5

Children and Youth

Educational equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is realized in the lived experience of children, youth, and families. Equity, although often treated as an abstraction, is premised on the day-to-day realities of children living unequal childhoods and adolescence. Equity necessarily hinges on perspective, meaning that equity is constructed through individual and collective experiences related to oppression, privilege, discrimination, favoritism, marginalization, and inclusion (Dotson, 2013). What, then, does it mean to consider equity in general, and equity in STEM education particularly, from the perspective of the child? In the previous chapter, we emphasized the state of STEM from institutional and systems levels whereas in this chapter, we describe equity in STEM education from the vantage of adolescents and children, sometimes very young children. Throughout this chapter, we describe how equity can take multiple forms in the everyday contexts of children, as well as discussing how equity can be readily identifiable and visceral for children. By reading the previous chapter and this chapter in concert with one another, readers can see how inequity takes shape at both the macro and micro levels of the education system, as well as how aspects of the macro level of the system have critical implications for what happens in the micro levels.

This chapter seeks to provide a detailed account of the consequences of historical and systemic decisions resulting in inequity as experienced by children and youth. This chapter is organized in two parts: first, we offer a discussion of the importance and diversity of children’s perspectives. Second, we share vignettes of children and youth in STEM education to portray the complexity of their learning experiences and the implications

for equity. We have selected these examples for their “everydayness” to illustrate the mundane ways that (in)equities shape children’s lives as STEM learners.

CENTERING THE PERSPECTIVES OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH

In this chapter, childhood and adolescence are taken as locations of social experience—i.e., experiences based on children’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, linguistic background, socioeconomic resources, and geographic contexts, instead of only by developmental phases or stages (James et al., 1998). This approach provides a way to gain insight into the lived experiences of children and adolescents in STEM classrooms and other settings. In our analysis, we draw on feminist standpoint theory and explore STEM learning experience from children’s standpoint:

Acknowledging the standpoint of children is a departure from typical characterizations of children’s knowledge as inferior, less sophisticated, naïve, or unproductive (Bang, 2009; Elby & Hammer, 2009). The dismissal of children’s capacity to build knowledge and make sense of their world is particularly acute for children who are marginalized, wherein children’s “histories, experiences, cultures, and languages are devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings” (Delgado Bernal, 2002, p. 106). A stance that honors children’s standpoint is necessary for fully accounting for equity in STEM education.

Mediators of Unequal Childhoods in STEM

In the United States, childhoods are unequal (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019) and structurally mediated by chronological age, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious identity, linguistic background, ability status, geographies, citizenship, and other sociocultural differences. The inequality in childhood extends to children and adolescents as STEM learners. For example, consider Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old, ninth-grade Muslim

child, arrested in 2015 for bringing a disassembled digital clock to school under allegations of having made a bomb. Ahmed had reassembled parts of a digital clock into a pencil container, displaying proficiency as a science learner in both investigation and design; however, his knowledge, skills, and curiosity as a science learner (nicknamed by his peers as the “Inventor Kid”) were criminalized instead of celebrated because of how Ahmed is positioned across multiple categories of difference—most saliently his ethnicity (as suggested by his Arabic name), his religious identity (as a Muslim), which also functions to racialize him in particular ways, and his gender (as a boy; Gholson & Wilkes, 2017). The collection of these social categories led to Ahmed’s science prowess being read as “criminal” or “terrorist” instead of “tinkerer” or “inventor.” His position within other social categories, such as his chronological age, socioeconomic status, linguistic background, and ability-status may have tempered the outcomes in this troubling episode of Ahmed’s life. Indeed, different outcomes (besides being arrested) may have occurred if Ahmed appeared differently phenotypically or if his name were recognizably Black, or Latinx, or from a different racial background.

In this way, categories of social difference operate together to construct standpoints that are unique to individual children and youth and, in some cases, yield adverse experiences in STEM. Often discussions of discrimination in policy reports, the media and other venues focus on only one category of social difference (e.g., race or gender); however, this is insufficient when accounting for the complexity of lived experience. It was the confluence of the categories that rendered how Ahmed was read and understood within his classroom and school. Ahmed (and children more broadly) wield power and agency differently as STEM learners based on the complex social locations or standpoints they occupy.

Understanding Categories of Social Difference

The categories of social difference function in five key ways that are relevant for our discussion of educational equity in STEM.

1. These categories are descriptive, not determinative;
2. While these categories are not determinative, they are consequential to children’s everyday lives and futures;
3. These categories are tied to history;
4. These categories are tied to present-day experiences; and
5. These categories function together, not in an additive or multiplicative way, but in a mutually constitutive way.

Categories of Social Difference Are Descriptive

Categories of social difference (e.g., race, gender, class, religious identity, or sexuality) do not determine individual children’s lived realities as STEM learners. For example, being a Black girl does not foretell any fixed future in STEM education. The categories are always insufficient in describing any individual’s reality or prospective futures.

Categories of Social Difference Are Consequential

Categories of social difference come to hold value in U.S. society and establish hierarchies within educational settings; categories such as smartness, educability, criminality, success, and failure become organizing principles and shortcuts for thinking about the capabilities of children and adolescents in STEM. A useful example is the racial hierarchy of mathematics ability (Martin, 2012). Within this hierarchy, white students and certain groups of Asian students are positioned as superior concerning mathematics ability, and Black, Latinx, and Indigenous children and youth are positioned at the bottom of the hierarchy. Martin notes, “This positioning often becomes the default, taken-as-shared assumption and starting point not only in many mainstream mathematics education research and policy discussions but also in everyday discourse among the general public” (p. 48). While these categories are fundamentally simply descriptive labels, the labels have power to shape (not determine) the experiences of children in STEM education.

