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The creation of specialty science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) Schools has been presented as a way to improve both academic and STEM-related outcomes, particularly in urban school districts where "failing" schools are converted the STEM Schools. This study examines this conversion process through the tenets of critical race theory, particularly the tenets of Whiteness as property, interest convergence, and the power of discourse. Using data collected from 28 textual sources and 29 interviews of teachers, students, and administrators at STEM Schools, a comparative case study approach was used to examine the historical development of two STEM Schools in one urban area. Findings indicated that the creation of STEM Schools was a way to protect STEM as a property of Whiteness by funneling resources toward White, middle-class students. Additionally, the motivation for the conversions demonstrates how interest convergence functions in educational reform. In particular, the interests of White parents (to have access to high-quality educational resources) and industry leaders (to develop a STEM workforce) temporarily converged with the interests of local families to improve neighborhood schools. However, ultimately, Black students and families, particularly those from lower socioeconomic status, were not served by the new STEM Schools.

Out of school time (OST) STEM opportunities are often presented as ways to support student achievement, understanding, and identity in STEM. Recent work has begun to explore how OST programs function within the STEM Learning Ecosystem, a holistic view of the various STEM learning opportunities available to youth in a given area. In order to increase understanding of how microcontexts impact the STEM Learning Ecosystem, this study explores the experiences and perspectives of three groups of participants in a network of after school STEM Clubs: youth participants, college student facilitators, and sponsor teachers. Based on interviews with all three groups, results of comparative case study analysis revealed two cases: Narrowed STEM and Expanded STEM. Youth in the Narrowed STEM case had traditional perspectives of STEM as hard, for smart people, and related to behavior; made only weak or no connections between STEM in different contexts; and had tentative STEM identities. Youth in the expanded STEM case had more active perspectives of STEM as exploration and problem solving, saw clear connections across contexts, and had decisive STEM identities. Critical Discourse Analysis was used to show how facilitators and club sponsors negotiated macro-level discourses of STEM and urban education in ways that aligned with youth views and influenced interpretations of the STEM Club. We highlight a need for critical and multiscalar evaluation of STEM Learning Ecosystems, particularly in urban areas, so that learning opportunities are available to all students, particularly those from groups historically excluded from science and STEM.

Informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs are important tools for broadening participation in STEM careers. The St. Jude STEM Club (SJSC) is a 10-week afterschool STEM club focused on real-world problems in pediatric cancer research and designed for students in the fifth grade. The SJSC is conducted in partnership with the Shelby County Schools (SCS), an urban school district that encompasses Memphis, TN and serves a disproportionate number of students from underrepresented backgrounds in science. In this report, we provide details on the club logistics, curriculum, pilot data and outcomes related to club impact on student attitudes towards science, and challenges and limitations of the program. Participants in the program reported significantly higher rates of STEM engagement, STEM identity, critical thinking, perseverance, and relationships with peers and adults compared to national normative data. This program description is intended to serve as a resource for other institutions wanting to use a similar strategy to broaden participation in STEM careers.

African-American women continue to be underrepresented in science and engineering field despite years of interventions, including providing out-of-school time STEM experiences. Although some out-of-school time programs have shown impacts in participants' content knowledge and skill acquisition, impacts on science identity development have been mixed, with some research indicating that participants' struggle to access science identities developed in out-of-school time in a formal educational setting. In order to better understand the barriers to accessing and developing science identity across contexts, this study uses a combined framework of Activity Theory, communities of practice, and Critical Race Theory to compare the in-school and out-of-school time STEM experiences of African-American girls. Using data collected in both settings, activity systems for an out-of-school time STEM Club and an in-school seventh grade science classroom are reconstructed and examined for contradictions. The results indicated that objects, and therefore outcomes, of the two systems contradicted each other and tertiary tools (ideologies) from the in-school activity system created contradictions and barriers within the out-of-school time activity system. We show how the contradictions were resolved through contraction, instead of expansion, of the activity systems and how this contraction can be viewed as maintaining science (and STEM) as a property of whiteness. This work has implications for both formal and informal educators and researchers who wish to support students' science identity development across contexts and disrupt inequitable distributions of science (and STEM) resources (physical and ideological).

