STEM for All

Student Identities and the Paradox of STEM Democratization

Bibliographic Data

ID21460002
AuthorsKristin Cipollone (Ball State University, corresponding author), Amy E Stich (0000-0002-1260-5088, University of Georgia), Lois Weis (0000-0001-9495-9025, University at Buffalo, State University of New York)
Year2020
Volume122
Issue2
Pages1-67
Publication date2020-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTeachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0161-4681 • E-ISSN: 1467-9620
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/016146812012200212
OpenAlexW3107543831
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited24

Background/Context Calls to increase participation in and access to STEM education have been loud and frequent. These democratizing efforts have targeted the aspirations and expectations of non-dominant students attending U.S. secondary schools, promising pathways to college and opportunities for social mobility, yet the results have been mixed. While some exemplars exist, recent research has identified a number of social and structural challenges that undermine the stated goals of policy initiatives and fail to yield positive student outcomes. Purpose Drawing upon the authors’ notion of shadow capital, an extension of Bourdieu's theoretical framework, and Holland, Lachincotte, Skinner, and Cain's theory of figured worlds, this article explores how high-achieving students from non-dominant backgrounds construct their academic identities amid limited STEM material and discursive structures in two urban, non-selective, public, STEM-focused schools. In so doing, we aim to extend and complicate the literature on STEM reform and its ability to provide opportunity and improve outcomes for non-dominant students. Research Design The findings reported herein are part of a larger ethnographic, longitudinal, and comparative study of eight non-selective, urban public high schools serving primarily economically and racially non-dominant students. Data consist of interviews with multiple stakeholders, sustained participant and non-participant observation, and document analysis. In this article we focus on two STEM-focused schools, STEM Academy and Broadway Science Academy (BSA), and primarily draw upon interview data given our emphasis on student identity development. Findings/Results As a result of a mismatch between the intention and outcome of STEM reform as it plays out in this study, each school provided students with shadow capital. Given the different school contexts, the effects of this shadow capital on students’ STEM identities vary across site. In the case of STEM Academy, students develop conflicted STEM identities amid the school's own conflicted institutional identity as both STEM-focused and college preparatory. In the case of BSA, students are provided opportunities that are seen as more “connected” to student-lived experiences, resulting in vocational pathways devoid of the elements that truly bridge home and school in ways that create opportunity, complicating students’ ability to actualize their college and career aspirations. Conclusions/Recommendations In order to create authentic and meaningful connected STEM opportunities that allow students to draw from their own stores of capital and nurture STEM identities, we need to reevaluate and re-envision the “good intentions” undergirding the democratization of education and ask whether efforts to democratize STEM are plausible within our deeply stratified system

Cultural capital · Ethnography · Habitus · Pedagogy · Political science · Public relations · Social capital · Social science · Sociology · Career Development and Diversity · Education, Achievement, and Giftedness · Higher Education Research Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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