Qualitative Research in STEM

Studies of Equity, Access, and Innovation

Sherry Marx

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317385189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Qualitative Research in STEM examines the groundbreaking potential of qualitative research methods to address issues of social justice, equity, and sustainability in STEM. A collection of empirical studies conducted by prominent STEM researchers, this book examines the experiences and challenges faced by traditionally marginalized groups in STEM, most notably culturally and linguistically diverse students and women. Investigations into these issues, as well as the high dropout rate among engineering students and issues of academic integrity in STEM, come with detailed explanations of the study methodologies used in each case. Contributors also provide personal narratives that share their perspectives on the benefits of qualitative research methodologies for the topics explored. Through a variety of qualitative methodologies, including participatory action research, Indigenous research, and critical ethnography, this volume aims to reveal and remedy the inequalities within STEM education today.

PART I

Critical Studies in Informal STEM Education

1

“I AM AN INNOVATOR”

Quahn’s Counternarrative of Becoming in STEM

Myunghwan Shin, Angela Calabrese Barton, and LaQuahn Johnson¹

In engineering, achievement and interest gaps remain for youth from underrepresented backgrounds. For example, African Americans make up only 5% of the engineering workforce in the US—a statistic that has not budged in decades. Studies show that identifying with engineering is critical in the pursuit of engineering careers (Danielak, Gupta & Elby, 2014); whether one sees oneself as capable and welcomed in engineering, or is recognized by others for one’s engineering expertise, this impacts opportunities to learn (Eliot & Turns, 2011). Identifying with engineering has been shown to be important in engineering aspirations as early as pre-adolescence (Capobianco, French & Diesfes-Du, 2013). This trend continues through high school, college, and into the professions.

Racism and associated race-based negative engineering-related stereotypes can impede youths’ identity formation and possible career choices in STEM (Steele, James & Barnett, 2002).² Little is known about how African-American youth recognize racism and racist stereotypes in engineering over time and in various contexts as they engage in the practices of becoming engineers. Further, most studies on identity development and racism in engineering only focus at the college level or on the importance of the awareness of stereotype threats as tied to test-taking performance (Vogt, Hocevar & Hagedorn, 2007). Such studies do not account for the voices of African-American youth in the noticing or interpretation of the influence of racist stereotypes on identity development. Nor do they connect understanding and awareness of racist-stereotype threats in engineering practice.

This chapter focuses on how one young man, Quahn (also a co-author), developed an identity in science and engineering over the course of the middle grades, and how he did so while responding directly to the racism and, in particular racist stereotypes, directed his way.

Framework

We ground our work at the intersection of social practice theory and Critical Race Theory. Who one is, in the past, present, and possible futures, is informed by the encounters one has with others while enacting new practices and activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Different from psychological studies (which situate identity as a personal attribute), who one is and who one is becoming, at any given moment, is always under negotiation, and is contingent upon the people and resources to which one has access (Wortham, 2006). As individuals move across settings and time (such as through middle school), they are exposed to, positioned by, and react to a range of people, as well as institutional and cultural structures and forces, such as school, or societal narratives around who is good in science or who can be an engineer (Holland & Lave, 2009).

As individuals join new communities of practice they call upon salient practices and ways of being that are learned in that community, as well as from other places (Nasir, 2011). These actions can position one as either central or marginal to their new community depending upon how they are recognized by others (Danielak et al., 2014). For example, how students leverage their knowledge of community concerns and values could be positioned by the teacher or peers as either important or not, to doing engineering. How students come to the science classroom seeing themselves as capable in engineering is influenced by broader sociohistorical narratives around who can be an engineer.

Drawing upon Critical Race Theory (CRT), we are particularly concerned with how the narratives, traditions, and histories that demarcate identities in engineering become disrupted and reformed as teachers and students engage in activity together. Scholars from Critical Race Theory have argued that it is important to move outside dominant discourses, to understand and act upon the experiences of youth of color. For example, institutional stories—like those about school achievement, and who can do science or mathematics, for example—are not neutral or objective. The experiential knowledge of students from marginalized positions narrates new ways of understanding their challenges and possibilities (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001).