Building on previous research that has described the underrepresentation of women of color in science fields, this paper presents case studies of Black middle school girls to examine how their science identities developed over space and time. Data were collected over the course of their seventh-grade year in both in school (science classroom) and out-of-school (afterschool club) contexts. The Multidimensionality of Black Girls' STEM Learning framework was used to explore the role of the afterschool club as a counterspace and how students made sense of science, science people, and their current and future selves based on their experiences in school and after school science contexts. All three participants struggled to see their future selves as scientists and made distinctions amongst being a "science person," a person who likes science, or a scientist. They also negotiated views of science as active and hands-on in the afterschool setting while experiencing more passive and decontextualized forms of science in the formal school setting. Implications include a need to disrupt the culture of science and reimagine formal science education by learning from out-of-school time science programs that function as counterspaces to support Black girls' science identity. We conclude that there remains a need to draw attention to and understand the role of race and racism in science education so that Black girls' science identities are affirmed beyond counterspaces.

This paper explores school structure in an all-girls, predominantly African American middle class school to examine the ways in which discourses of education, race, gender, and science work to position middle school, African American girls as outside of science. Using discourse analysis, two prominent school signs are presented, a bulletin board and a classroom sign, and examined alongside excerpts from student interviews. The results indicate that being a 'Nice Girl' is a prerequisite for being a 'Good Student' and is synonymous with being a 'STEM Girl', potentially alienating students from viewing themselves, or wishing to be viewed by others, as a science person.

Research has shown that African American girls are interested in science but not as likely to pursue science-related careers as their white or male peers. Although out of school time (OST) science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs have been presented as means to address this discrepancy and support scientific identity development in girls and students of color, programs specifically for African American girls have not been studied in detail. Additionally, the challenges associated with creating and sustaining OST STEM programs have not been examined. This study explores the evolution of one OST STEM program for African American, middle school girls over the course of three semesters. Using a combined framework of activity theory, communities of practice, and critical race theory, the contradictions within each stage of the program were identified and viewed as opportunities for expansion of the activity system. Results indicated that a consideration of dominant ideologies, or tertiary tools in the activity system, as well as the cultural and historical context of the activity system were necessary to understand and resolve tensions in the system. Implications of this work for researchers and others interested in OST STEM Programs include the need to focus on the interaction of components within activity systems and to identify contradictions within systems in order to support the establishment of a community of practice in the OST STEM Program.

This study explores how the figured world of school science is influenced by macro level discourses of science, education, race, and gender that are circulated in society and perpetuated through schooling. It also examines how the figured world of school science defines limited means of recognition, both positive and negative, for African American girls. As part of a larger critical ethnography, data was collected over 2 years in one middle school and in one seventh grade science class. We present an analysis of the figured world of school science present in the study, a description of how the macro level discourses at the school impacted that figured world, and a description of the Discourses (ways of saying, doing, and being that are recognized as certain types of people) available to students in the figured world. Our results reveal a limited, and inherently unjust, set of Discourses are available to students in this figured world. In addition, Discourses that would support learning and development in science were noticeably absent. This leads to a world in which African American girls gain positive recognition as good science students for being quiet, polite, passive, and fast workers. We argue that this not only unfairly marginalizes many students from school science, in fails to prepare any students for meaningful engagement with science. We conclude with implications for both teaching and research, calling for ways to allow African American girls to self-define with respect to science and research to better understand the larger contextual factors influence on teachers and other settings.

Modeling is considered an important scientific practice, and modeling instruction has the potential to support conceptual change in students in physics. However, when students are not taught how to think about modeling, and how to develop and use models, the learning potential of modeling may be limited. This paper argues that the use and explicit teaching of metacognitive tools like interactive questioning and individual reflection increase students' ability to use and make sense of models. We present a sequence of activities incorporating metacognitive tools with a variety of models (mental, physical, simulated, and mathematical) in a high school physics unit of electricity. Using data from classroom observations, individual student reflections, group-created posters, and classroom discussion, we found evidence to demonstrate the complicated nature of conceptual change, the importance of using a variety of different representations (models) of a phenomenon, and the critical role of the teacher in learning. Teachers need to be aware of this process and able to give students the time they need to fully explore and develop multiple models and support to think critically about models. Although many classrooms are limited in time, this process is necessary to move beyond rote memorization toward meaningful conceptual change.

