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What does it mean to express Black joy and loving blackness through STEM-rich making? What does it mean for Black youth in community-based, youth-focused makerspaces to express Black joy and loving blackness? We look at how Black youth alongside their facilitators co-create spaces of Black joy through making. These makerspaces are located at two local Boys and Girls Clubs in the US Midwest and the Southeast. Makerspaces are informal sites where youth are encouraged to work collaboratively while building digital and physical artifacts. As two Black female STEM educators working with Black youth we frame our work in critical race theory. Specifically we draw on the tenets of whiteness as property and counter-narratives. Using critical ethnographic methods, we explore the ways in which Black youth produce counter-narratives that disrupt whiteness as property through STEM-rich making. Data sources include fieldnotes; artifacts, such as youth work; interviews; and video recordings. The first vignette highlights how two Black girls navigate choosing and creating characters using Scratch. The second vignette focuses on a brother and sister duo who center their making on family and their shared maker identity. We then discuss the freedoms afforded to youth with flexible co-designed curriculum with facilitators and how we foster open spaces. We address this special issue’s driving question by asking, How do we, as STEM facilitators, counter anti-blackness in/through STEM by fostering space for Black joy with youth in making?
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Reauthoring STEM Narratives Towards Black Joy
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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- Award ID(s):
- 1661175
- PAR ID:
- 10463426
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ProQuest dissertations theses global
- ISSN:
- 2771-5140
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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