Categories of Social Difference Are Tied to History and Shape Present-Day Experience

Categories of sociocultural difference index historical patterns of oppression and opportunity and constrain social locations of experience in the present. In other words, assumptions about children and youth that are based on their constellations of social categories are essentially shortcuts through history that seek to naturalize (to make “natural”) hierarchies of achievement and perceived ability without accounting for the legacies of the broader historical contexts, like boarding schools or racially segregated schools. Such shortcuts serve to maintain societal hierarchies.

Continuing with the example above, knowing a Black girl child does mathematics is insufficient to make any predictions about that particular girl. However, the well-established history of exclusion and marginalization among Black learners and girl learners in the United States (discussed in more depth in Chapter 2) provides important contextual information regarding how this Black girl is located as a STEM learner within a map of social experience. In this example, these social categories are likely to

constrain her, and suggest that teachers might see her questions in mathematics and science class as challenges to their mathematical knowledge and authority instead of her bid for a deep understanding of a mathematical concept (Carlone et al., 2014; King & Pringle, 2019; Wright et al., 2018). These social categories of difference (i.e., race, class, gender, and ability) relate to structures and processes (like racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism) that span the past, the present day, and, unless disrupted, may extend into the future.

Categories of Social Difference Function Together in a Mutually Constitutive Way

Finally, these social differences are neither separable from one another, nor do they operate in a simple, additive way. For example, is it possible to imagine a Black girl without an age (e.g., Rodó-Zárate & Jorba, 2022)? A socioeconomic status? An ability status? These other sociocultural identities do not “add” to the experience of being a Black girl as a STEM learner from a fixed location with a map of social experience; the inclusion of their age or ability status (like blind, autistic, or deaf) shift our conception of fundamentally who this Black girl is as a mathematics learner within a map of social experience. Age, class, and ability status do not add to a universal Black girl experience. Instead, these categories create new standpoints for a childhood experience. In this way, categories of social differences are deeply consequential to making sense of children’s social experiences.

The Intersection of Categories of Social Difference Build Social Locations of Experience and Opportunity

These insights about social difference lead to the general concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), an idea defined as the complex structural interaction of categories of social difference. Because these categories of social difference are hierarchical and connected to forms of historical oppression, they are referred to as intersecting hierarchies of oppression (Collins, 2000; Collins & Bilge, 2016; Hill-Collins, 2015). Children’s locations within intersecting hierarchies of oppression in STEM education are consequential to their experiences as learners through the kinds of structures and learning experiences these locations make available to them.

For example, the categories of 13-year-old, middle-class, autistic, Black, and girl have a particular meaning in an algebra class. These categories fail to tell us who this Black girl is, but they help to explain the histories she is connected to in terms of exclusion and marginalization; the kinds of policies and resources that she might have access to based on her class status and ability status; and, irrespective of her personality, how likely a

teacher will be to discipline her for breaching racial and gendered behavior norms in algebra class. The histories of racism and sexism, policies related to ableism, and structures of discipline related to racism and sexism establish this girl’s location within systems of power. In this way, the concept of intersectionality illuminates how particular social locations can become places of privilege, where opportunity, resources, and rewards accrue, versus places of oppression, where discrimination, obstacles, and punishment are prevalent. Additionally, intersectionality allows those who have been erased, ignored, neglected, and forgotten the possibility of being seen, and therefore potentially knowable and supported.

For example, school-level data are often aggregated by race and gender, which allows teachers and administrators to monitor, for example, the performance of students who identify as boys, girls, or non-binary as one category or racially identify as Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, or white, for example. However, this aggregation does not allow us to answer, “How are Black girls doing in this system?” While the hypothetical Black girl in the preceding examples is rendered invisible by the general practices of data aggregation, an intersectional view provides visibility and allows educators and administrators to respond and support children who may go unseen, like a neurodivergent, middle-class Black girl in mathematics. Scholars in the growing field of critical quantitative methods (known as QuantCrit) have pointed out and offered suggestions for how to address these erasures in data (e.g., Castillo & Gillborn, 2022).

First-Order Issues for Children Across Categories of Social Difference

While STEM is the core of this report, there are a set of first-order issues for children across categories of social difference that impact equity in STEM education and connect to broader historical patterns (see Chapter 2). Although these issues are not specific to STEM, the committee believes that it is critical for readers to understand these issues as the salient, undeniable context within which children across the United States go to school. We highlight these first-order issues here in order to situate our later analyses.

Some children, particularly Indigenous children, have been erased and made invisible within the U.S. educational context. The experiences of Indigenous children in STEM are under-researched and under-documented, and generally rely on damaged-centered narratives and statistics of academic achievement. Other children, particularly Black and Latinx children, have been made hypervisible within the U.S. educational context. In these cases, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx children experience disproportionate rates of disciplinary action, such as in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, law enforcement referrals, school-related arrests, and

expulsions. These disproportionate rates of disciplinary action extend to the pre-kindergarten contexts (Dholakia, 2022). Educational activists and scholars have documented the school and prison nexus (Stovall, 2018), where children at the intersections of multiple forms of oppression (e.g., particularly, class-based, race-based), namely Black, Indigenous, and Latinx children, fall victim to logics of order and compliance and are duly punished for breaching school policies and norms.

That is, many children are forced out of STEM classrooms, which suggests that first-order issues are about establishing a rightful presence in the STEM classrooms (Calabrese-Barton & Tan, 2020), making it necessary to reconfigure the present educational infrastructure in which STEM, and mathematics specifically, drives, for example, high school dropout rates (Gholson & Wilkes, 2017). In addition to the overuse of carceral policies for many children, the educational experience of far too many Black, Indigenous, and Latinx children is marked by a “pedagogy of poverty” in which learners are positioned as receivers of information rather than active agents in the learning process (Haberman, 1991); this approach, too, is defined by an overt emphasis on standardized tests (Davis & Martin, 2008) as characterized in the review of the state of STEM education in Chapter 3 of this report. Dr. Julius Davis, a former middle school mathematics teacher in the Baltimore City Public School System, described “teaching to the test” as the primary instructional approach for his predominantly Black students:

Imagine this as children’s primary school-based mathematics learning experience—STEM learning experience. What is it like to be a child in the above classrooms? As we transition to our discussion of how equity emerges in

children’s lived experiences, we note that these first-order issues offer readers one understanding of how the macro aspects of the education system create a context in which the micro elements of the systems take place. As we will discuss throughout this report, attending to equity in STEM cannot occur only in the person-to-person interactions: these first-order issues are evidence of the profound impact of the macro elements of the system on students’ experiences.

