Dream a Little [STEAM] of Me Exploring Black Adolescent Girls' STEAM Career Futures Through Digital Multimodal Compositions

The underrepresentation of Black women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a significant concern in the United States. Researchers assert that racist stereotyping combined with the lack of access, cultural responsiveness, and intersectional representations within STEM educ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGenders, Cultures, and Literacies pp. 49 - 61
Main Authors Turner, Jennifer D., Griffin, Autumn A.
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 2022
Edition1
Subjects
Afrofuturism
Stem Career
FAMU
Jackson State
STEAM
IB Diploma Program
Adolescent Black Girls
Stem Dream
Stem Future
Stem Knowledge
Stem Education
Young Men
Enter Stem Field
Stem Workforce
Stem Professional
Stem Learning
Stem Program
Black feminism
STEM
Black girls
digital multimodal compositions
Stem Concept
Stem Field
Children's Heritage Language Learning
Pursue Stem Career
Stem Identity
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Summary:The underrepresentation of Black women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a significant concern in the United States. Researchers assert that racist stereotyping combined with the lack of access, cultural responsiveness, and intersectional representations within STEM education are key factors that limit Black girls' capacity to dream of, or aspire toward, STEM futures. To disrupt the notion that STEM is white male property, this study foregrounded the digital multimodal compositions that two Black adolescent girls composed as dreamers of STEAM career futures - professions that fuse the arts with STEM fields. Themes derived from Afrofuturist feminist readings of the digital multimodal compositions demonstrated how girls moved beyond revising STEM trajectories that privilege middle-aged white men to redefining the ways Black girls' intersectional identities and their professional work are envisioned more expansively as STEAM futures. Findings are significant for understanding how Black girls creatively leveraged images and words to critique U.S. sociohistorical and STEM professional contexts in their digital multimodal compositions, and author new dreams for their scientific and personal futures, providing implications for supporting adolescent Black girls' STEAM career aspirations and dreams.
ISBN:9780367744564
0367744562
9780367742751
0367742756
DOI:10.4324/9781003158011-5