Chapter 13: STEM-ing the Tide: Women of Color Reimagining Their “Place” Through Sociocultural Action

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields have been a major focus of U.S. education reform efforts since the 1958 National Defense Education Act (Zhao, 2009). While federal financial support and other K–12 initiatives have followed, there is little evidence that instructional strategies have changed or that students have gained more interest in STEM from such initiatives (Breiner, Harkness, Johnson, & Keehler, 2012). Furthermore, the recruitment and retention of women of color into STEM fields continues to be low (Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield, 2011). The socialization of students into prescribed gender roles and its relation to STEM is lifelong and transpires in the intricacies of everyday talk (Ochs, 1990). By middle school, students have already formed strong affinities or aversions towards STEM disciplines based on gender and/or race (Hayden, Ouyang, Scinski, Olszewski, & Bielefeldt, 2011; Sadker & Sadker, 1982). Given the prevailing patriarchal and Eurocentric “White” paradigm that permeates STEM education, girls and women of color who excel in these fields are in a sense “STEM-ing” the tide and creating a counter narrative to the dominant script. PROJECT,¹ a long-term professional development program for teachers working with English learners (ELs), aims to provide spaces of reclamation for teachers of color designing STEM activities in K–8 urban classrooms. Two questions guide this study: (a) How do women of color teachers (WCT)² negotiate the tensions of integrating STEM with language and literacy? and (b) How do they reimagine STEM possibilities for themselves and for students of color?