01/31/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 01/31/2025 14:03
Black employees comprise 9 percent of the STEM workforce. As a result, most Black children who are curious about science never benefit from the "role-model" effect, a phenomenon in which people see relatable characteristics in successful individuals and believe they can achieve similar success.
To better understand the early science experiences of Black women in science education, an NYU researcher sought out their stories and found that family role modeling and support were the key factors in cultivating their interest and curiosity. In contrast, schools provided little formal science education or encouragement, which means they had to heavily rely on science-career professionals at home or a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship to strengthen their curiosity.
Getty images/SrdjanPav
In a qualitative study, five Black women science teachers, each with more than 15 years of experience, shared their teaching and life experiences through one-on-one interviews and poetry. The interviews were designed to elicit narratives of their lives, including early childhood experiences as well as their teaching, and the poems-written to their childhood selves-sought to understand how reflection helps Black women science teachers make meaning of their past experiences
"Black girls, which includes those who attend under-funded public schools, deserve the opportunity to be science curious, to be able to use and enjoy science in any way they so choose," says Alexis Riley, assistant professor of teaching and learning at New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. "One of the many ways to redress feelings of exclusion and erasure in the culture of science and foster change for Black girls is to bring life to how we support Black women science teachers, and one of the ways to do that is to use freeing avenues for creative expression such as poetry."
The participants' responses and poems were coded and analyzed to determine common themes. The findings are published in Science Education.
After interviewing the participants, Riley identified the following:
In the poems, she found overlapping sentiments with the previous themes.
Riley writes that Black girls' learning can be stifled in classrooms, noting that teachers may find Black girls asking a question as "sassy, disruptive, aggressive, or loud." She proposes that curricula in schools "give ample space for young Black girls and other minoritized groups to explore their curiosity and communicate their thoughts, questions, and ideals without punishment."
"For science teachers who desire to help their students be seen within the science content and to express themselves in the science learning spaces process, they must consider frameworks of liberation and anti-racism-for example, inviting students who are community members to science fairs, debates, or presentations to increase public awareness and giving students space to make sense of climate change or climate denial and issues related to COVID-19 in the classroom," says Riley.