The Experiences and the Voices of Children

One clear purpose of this chapter is to openly consider experiences and voices of children. As previously discussed, children are a unique social group who are positioned outside of research production and authorship as subjects or participants. Increasingly, there are efforts to include children in the research process through, for example, youth participatory methods (e.g., Yonezawa et al., 2021). Most of the examples, however, in this chapter are based on vignettes within classrooms conducted through ethnographic research. The committee acknowledges that to take children’s perspectives seriously requires serious reflection on the complex power relations in research settings (Spyrou, 2018).

To highlight the complexities of representing children’s voices, consider the following example. Civil and Planas (2004) conducted an ethnographic study of a fifth-grade classroom in which they sought to broaden participation in the mathematics classroom in collaboration with the teacher. The class comprised 29 children (14 boys and 15 girls), who were mostly from working class families. Racially and ethnically, the class included Latinx, white, Black, and Indigenous children; however, the class was predominantly Mexican-American or other Latinx origin. Civil and Planas noted how the power and status structures organized participation according to who was good at sports (notably basketball and American football) and the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program.

Andrew’s and Rebecca’s voices underscore children’s consciousness of social difference, access, and privilege within the mathematics learning. As we share the work of Civil and Planas, it is important to recognize that we are re-representing their representation of children’s voices and experiences, at least twice removed. To the extent that we are inclined to attribute autonomy, rationality, and intention to children’s actions and talk, we should not ignore the power relations in which children’s voices are being shared and how that matters for what voices are, or are not, represented in this chapter (Spyrou, 2018). While Andrew is seemingly being forthright and clear, there are multiple interpretations of his statement. For example, Andrew may be commenting on the disproportionality of white students leaving the room for GATE, or acknowledging a perceived unfairness of students who get to leave and have seemingly more fun at GATE, or looking for affirmation to be seen as mathematically smart like the GATE kids. The juxtaposition of Andrew’s statement with Rebecca’s shapes our interpretation of his observation. Multiple overlapping interpretations are equally plausible, and all implicate issues of equity.

Through this chapter, it is important to assert that by no means are we speaking for children. We are, however, attempting to orient ourselves to the literature in a way that honors the experiences of children in order to illuminate the often-hidden dimensions of (in)equity in STEM educational contexts. Of course, it is beyond this chapter’s scope and impossible to exhaustively map all categories and intersections that are present in the diversity of STEM learners in the United States. Examples are chosen to help illuminate different kinds of (in)equities within the STEM learning experience. Each example helps us conceptualize nuanced equity meanings based on children’s lived experiences.

ILLUMINATING BARRIERS TO EQUITABLE STEM EDUCATION

The vignettes of children and childhood are divided into three parts to address three barriers to equity in STEM education. In the first section, we address the issue of who is or is not afforded the opportunity to be understood as a STEM person. In particular, we focus on the stories, messages, and myths that permeate STEM education and their effects on children. In the second section, we address the issue of what resources children possess as learners and whether their various forms of cultural and political knowledge are valued and supported in STEM learning contexts. In the

third section, we discuss how interactions within social structures among children, youth, and their teachers produce different experiences for STEM learners.

These vignettes exemplify how inequities and hierarchies can be reproduced in and through moment-to-moment social interaction in STEM contexts and how moment-to-moment social interaction looks when equity is a key mediator and goal. The vignettes tend to focus on the reproduction of inequity and point to common challenges in STEM learning contexts, which can help us to conceptualize children’s disenfranchisement and the social context of motivation in STEM education generally (Nolen et al., 2015; Silverman et al., 2023). Importantly, the vignettes represent moments—a snapshot of the children’s experiences—and do not provide the full story of any learner across time. Lastly, we note that later chapters in this report will take up many of the ideas addressed in this chapter from the perspective of what instructors can and should do in pursuit of equity. It is our hope that by laying the groundwork for how equity is experienced by children here in this chapter, our later chapters will be positioned to offer insight into the role adults in the system can play in building equitable learning environments.

STORIES, MESSAGES, AND MYTHS IN STEM

Stories, messages, and myths about STEM and who can be successful in STEM are pivotal to children’s experiences in STEM education and are our focus in the discussion of the first two vignettes (below). These stories, messages, and myths are portrayed through movies, television sitcoms, and other popular media and reside in STEM classrooms within the curriculum and posters. They also inhabit how children, youth, families, teachers, and administrators talk about STEM learners and learning. Children do not necessarily need to endorse these messages to be affected by them. Nevertheless, these stories, messages, and myths are in the air, implicitly and explicitly signaling to children who can be a STEM person and, fundamentally, what constitutes the disciplines of STEM.

For example, research conducted in the 1980s revealed that when depicting scientists in hand drawings, children overwhelmingly included the following indicators: “a lab coat, eyeglasses, facial growth of hair (including beards, mustaches, or abnormally long sideburns), symbols of research: scientific instructors and laboratory equipment of any kind, symbols of knowledge: principally books and filing cabinets, technology: the ‘products’ of science, and relevant captions: formulae, taxonomic classifications, the “eureka!” syndrome, etc.” (Chambers, 1983). This phenomenon has endured over five decades of study. Recent meta-analyses of studies using the Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) show that overall children’s drawings

depicted more women in recent decades, but they still predominantly depicted men (Miller et al, 2018). DAST is perhaps an excellent example of the prevalence of messages within STEM culture. Children are not explicitly taught what it means to look like a scientist. Nevertheless, scientists are overwhelmingly depicted across multiple decades, countries, and cultures as white men (Finson, 2002; Miller et al., 2018). These drawings provide insight into multiple messages about STEM, but equally concerning is the narrowness of identification to race and gender.

