PERC 2018 Abstract Detail Page
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| Abstract Title: | Inclusive and transformative epistemic agency: Broadening participation by valuing "wonderful ideas" |
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| Abstract: | Whose ideas are seen as "wonderful ideas" in science research and learning environments? Broadening participation scholarship on the experiences of participants from non-dominant communities has focused on success, persistence, and resilience and has created opportunities for designers of learning environments to consider new pathways to participation in STEM fields. This work has pushed designers, educators, and policy makers to support the participation and persistence of individuals from non-dominant communities and the institutions that serve them. Critical STEM education scholars have built upon and questioned assimilative narratives of disciplinary participation and questioned the burden that narratives of participation based in resilience place upon students from non-dominant communities (McGee & Bentley, 2017). Within this context, a focus on science teaching and learning that engages inclusive and transformative epistemic agency has the power to expand the ways we think about broadening participation. Inclusive epistemic agency relates to the ways that youth from non-dominant communities were positioned to contribute to the ongoing knowledge making practices of a chemical oceanography laboratory. Transformative epistemic agency refers to the ways youths' actions and interests shifted the ongoing practices of the laboratory. I argue that broadening participation in STEM needs to include both increasing non-dominant community participation in existing STEM paradigms i.e. inclusive epistemic agency but also transformative epistemic agency that pushes for changing definitions of STEM participation which include other ways of knowing and doing. |
| Abstract Type: | Plenary |
| Room: | Renaissance Ballroom |
Author/Organizer Information | |
| Primary Contact: |
Déana Scipio University of California Davis School of Education |