This article describes how teachers can turn their class into a STEM exploration hub where students engage with real-life scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Within this space, students have opportunities to connect "Next Generation Science Standards"-aligned learning targets with potential STEM career choices. Using the 7E instructional framework (Eisenkraft 2003), the authors created a lesson in which students solve a genetic coding mystery, using their puzzle skills and knowledge about patterns to decode DNA. To explore STEM and DNA career choices, students also read about and then engaged in a virtual meeting with Pardis Sabeti, a practicing computational biologist, geneticist, professor, and researcher. The authors taught this lesson to a diverse high school biology class as part of a larger unit on heredity. The lesson took three 60-minute class periods: one hour for reading and DNA activity, one hour for STEM Gems Virtual Book Club, and one hour for the Claims-Evidence-Reasoning and argumentation session.

The creation of specialty science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) Schools has been presented as a way to improve both academic and STEM‐related outcomes, particularly in urban school districts where "failing" schools are converted the STEM Schools. This study examines this conversion process through the tenets of critical race theory, particularly the tenets of Whiteness as property, interest convergence, and the power of discourse. Using data collected from 28 textual sources and 29 interviews of teachers, students, and administrators at STEM Schools, a comparative case study approach was used to examine the historical development of two STEM Schools in one urban area. Findings indicated that the creation of STEM Schools was a way to protect STEM as a property of Whiteness by funneling resources toward White, middle‐class students. Additionally, the motivation for the conversions demonstrates how interest convergence functions in educational reform. In particular, the interests of White parents (to have access to high‐quality educational resources) and industry leaders (to develop a STEM workforce) temporarily converged with the interests of local families to improve neighborhood schools. However, ultimately, Black students and families, particularly those from lower socioeconomic status, were not served by the new STEM Schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of school time (OST) STEM opportunities are often presented as ways to support student achievement, understanding, and identity in STEM. Recent work has begun to explore how OST programs function within the STEM Learning Ecosystem, a holistic view of the various STEM learning opportunities available to youth in a given area. In order to increase understanding of how microcontexts impact the STEM Learning Ecosystem, this study explores the experiences and perspectives of three groups of participants in a network of after school STEM Clubs: youth participants, college student facilitators, and sponsor teachers. Based on interviews with all three groups, results of comparative case study analysis revealed two cases: Narrowed STEM and Expanded STEM. Youth in the Narrowed STEM case had traditional perspectives of STEM as hard, for smart people, and related to behavior; made only weak or no connections between STEM in different contexts; and had tentative STEM identities. Youth in the expanded STEM case had more active perspectives of STEM as exploration and problem solving, saw clear connections across contexts, and had decisive STEM identities. Critical Discourse Analysis was used to show how facilitators and club sponsors negotiated macro‐level discourses of STEM and urban education in ways that aligned with youth views and influenced interpretations of the STEM Club. We highlight a need for critical and multiscalar evaluation of STEM Learning Ecosystems, particularly in urban areas, so that learning opportunities are available to all students, particularly those from groups historically excluded from science and STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores school structure in an all-girls, predominantly African American middle class school to examine the ways in which discourses of education, race, gender, and science work to position middle school, African American girls as outside of science. Using discourse analysis, two prominent school signs are presented, a bulletin board and a classroom sign, and examined alongside excerpts from student interviews. The results indicate that being a 'Nice Girl' is a prerequisite for being a 'Good Student' and is synonymous with being a 'STEM Girl', potentially alienating students from viewing themselves, or wishing to be viewed by others, as a science person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how the figured world of school science is influenced by macro level discourses of science, education, race, and gender that are circulated in society and perpetuated through schooling. It also examines how the figured world of school science defines limited means of recognition, both positive and negative, for African American girls. As part of a larger critical ethnography, data was collected over 2 years in one middle school and in one seventh grade science class. We present an analysis of the figured world of school science present in the study, a description of how the macro level discourses at the school impacted that figured world, and a description of the Discourses (ways of saying, doing, and being that are recognized as certain types of people) available to students in the figured world. Our results reveal a limited, and inherently unjust, set of Discourses are available to students in this figured world. In addition, Discourses that would support learning and development in science were noticeably absent. This leads to a world in which African American girls gain positive recognition as good science students for being quiet, polite, passive, and fast workers. We argue that this not only unfairly marginalizes many students from school science, in fails to prepare any students for meaningful engagement with science. We conclude with implications for both teaching and research, calling for ways to allow African American girls to self‐define with respect to science and research to better understand the larger contextual factors influence on teachers and other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]