Like scientists, studies of popular mathematics texts, historical accounts, and portraits overwhelmingly depict and construct mathematicians as racially white and masculine (Hottinger, 2016). Mendick (2005) argues that children are managing binaries about mathematics, such as “fast/slow, competitive/collaborative, independent/dependent, active/passive, naturally able/hardworking, real understanding/rote learning, reason/calculation” (p. 203) in constructing meanings of themselves as mathematics learners. These binaries are also gendered as “feminine/masculine” and racialized as “White and Asian/Black and Latinx.”

These binaries are commonly referred to as discourses embedded within stories, messages, and myths, such as “Asians are good at math.” This discourse is pervasive and harms the humanity of all children but most acutely, Asian children (Shah, 2019). As Shah notes, “To be clear, though, Asians are not actually good at mathematics—or at least no more or less so than any other group of people. The ‘Asians are good at math’ narrative is false. Every human being has the capacity for mathematical problem solving (Dehaene, 1997; Devlin, 2000)” (p. 669). In the following vignette, a typical day in a mathematics classroom is described to illustrate how discourses in mathematics get mobilized and used around the “Asians are good at math” myth.

While Akshay receives presumed compliments from his peers for completing his test quickly, along with Visha and Sanjay, he understands this to be a diminishment of his full sense of self and effort as a mathematics learner.

The category of Asian necessarily masks the diversity between individuals and subgroups within the Asian community (e.g., Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese) and conceals how these discourses impact children from different subgroups, genders, and linguistic backgrounds. For example, Ryu’s (2015) account of six Korean transnational learners in AP Biology shows “how the gender-biased discursive practices of the class, co-constructed by the teacher and students, constrained the girls’ possibilities and did not sufficiently empower them to seek support for learning biology” (p. 368). On the one hand, the girls in Ryu’s study were positioned as naturally good at science and mathematics. On the other hand, the girls’ learning experiences reflected patterns of marginalization and invisibility as science and mathematics learners. The harmful nature of good stereotypes is revealed in this example, where hard work and perseverance are masked, along with bids for recognition for help and support.

Importantly, discourses like “Asians are good at math” are part of binaries that do not only tell us who occupies a “favorable” location within a mathematical social experience—these discourses are also send messages about who cannot occupy favorable positions in mathematics and STEM more broadly. The following vignette continues from Shah and Leonardo’s (2017) account of the precalculus classroom.

James walking into class was considered a breach of racialized norms of who takes advanced mathematics, which he must negotiate as a mathematics learner. It is vital to understand Akshay’s and James’s vignettes as two sides of the same coin of a racialized discourse of mathematics ability. “Asians are good at math” is less meaningful in the absence of its counterpart, namely, “Black people are not good at math.” The internalizations of these discourses have been well documented for Black men (Nasir & Shah, 2011; Stinson, 2013) and should also be understood as foundational to psychological phenomena, like stereotype threat, wherein individuals experience anxiety over the possibility of confirming a negative stereotype about their social group (Steele, 2010; Steele & Aronson, 1995). This anxiety, then, can often spill over into affecting academic performance. Akshay and James do not adopt these discourses for themselves as mathematics learners: indeed, both boys resist these discourses of either being a mathematical “genius” (in Akshay’s case) or a mathematical “alien” who purportedly does not belong (in James’s case). Further, their peers in both cases are playfully (although perhaps not innocently) wielding these discourses to make sense of the classroom environment and themselves.

A sense of belonging and social connectedness is central to learning and development. Belonging strongly predicts student motivation and success across learning contexts (Maloney & Matthews, 2020, p. 400), which is related to but distinct from social connectedness. Where belonging relates to a feeling of closeness, familiarity, and being on the inside, social connectedness is about a set of relational ties or networks (Crisp, 2010). Children can be connected, like James in his mathematics class to his peers, but may lack a sense of belonging. Racialized and gendered myths give some children privileged status to learn in STEM spaces, like white and some Asian children, whereas Black, Latinx, and Indigenous children, like James, are denied that sense of belonging.

While these racialized and gendered discourses emerge in classroom spaces, teachers can play a role in cultivating a supportive classroom climate and inviting belonging among students. A recent study by Maloney and Matthews (2020) revealed that “teacher care […] was a significant predictor of student sense of connectedness in their mathematics classrooms (β = –.27)” (pp. 421–422). An aspect of care may include addressing racialized and gendered discourses in the classroom by (a) supporting individual student’s resistance to marginalizing discourses and (b) managing how peers are positioning one another with respect to stereotypes and myths. In other words, the pervasiveness of these racialized and gendered discourses in the above examples can be mediated by skillful teachers, who conceptualize at least part of their work as confronting the stories, messages, and myths operating in learning spaces. We discuss strategies for pursuing equitable instructional approaches for mediating these harmful discourses in Chapter 8.

By focusing on messages, myths, and stories, the pursuit of equity confronts more than the material experiences of children; it also addresses what is in the air—that is, the assumptions that organize and underpin ideas about who can be good in STEM. Equity in the air can be considered the availability of psychological resources and supports, like belonging, which are facilitated through teacher talk, peer talk, images that are available inside and outside of learning contexts, implicit and explicit messages of who and what is valued and recognized informally and formally (through awards), as well as stories that are told about the people in and learning of STEM. Children need resources to self-define positively as STEM learners. The messages, stories, and myths are particularly stubborn and directly contrast the growing diversity of STEM learners. Attention to equity in the air encourages us to produce new messages, representations, and ways of being a STEM person and disrupt messages that narrow STEM participation. Importantly, not attending to equity in the air allows negative and deleterious messages, stories, and myths to flow in and through the learning environment, meaning deliberate and focused decisions are required to provide children with sufficient self-defining resources. (For more on equity in decision making and creating positive learning environments, see Chapters 6 and 7.)