In particular, the tenet of CRT that we draw upon most is counternarrative. Counternarrative, or counterstorytelling, has been defined by Delgado and Stefancic (2001) as the telling of stories of, and by, people whose experiences are not often told, such as low-income African-American and Latino youth in urban schools. Counterstorytelling has been utilized within the Critical Race Theory tradition as a tool for accomplishing two related goals: first, as a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the stories of those in power, and which are naturally a part of dominant discourse; and second, counterstorytelling has been used as a tool to build community among those at the margins, and to challenge the perceived wisdom of those at society’s center. Counterstories do this by opening up new windows into the reality of those on the margins, allowing new and different possibilities to be showcased, and by combining elements of the story and the current reality, thus constructing another world that is richer than either story or reality alone. Counterstories work against setting up their own master narrative by asking us to “develop multiple and often conflicting models of understanding social and cultural identities in ways that support our ability to hold complexity and broaden our perspective of the possible” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001, p. 475).

Critical Ethnography

Our study was carried out as a critical ethnography; a methodology for conducting research focused on the goals of participatory critique, transformation, empowerment and social justice. Critical ethnography is grounded in the idea that researchers can use the tools of ethnography to conduct empirical research in an unjust world, in ways that examine and transform inequalities from multiple perspectives (Trueba, 1999). Critical ethnography provided an approach in which to “politicize” the interaction between actors and the social structures through which they act, grounded in the belief that these relationships are never neutral. This approach was important as we attempted to make sense of how youth, who are positioned in particular ways, due to race and class, engage in STEM.

We employed this methodology due to the desire to conduct research “with” participants, rather than “on” or “for” them (Calabrese Barton, 2001). It is important to note that, as a research team, we reflect a diversity of life experiences, genders, socioeconomic classes and ethnicities, and must work to challenge the power hierarchies these can inscribe into our relationships. Angie is a middle-class white university faculty member. While she did not grow up middle class, she benefited greatly—economically, emotionally—from a deep commitment to her education by her parents. Myung is a doctoral student, who grew up in Korea. He experiences both the privileges of a good education while confronting racism in the US as an Asian international student. Quahn, whose story is shared below, is African-American, and growing up in economically challenged conditions. He has a mother who supports him and his education greatly.

Myung and Angie, the university scholars on this project, assumed multiple roles throughout the project, acting as teachers and researchers. This positioned us as members of the group who had various degrees of influence on the direction of inquiry as the investigation progressed. Youth also assumed multiple roles throughout this project being actors in the investigations, while also having input on the direction of this study.

One of the young people in our larger study, Quahn, was interesting in writing this book chapter with us. We took this opportunity to explore his science story in detail, examining how race and racism shape his experiences in STEM.

Quahn has been growing up in a Midwestern city, Great Lake City.³ The city has experienced severe economic decline over the past few decades, and Quahn has not been immune to these economic challenges. As the eldest of three children living with their single mother, Quahn has often made reference to the importance of saving money. His mother has had steady part-time employment as an office worker at the community center, where we initially met Quahn; the income barely makes ends meet. In the four years we have known Quahn his family has moved three times in search of better, more affordable living conditions.

Quahn lives on the side of the city that is mostly African-American. While the percentage of African Americans in this city is high compared to the national average (about 25%), the city itself is fairly segregated. Segregation falls along race and class lines. The community center serves a predominantly African-American population, with only about 15% of the students being white, biracial, Hispanic or Asian-American.

We first met Quahn in 2011, when he joined the STEM afterschool program, “GET City,” the summer prior to entering the 5th grade. GET City offers both year-round and summer science and engineering programs for middle-school youth focused on green-energy technology and environmental issues. In these programs, young people engage in authentic investigations and engineering design on questions and issues that are defined by them, such as “Can we take GET City off the power grid?” and “What kind of portable green-energy invention can I design that solves a local community problem?” While learning about science and engineering through hands-on work, the young people engage with engineers, scientists, and other community-based experts, expanding their social networks and learning more about career opportunities. During the school-year programs, they attend twice a week for a total of four hours/week. During the summer, youth attend more intensive two-week programs for over 80 hours. Most of students who participate in the Green Club attend public schools in the Great Lake City metropolitan area.

