownership over inventions across many stakeholders. For example, youth turned Nila’s #stopracism sign on during group discussions when they felt that racism needed to be foregrounded. Third, the afterlife of youth invention processes impacted the emergent inventor-maker culture through influencing the iterative process. Significance Iterations expand hybridization of cultural knowledge/practice and STEM-rich inventing, re-shaping whose cultural knowledge matters, and fostering justice-oriented collective outcomes. 

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