CHILDREN’S RESOURCES FOR LEARNING AND HOW THEY ARE VALUED

In the previous section, our discussion of the experiences of Akshay and James focused primarily on their being—merely who they were, not necessarily what they were doing beyond occupying space within a STEM setting. The boys’ races and gender identities mitigated their experience of belonging, and competence (or not) in the STEM disciplines, without any

action or talk involving science or math. It was simply the proximity of Ahmed to a homemade digital device, or James walking in an advanced mathematics classroom, that placed in motion a set of responses independent of their doing, i.e., their talking, acting, and using tools.

In this section we explore children and youth as actors who bring a set of resources to STEM learning that are shaped by their social location. Tara Yosso (2005) introduced the Cultural Wealth Model as a frame to account for the standpoint resources that children bring into learning interactions that are often ignored or devalued. This model defines six forms of social capital: aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistance (pp. 77–81). This section provides examples of these different forms of social capital—highlighting the cultural and political dimensions in STEM learning contexts. Of course, social capital is always operating inside of material capital, such as technological tools and infrastructure, high-quality tools, learning aids, etc., that are structured by histories described in Chapter 2. Specifically, this section takes up how children’s talk and ways of making sense culturally and politically are central to understanding equity issues.

CHILDREN AS CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ACTORS IN STEM

When describing children as cultural actors, culture extends beyond the oft-used everyday meanings, like holidays and food. Culture within STEM learning experiences holds as particular meanings, defined by Nasir et al. (2005) in this way:

Culture is important for how it indexes the family—albeit broadly construed—as a source of resources that define a child’s standpoint. Family includes extended family as well as “fictive kin,” which includes long-time friends and neighbors (who are not “blood” relatives) but considered family nonetheless. The family holds significance for interpersonal relationships, histories, language(s), knowledges, and practices for engaging in various everyday activities, including STEM learning (Buxton et al., 2012; Goldman & Booker, 2009; Nolan et al., 2020; Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2003). In the following vignette, Wright and Riley (2021) describe an episode in a seventh-grade science classroom, along with an analysis of the cultural implications concerning equity.

As Wright and Riley (2021) note, Jahnay seeks to leverage a different set of perspectival resources that are proximal to her family. She uses cultural knowledge about herbs to make sense of a biological phenomenon; however, while recognized rhetorically by the teacher, these resources were immediately diminished substantively as “unscientific.” Of course, many medicines made by scientists actually come from plants, and there is now deepened understanding of what makes plant-based medicines work, which at the core is the same as many synthetically produced medicines. Yet, the resources connected to Jahnay’s family (and certainly structured by race and class) differ from the cultural practices of the dominant culture in the United States, namely white, middle-class norms, which rely primarily on pharmaceutical remedies. Again, the role of the teacher emerges as an essential mediator of whether children are recognized as cultural actors and active meaning-makers in the context of STEM.

The following vignette describes Ernesto, a fourth-grade, emergent bilingual, Latinx student who has been enrolled in U.S. schools for approximately 1.5 years and is in an afterschool program (Turner et al., 2013). Ernesto’s mathematical ability is showcased by privileging Spanish, during a discussion through the teacher’s practice of mathematical translanguaging.

In contrast to Jahnay from Vignette 3, the teacher makes space for the family in a symbolic way by centering Ernesto’s home language, which is invited by the teacher’s question in Spanish, “Ernesto, ¿nos dices cómo lo hiciste?” Notably, the teacher aptly refocuses a bid by Ernesto’s classmate, Corrine, that questions Ernesto’s mathematical competence in light of his use of Spanish. The teacher’s talk acknowledges the importance of Ernesto’s mathematical thinking and contribution (i.e., “I think it’s great if you want to make a comment about what he did. It’s really important”). It also addresses a discourse “in the air” related to ideologies about language (i.e., mathematical competence and trust are tied to mastery of English). Ernesto’s strategy is being elevated and supported in this interaction and, at the same time, Corrine is being acknowledged and supported to focus on the features of the mathematical thinking, not the ideological power of the language being used to express mathematical thinking. The teacher’s skillful interplay between English and Spanish while addressing dominant discourses allows for a productive discussion that supports Ernesto as a mathematics learner.

The leveraging of children’s home language through translanguaging, although often exclusively referenced with English language learners, applies to children who identify as native English speakers as well. For example, Brown and Spang (2007) offer an important example of an all-Black fifth-grade science classroom, where the teacher, Mrs. Murphy, and her students engage in a practice of “explanations with embedded definitions” often “accompanied by a vernacular, more accessible alternative phrase” (p. 725). In short, this means that academic language is always integrated with everyday language that is familiar to the children. For example, during a discussion of living versus non-living things (itself a particular cultural construction), Mrs. Murphy calls on Damon, who uses the term “vegetate” to describe a non-living thing, followed by the explanation, “it just sits there” (p. 724). A hybrid mode of communication in this classroom provided multiple entry points for students to appropriate formal science language. In this example, there are three layers of naming and describing with different academic formality: “vegetate,” “non-living thing,” “it just sits there.” Each of these terms may connect with different learners while converging on a particular cultural construction of living versus non-living by leveraging linguistic variance. In the cases of both Ernesto and Dawson, language serves as an essential cultural tool in the STEM classroom that can be used to open or foreclose participation.

Place, like language, is foundational to resources children bring to STEM learning. While the lands and waters of communities hold cultural importance to STEM learners in developing intergenerational cultural practices (Marin & Bang, 2018), the land and water also possess political importance that children can leverage to develop deeper understandings of scientific concepts. In the following vignette, fourth and fifth graders living near Flint, Michigan, use their sociopolitical understandings to build their conceptions of water.

