STEM learning as care work

Abstract

In reckoning with anti-Blackness and white hegemony in STEM, this study recommits to critical feminist orientations and explores alternative engagements with STEM education that center “matters of care” where learners are encouraged to build upon their existing values of family and collectivism to reinvigorate rather than disrupt relations with/to community. Our view of STEM learning is informed by feminist critiques of technoscience as well as sociocultural studies of learning in classrooms, homes, and community settings. These models acknowledge and value pluralism, affect, context, esthetics, and the ambivalence of labor/care in STEM learning. Within these frames, our research-practice partnership (RPP, named “STUDIO”) reported on here commits to de-centering the myth of individual accomplishment in out-of-school time (OST) STEM learning by engaging the whole scientist (in the context of their community) while also working across various explanatory frameworks. We explore these commitments through literature, showing how we were informed by extant STEM education research, and also extant critiques. Looking at our programming through a critical feminist lens of care, we found STEM learning in STUDIO to be nourishment for participants, a form of maintenance, and supporting families of choice for youth and adult facilitators. In this paper, we provide examples of these findings, as well as implications for STEM educators working in school and OST contexts.