NSF Award
2306259
This project will explore the impact on African American youth when the African American experience is the basis of the teaching methods and curriculum. Conscious Ingenuity (CI) is one of few programs that utilizes an African-centered approach to teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts to African American students in kindergarten to eighth grade to encourage and support their interest, pursuit of, access to, and involvement in STEM fields. Currently, many STEM programs exist throughout the United States to increase interest and participation in STEM through exposure to the field. However, these programs utilize a traditional approach to teaching STEM concepts which fails to create an inclusive learning environment. While conventional STEM teaching aims to develop and strengthen interdisciplinary skill sets such as critical thinking, problem-solving and exploratory learning, European history and culture are at its core. African American culture and contributions are completely ignored, these exclusions weaken the African American STEM educational experience. This research study will help the research team identify specific instructional strategies and materials from an African-centered perspective that supports and encourages the interest, engagement and comprehension of African American STEM learners. We anticipate the results will demonstrate that when African American STEM learners are instructed with a pedagogy and curriculum that centers their experience, provided adequate resources and nurtured in a communal environment, they are capable learners.<br/><br/>Little work to date has investigated the efficacy of using an African-centered pedagogy and curriculum to encourage and support the interest, engagement and comprehension of African American STEM learners. To address this gap, the objective of our research is to examine the implementation and efficacy of an African-centered pedagogy and curriculum on the STEM education of African American youth by analyzing the instructional strategies and materials of the Conscious Ingenuity program, and evaluating student learning of STEM concepts and formation of engineering identity. We are guided by the following research questions: “In what ways does an African-centered pedagogy and curriculum influence the construction of engineering knowledge?” and “How does an African-centered pedagogy impact student learning of engineering concepts and engineering identity formation for urban African American youth?”. To address these questions, we will conduct a two-phase mixed-methods case study. The first phase of the research study will begin by studying the instructors of the CI by examining their instructional strategies and materials. The second phase of the research study shifts the focus of the investigation to measuring the effectiveness of the teaching strategies and materials instructors use by assessing the participants' understanding of particular topics and engineering identity formation. The findings of the proposed research will contribute to efforts to redress racial inequities in STEM education. These racial inequities include but are not limited to culturally unresponsive traditional STEM teaching methods, limited access to technology, inadequate technological literacy, eurocentric intellectual perspectives, unhealthy student-teacher relationships, and the absence of teacher-family-community relationships. The adoption of the proposed pedagogical approach will cultivate an inclusive environment for all students to learn effectively, where such inclusion diminishes the conventional one size fits all approach to teaching STEM. This inclusive learning environment will increase social consciousness, a phenomenon necessary for cultivating harmonious diverse communities.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