The children’s discussion summarized in the above vignette was prompted by the teacher, Janelle, and a school administrator, collaboratively initiating an instructional module on the water crisis after the then-governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, declared a state of emergency in Flint (Davis & Schaffer, 2019). The adults created an opening for the children in this fourth- and fifth-grade classroom to connect their lived realities (or perspectival resources within their community) to academic life science. The discussion traversed the commodification of water, meanings of fairness, qualities of water (as pure or impure), notions of caring and empathy, activism, and theories of social change. The references to fairness by Jack and political action by Iris and Tariq belie the commonly held belief that children are ambivalent or naive about their cultural sociopolitical surroundings. Young children are capable of engaging in political discussions in STEM: studies across preK–12 within STEM evidence the importance of including and centering the sociopolitical context of children in their mathematics (Gutstein, 2006; Kokka, 2020), computer science (Ryoo et al., 2021), and chemistry (Morales-Doyle, 2020; Morales-Doyle et al., 2019).

SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND POWER IN STEM EDUCATION

The experiences of children in the previous sections focused on individual children within particular STEM contexts. This section focuses on how classrooms, small groups, or pairs of children interact in STEM educational contexts and how social arrangements create or suppress equity for children. These vignettes will illustrate how power unfolds: within each, we illuminate the imperceptible social structures that order children’s opportunity to learn in STEM in predictable ways across race, gender, class, and ability. We also show how children resist or disrupt these predictable patterns of power and the consequences of said resistance and disruption.

The first of these vignettes begins with Jackson’s (2009) ethnography of a majority-Black fifth-grade mathematics classroom. It provides an illustrative example of the social structures that emerge in STEM spaces at the classroom level, with a particular focus on gender.

The vignette of Nikki reveals the complexity of equity in mathematics learning at a classroom level. In Nikki’s classroom, mathematics has a particularly narrow definition, which was established through a set of norms and routines, like beginning class with a timed test, recognizing a winner, and chanting, “You rule.” Competence in this classroom is narrowly and problematically constructed as being fast and computationally accurate through daily competition. The teacher erected a social structure that exclusively benefits children who have or develop computational fluency. Through this structure, Nikki is elevated as a highly competent mathematics student, disrupting gender norms about mathematics ability. However, the

boys in the classroom resist a social structure that operates to their exclusion, and the boys refuse to chant, “You rule.” Later in the year, the other girls became less enthusiastic, resisting a social structure that only allowed individual recognition. Nikki also engages in her own forms of resistance by intentionally losing the Math Royalty test—only to be ridiculed by the teacher. Opposition to classroom practices like Math Royalty is common in mathematics classrooms and is often conflated with children’s competence (Hand, 2010).

What does equity look like in this STEM classroom? As a Black girl, Nikki holds a symbolic power position as a mathematics learner. Her occupation of this position seems important in disrupting racialized and gendered discourses of mathematics ability. The gendered contestation of mathematics ability is readily apparent through the boy’s refusal to congratulate Nikki for achieving Math Royalty. However, when considering educational equity beyond the success of an individual child, Nikki’s elevation as a highly competent girl mathematics learner is a pyrrhic victory at best. It is a “victory” that denies the other children in the classroom access to identities as being “good” at mathematics. It ultimately results in Nikki’s decision not to identify with mathematics competence in order to maintain her relationships with her peers.

The practice of Math Royalty on its face appears innocent. The use of crowns and tiaras and the double meaning of “You rule” as a colloquial expression, along with the connection to images of nobility and power, was a deliberate and thoughtful attempt by the teacher to create a space of enthusiasm and playfulness. Unfortunately, the teacher’s intent is negated by an outcome that produces marginalization, exclusion, and disidentification for most, if not all, of the children in the classroom, including Nikki. Fundamentally, the social structure enacted by the teacher unsettled the social dynamics between the children. Some dynamics, like gender hierarchies in mathematics, require attention—not, however, to establish a new hierarchical ordering. In this case, a new hierarchical ordering was established where Black girls are at the top. In other words, elevating a Black girl without supporting children in unlearning aspects of men-boy dominance in mathematics as intersected with anti-Black racism reproduces marginality of a different kind.

The social dynamics and relationships between children and youth are not often considered in formulations of STEM learning or equity (Gholson & Martin, 2014). However, they play a critical role in shaping STEM learning experiences. For example, friendship for adolescent girls predicts course taking in all subjects, particularly in mathematics and science (Riegle-Crumb et al., 2006). Teachers’ ability to understand these social dynamics and build structures that allow for multiple forms of competence removes the burden from children, who have learned to rely on their peers in STEM

learning environments for support, recognition, and acceptance. Without sufficient social support, children can be vulnerable to various forms of marginalization within the classroom, academic programs, and school (Sengupta-Irving, 2021).

In the next vignette, a learning interaction between Jakeel and Rebecca, two fourth-grade students, is shared to understand how children wield power and shape the social dynamics within small group structures during STEM learning. Rebecca is a white girl, and Jakeel is a Black boy who is considered likable by teachers and also a student designated academically “at risk.”

In this example, the children are in a small group structure to enact equitable instruction, giving students roles, clear tasks, and norms for working together. Within this interaction, there are several noteworthy turns. For example, Rebecca’s directive tone and reference to Jakeel as “boy” suggests her position of authority, coupled with her physical move to take his paper. These opening moves are followed by Rebecca telling Jakeel what to write—a move that Jakeel resists by saying, “I don’t want to rewrite.” In this interaction, Jakeel’s engagement with the group was diminished to a writing (or copying) task, not a mathematical task.

Despite the teacher using a small group structure intended to support equitable instruction, the children enter the social structure with different access to power for completing the task; the positions assumed by students in U.S. classrooms reflect the social hierarchy in society (Kurth et al., 2002). Thus, even between children, inequities in participation can and do emerge. The social structures children navigate can be inequitable, like Math Royalty, or structures purposefully implemented for equitable learning, like small groups, and yet they are still susceptible to various social inequities along the axes of race, gender, social class, and academic ability. Further, the presence of inequities is not only the consequence of adult decisions and actions. Children also leverage their positional authority to affect other children’s learning experiences in STEM contexts—not only in response to structures imposed on them but through their agency and social power toward their own social and academic goals. Because of this, transferring power to children or smaller social structures is not a solution for equity on its own. Small group work inequalities have been well documented in various STEM settings, including high school physics classes (Shah et al., 2020) and high school mathematics (Langer-Osuna, 2015).