Each year we collect a range of data from the youth, all of which we drew upon with Quahn to write his story. These data include:

1. Weekly conversation groups with a subset of the youth (2 hours/week) as a way to debrief as well as to plan for future activities.

2. Small group “artifact” interviews twice during the year, allowing youth opportunities to talk about their engineering design work in detail.

3. Artifact collection of youth work.

4. Weekly field notes and video recordings of sessions.

5. Youth video diaries of their efforts.

Quahn’s narrative, which makes up the bulk of our story, is a compilation of text he generated in response to the issues raised in this chapter (both written and oral), and text from conversations from across the years we knew him. Our conceptual framework—counternarrative and social practice theory—guided how we talked about and worked with Quahn’s narrative. Counternarrative provided a lens to analyze participants’ words or behaviors that understands, critiques, and dismantles science-related stereotypes. Social practice theory offered conceptual tools to look at the process of identity formation of participants, as well as its relationship to stereotypes. We involved Quahn in analyzing these data and in co-authoring the narratives presented in this chapter.

Quahn’s Story

I am currently in the 9th grade. I live with my mom and my two siblings. My friends describe me as friendly and social, and as someone who enjoys spending time with other people. I am known for my good sense of humor, and I really like to make people laugh. I’m also an expert in people. I can find out and I can tell what’s wrong with them, or what they’ve been through by their body language most of the time. I am the man of the family.

In my story below I tell you that at first, back in the 5th grade, I did not really like science. I didn’t even know what engineering was. My teachers also did not think I was very smart or capable. However, now I have straight As, I am thinking about becoming either a civil engineer or a science teacher. I feel like I have had to work hard to get to this point. I have had to fight back against many people who did not believe in me or notice me. But, with help from people like my mom, the Boys and Girls Club president, and the GET City staff and my peers in GET City, I feel that I can do something in STEM.

Narratives of Race and Racism in School and Science

Quahn’s narrative: 5th grade was not a great year in school from me. I often got in trouble just for being myself. Funny! My teacher would throw me out in the hallway because I was not paying attention. Actually, I was paying attention; I was just trying to make things fun. School is not that fun. But that is not the only reason why 5th grade was not that great for me. I felt like no one cared about me. My teacher did not care about me.

I heard from my teacher that African Americans are less smart than Whites in science and engineering. She told us stereotypes, like if an African American and a White person send in applications for college at the same time, they would reject the Black person because they would think the White person was smarter. I was thinking about going to fight against this negative stereotype because it’s not true. Some people are smarter than other people, and some people are not smarter than others. But, it’s not because of race, like White people are smarter than Black people in science. It’s not because of race, but because of people. I don’t think stereotyping is right.

I was not surprised to hear those stereotypes from my teachers. I hear them all of the time, no matter where I go. There are many negative racial stereotypes in the movies and on TV. African Americans are not smart in science on TV. They are never the scientists on the show. They are trying to make the show funny, but really it is a stereotype.

Also, I felt that, in 5th grade and all the way into middle school, my teachers had low expectations for me. If I got a D in class, as long as I passed the course that was good enough. My teachers didn’t care about my grades. They treated us like we were not smarter than others. My principal told me I was doing good in science, but I had a D in my class. He told me, “Your grades are good,” but I had a D!

I decided to write a letter to my 5th-grade teacher. I wrote the letter in January, which was halfway through the school year. In my letter I wanted to tell my teacher my name, so that he would know it. I also told him about all of the science things that I do at home, in my community and at the Boys and Girls Club, so that he would realize that I am not the person that he thinks I am at school. I wanted him to know that being funny and being good in science could happen together (see Figure 1.1).

Reflection

Quahn, in many ways, meets the stereotypes thrust upon him: an African-Ame...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Qualitative Research in Stem
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART I Critical Studies in Informal STEM Education
• PART II Access and Equity in Undergraduate Engineering Education
• PART III Indigenous Ways of Knowing in STEM Education
• PART IV Access and Equity in Science and Math Education
• Appendix: Youth Interview Protocol
• Notes on Contributors
• Index