Fighting for Desired Versions of a Future Self: How Young Women Negotiated STEM-Related Identities in the Discursive Landscape of Educational Opportunity

March 15th, 2017 | RESEARCH

In this article, we investigate how the national imperative to increase opportunities for young women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to broaden their participation was taken up locally at two high schools in one school district. Using ethnographic and longitudinal data, we focus on four young women of color (two at each school) as they negotiated STEM-related identities in the discursive and practice contexts of their lives at school. Using Holland and Lave’s concept of history in person, we view the young women as fighting for particular versions of a future self while entangled in discursive and social relations that threatened to position them differently than they wished to be. We find that their fight for future selves was not—for them—with the national narrative about women of color in STEM but with local school narratives that negatively positioned students of color more broadly and remained silent on issues of gender, the intersection of gender and race, and the implications for STEM. High school success in STEM came as a hopeful but potentially fragile byproduct of struggles to differentiate themselves from people like them (other Blacks, Latinas, the poor). Implications of these findings are discussed.

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Team Members

Carrie Allen, Author, SRI International
Margaret Eisenhart, Author, University of Colorado Boulder

Citation

Identifier Type: ISSN
Identifier: 1050-8406

Publication: Journal of the Learning Sciences
Volume: 26
Number: 3
Page(s): 407-436

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Tags

Access and Inclusion: Black | African American Communities | English Language Learners | Ethnic | Racial | Hispanic | Latinx Communities | Immigrant Communities | Low Socioeconomic Status | Women and Girls
Audience: Educators | Teachers | Learning Researchers | Youth | Teen (up to 17)
Discipline: Education and learning science | General STEM
Resource Type: Peer-reviewed article | Research Products
Environment Type: K-12 Programs