Thus, the role of teaching takes on ever-increasing complexity. Equitable teaching demands structuring non-hierarchical social arrangements for children’s STEM learning, scaffolding children’s engagement and interaction, and vigorously monitoring the activity within these structures—not to surveil or punish children’s behavior, but to maintain the focus on mathematical and scientific thinking and understanding. Which is to say, orchestrating non-hierarchical social arrangements is foundational to equitable teaching in STEM contexts. However, it is the infrastructure of these arrangements that makes for equitable STEM learning. That is, the learning of STEM is inextricable from how children learn to relate with one another, themselves, and the wider world. These norms can be explicitly taught, and children can be scaffolded into these patterns of engagement.

In the next vignette, two young children, Arthur and Robert, are working to build a marble machine. This provides opportunities to see the importance of bodies in STEM learning. Arthur and Robert are Chinese American and seven years and nine years old, respectively. In this episode, power is exercised in its bodily form—as opposed to its discursive form. Rebecca’s move to grab Jakeel’s paper from him in the previous vignette was also an example of bodily power. Importantly, in Vignette 8 this power within the body is not distinct from children’s ideas and understandings of the design problem concerning the marble machine.

Vignette 8
Arthur and Robert (Vossoughi et al., 2020)

This interaction took place in an afterschool program. Robert is older than Arthur and has been in the program longer. Meg, the program director, is nearby. The boys are selecting different materials to begin building the marble machine.

Arthur (to the right when facing the board) picked up a slim metal pipe from the ground and proceeded to tape it to the board. Robert (to Arthur’s left) then said, “No! You got to do this first!” Grabbing the end of the metal pipe opposite Arthur’s hand, Robert held up a wooden platform in front of Arthur’s chest (Figure 7). Robert pushed the metal pipe away and positioned the wooden platform against the board and said, “Wait! Wait! Yes!” Arthur replied, “No! I’m trying to …” as he continued holding up the metal pipe in front of Robert. Meg then intervened. Crouching down behind them, she said, “Let’s make a decision together. Let’s hear both ideas.”

Vossoughi et al. (2020) note that as a relatively older, more experienced child in the afterschool program, Robert can exercise his power in ways that minimize Arthur’s contribution to the marble machine as a younger and newer member of the program. Robert effectively pushed away the metal pipe Arthur offered in favor of the wooden platform. The use of a particular material, like a metal pipe, is connected to an idea about the marble machine, so the rejection of the pipe is contemporaneously a denial of Arthur’s thinking and understanding of the design. This example highlights the intermingling of bodies and the materials children use, like pencils, paper, manipulatives, calculators, keyboards, or lap equipment, as STEM learners.

Children’s control of their bodies and extensions through different objects is essential to equity. Addressing equity in this way extends beyond sharing or taking turns with bodies and materials. Meg (the program director and mediator of this interaction) acknowledges this when she states, “Let’s hear both ideas.” It is common for an adult’s instructional focus to be on the metal pipe within the exchange between Robert and Arthur. This would typically sound like, “Robert, give the pipe back to Arthur.” Meg, however, does not focus on the metal pipe (or the control of the materials) but on the substance of the boys’ ideas as the intervention. Importantly, the next part of Robert’s and Arthur’s story involved Meg helping to shift the boys toward more equitable engagement with one another.

The previous examples have included the interactional dynamics of young children. Of course, these social structures also organize the learning experiences of youth in STEM educational contexts. Nguyen et al. (2022) have documented the experiences of older girls in high school (ninth through twelfth grade) who are interested in pursuing engineering. The girls’ experiences in STEM contexts point to three themes of discouragement: social exclusion, physical exclusion, and idea/identity ownership. Table 5-1 reproduces a table by Nguyen et al., in which they describe the themes, along with sample quotes.

Notice that many of the patterns related to relational exclusion, control of materials, and relegation of tasks are all present; however, these patterns take on new contours within high school settings, where gendered norms become increasingly rigid and restrictive into feminine and masculine stereotypes. Regrettably, the patterns of dominance and control reflected in Nikki’s (Vignette 6), Jakeel’s and Rebecca’s (Vignette 7), and Robert’s and Arthur’s (Vignette 8) interactions do not simply fade away as children get older. These patterns tend to crystallize into the exclusionary practices and norms, like the social and physical exclusion experienced by Olivia and Kiara (examples in Table 5-1), respectively, and often result in disidentification and lack of ownership of ideas, as described by Isabella. The “chilly climate” in STEM environments does not suddenly appear in postsecondary contexts (where the term was coined; Hall & Sandler, 1982).

A NOTE ON TEACHERS AND SIGNIFICANT ADULTS IN SUPPORTING EQUITY IN CHILDREN’S WORLDS

Teachers, administrators, instructors, and facilitators have been back-grounded throughout this chapter quite intentionally, but they indisputably play a pivotal role in creating equitable learning environments. Given the extent to which adults have appeared in this chapter it may seem that they are the problem as opposed to the part of the solution. However, it is important to note that all of these vignettes are snapshots in time and should

TABLE 5-1 Themes of Discouragement When Engaging in STEM Contexts

SOURCE: Reproduced Table 4 of Nguyen et al. (2022).

not suggest that any moment is indicative of a full story of a teacher or facilitator’s work. More will be said about teaching in Chapters 7, 8, and 9. Still, it is important to highlight the discretion that teachers and significant adults hold in facilitating and promoting equity for children. Part of the work of teaching is orchestrating learning environments as discretionary spaces (Ball, 2018), i.e., spaces that are full of possibilities for maintaining existing hierarchies or disrupting those hierarchies through instructional decisions. This orchestration requires numerous, moment-by-moment decisions. In her analysis of a mathematics lesson, Ball (2018) describes 20 instructional decisions a teacher can make within approximately 90 seconds and, according to Jackson (1968, 1990), teachers have 1,200 to 1,500 interactions with students per day. In this chapter, we have taken particular instructional decisions or consequences of those instructional decisions (for example, setting up group work or routines and norms) and placed them

under full inspection for their effects on children’s learning experiences—often to see discrimination and marginalization that is often invisible. The day-to-day realities and demands of teaching and learning do not have the luxury of such detailed analysis; however, from this intimate view, patterns emerge that may help us create a hopeful image of equity in STEM learning environments. Through this chapter, we can recognize the potential for equity when orchestrating learning environments as discretionary spaces to effectively embrace and manage children’s diversity through hybridity.

