Centering Race in the STEM Education of African American K–12 Learners

Centering Race in the
STEM Education of
African American
K–12 Learners

Glenda M. Prime, Editor

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Berlin

Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Prime, Glenda M., editor.

Title: Centering race in the STEM education of African American K–12 learners / edited by Glenda M. Prime.

Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2019.

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018047630 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6176-6 (hardback: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6175-9 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6177-3 (ebook pdf)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6178-0 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6179-7 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Education. | Science—Study and Teaching—Social aspects—United States. | Minorities in science—United States.

Discrimination in education—United States.

Culturally relevant pedagogy—United States.

Academic achievement—United States.

Classification: LCC LC2717 .C4 2019 | DDC 371.829/96073—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047630

DOI 10.3726/b14757

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2019 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

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All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the editor

Glenda M. Prime holds a PhD in education from the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. She is a professor of science education at Morgan State University, where she chairs the Department of Advanced Studies, Leadership, and Policy. Her publications include numerous articles in refereed journals in science and technology education, including four book chapters on technology education, mathematics education, science education, and doctoral education.

About the book

Centering Race in the STEM Education of African American K–12 Learners boldly advocates for a transformative approach to the teaching of STEM to African American K–12 learners. The achievement patterns of African American learners, so often described as an “achievement gap” between them and their White peers, is in fact the historical legacy of slavery and the racial hierarchy that was necessary to maintain it. The achievement gap is a contemporary manifestation of the racial hierarchy that continues in STEM to the present time. The racial hierarchy in STEM education is upheld by structural arrangements, policies, and practices, sometimes invisible, but ultimately denies access and depresses performance of African American K–12 learners in STEM. This book argues that disrupting these patterns of achievement and realizing more equitable outcomes for this demographic is essentially a political act that requires that race be overtly addressed and centered in the STEM education of these children—an approach called “race-visible pedagogy.” While this approach incorporates some of the elements of culturally responsive pedagogy and other anti-racist or liberatory pedagogies, it advances the thinking about such approaches by shifting the emphasis from the outcomes of such pedagogies to the experience of them. This book covers a range of issues related to the STEM education of African American K–12 learners and includes theoretical pieces that offer insightful, new, and asset-based, as opposed to deficit-based, frameworks for understanding and disrupting the patterns of achievement of African American children, as well examples of the practice of race-visible pedagogies.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Race-Visible Pedagogy in the STEM Education of African American Learners

Glenda Prime

Challenging Whiteness in Science Education

Gale Seiler

Toward a Transformative Framework for STEM Education: Achieving Equity Through a Holistic Approach

Roni Ellington

Reconceptualizing Science Education for Learners of African Descent

Jomo W. Mutegi, Crystal H. Morton, and Leslie K. Etienne←vii | viii→

Broadening Millennials’ Participation in STEM and the Teaching Professions Through Culturally Relevant, Place-Based, Informal Science Internships

Jacqueline Leonard, Scott A. Chamberlin, Elsa Bailey, Geeta Verma, and Helen Douglass

Developing Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers to Meet the Needs of Black Male Students in Teacher Education Programs

Julius Davis, Ramon B. Goings, and Keisha M. Allen