“Getting along” and “using evidence”: Elementary engineering as contentious practice

Abstract

Elementary engineering, as an emergent or “contentious” practice, is fertile ground for cultural analysis. Contentious practice (Holland, D., & Lave, J. (2001). History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities. School of American Research Press) highlights how historically enduring narratives of science, engineering, schooling, and minoritized youth get taken up, figured, and refigured in local practice. The study's research questions were: What classroom cultural narratives of “good engineers” were important for fifth‐grade, minoritized children's engineering design work? How did local and macro‐level cultural narratives about science and engineering, elementary schooling, and minoritized students intersect? How were multi‐leveled cultural narratives consequential for children's engineering work? Using ethnographic methods, researchers analyzed videos, field notes, and interviews with 20 students and their teacher, focusing on engineering design discussion and activities. The authors identified two key narratives: good engineers (1) get along well with others and (2) use evidence to make design decisions. The banality of these narratives makes them ripe for deconstruction. By beginning with children's meanings of engineering competence and framing engineering as contentious practice, the authors: (1) identify the tensions in these seemingly innocuous narratives and practices; (2) illustrate children's creativity and labor in navigating tensions; (3) demonstrate the workings of macro‐level racialized, technocratic, and Western scientistic narratives and their reconfigurations in local practice; and (4) reject deficit‐based perspectives that would frame classroom struggles by assigning blame to the teacher or students. Recommendations for practice include normalizing disagreement, providing tools for joint decision‐making, broadening meanings of evidence, and co‐constructing meanings of kindness. A contentious practice lens highlights the ever‐presence of historicized narratives in local productions of practice and renders elementary engineering as an ongoing accomplishment, opening spaces of possibility less readily available to established practices of elementary schooling. However, without explicit attention to countering racialized narratives applied to minoritized youth in such settings, these spaces tighten up, limiting the potential for social change.