Hybridity in learning environments acknowledges the full diversity of racial, cultural, and linguistic practices; global and local political histories; and various ways of knowing (or epistemologies) and amalgamates this diversity into a “third space” (Gutiérrez et al.,1999). Third spaces include the social and material entanglements of learning environments. Gutiérrez et al. explain these learning environments in this way:

To restate, learning environments are by definition imbued with conflict and tension because they hold the diversities of children and, at the same time, these tensions lend themselves to transformative potential for learning and development. Therefore, every conflict or tension in the preceding vignettes are sites for the creation of new spaces (Gutiérrez et al.’s “third space”) that can bridge, for example, children’s social identities, experiences, and activity goals across community, home, and school. Fruitful examples of these third spaces are found in Vignettes 4, 5, and 8 that highlight moments of child-centered equity. In Vignette 4, we see hybridity when linguistic practices are integrated through translanguaging as Ernesto uses his home language to describe his mathematics ideas. Vignette 5 explores curricular hybridity as local political issues related to the Flint water crisis are integrated with standards-based science curriculum. Further, Vignette 8 shows how hybridity in children’s competing activity goals and desires are integrated in the design of a marble machine.

In the following vignette, Tan and Calabrese-Barton (2008) introduce Ginny, a Latina sixth-grade student, who describes herself as successful in science. This vignette reveals a more playful side to hybridity.

Mr. M typed up the song and made a poster which was displayed outside of the classroom. The song lyrics were also shared with Ginny’s classmates, which “became available as a community resource” (Tan & Calabrese-Barton, 2008, p. 59). The integration of popular culture to the science curriculum created an opportunity for Ginny and her classmates in experiencing a standard science unit in an engaging way. The third space that Ginny initiated was built upon by Mr. M and opened learning opportunities and identities for children in this sixth-grade class. Mr. M had many choices to make, and he used his discretion to bend standard science toward a fun, popular song by receiving a song from one of his students. The achievement of hybridity in STEM learning environments is an ongoing process of moving toward equity in the classroom.

TOWARD AN ECOLOGICALLY COMPLEX, CHILD-CENTERED EQUITY IN STEM EDUCATION

Equity is often described as an achievable pursuit instead of the aim of the ongoing work in STEM education. As Chapter 6 will note, reducing gaps between groups and providing opportunity and access are one motivation for promoting educational equity in STEM. However, disparities concerning outcomes and opportunities point to something deeply flawed within the system itself and, generally, at the level of human interaction. The flaw within these systems is not the children. Children and youth are often, in fact, the casualties of these systems. When children and youth feel pain, boredom, and disconnect in STEM education, harm (be it systemic, physical, epistemological, or symbolic) is occurring to students’ ongoing experience of STEM in the name of the social orders of schooling (Martin et al., 2019). The quality of the student’s experiences tend not to be an impetus for pursuing equity. However, attending to the experiences of children and youth allows for a holistic approach to STEM learning (Roth & Jornet, 2013). When joy, desire, awe, and connection (to people, ideas, and the planet) are centered in the learning experience, one can pursue equity in a myriad of ways for children and youth.

For example, the vignettes in this chapter help us concretize and envision interventions to mitigate inequities within STEM learning: we have foreground approaches to equity that have intersectional relevance for children of various categories of social difference. The wellbeing of children and youth in STEM contexts is premised on pursuing equity across multiple dimensions of experience at various scales over time. Equity is an ongoing process and practice and requires continuous attention and care. Further, equity can be observed as a collection of moments over a class, a day, a week, a semester, and an academic year, for example, that should thicken or laminate, like layers, into positive identities and trajectories as a

STEM learner (Weeth Feinstein, 2023, paper commissioned for this report). Children and youth’s development as people who can and should do STEM is the work that occurs in moments. Children and youth could develop identities as scientists, mathematicians, or engineers, and as they carry out identity work, there should be more moments of experiencing equity that ensure children and youth can be who they desire presently and as they occupy new social locations with respect to age. However, becoming a STEM professional is not necessarily the ultimate goal, nor does becoming a STEM professional address fundamental challenges for children and families (e.g., racism). The goal, rather, is to nurture, sustain, and grow a multiplicity of meaningful STEM learning experiences that support young people’s dignity and thriving as learners and whole human beings as tied to community and individual wellbeing.

CONCLUSIONS

This chapter attempts to describe, from the standpoint of children, how equity can be seen and understood in children’s lives. Through the use of vignettes, we describe how equity can manifest in the everyday contexts of children, as well as discuss how equity can be readily identifiable and visceral for children. We offer the following conclusions:

Conclusion 5-1: Intersecting categories of social difference mediate the learning experiences of children and youth in STEM educational contexts. How these differences are understood by adults as well as peers can result in classroom processes, norms, participation structures, and interpersonal dynamics that send either positive or negative signals about who belongs or can be competent in STEM based on dominant assumptions about race, gender, class, and ability.

Conclusion 5-2: Patterns of inequity, bias, and oppression have consequences for groups of people that result in observed, population-level trends. These patterns also shape the individual experiences of children and youth with consequences for their learning, identity, and sense of belonging in STEM.

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