Seeing Histories in Bodies, Places, and Disciplinary Learning:Historicizing Methodologies

In this symposium, we will reconceptualize our methodologies and research design centering histories in places, bodies, and disciplinary learning. We re-engage in qualitative methodologies that guided us so far yet limited us in fully accounting for the sociopolitical and sociohistorical nature of our research and analyses. This symposium challenges individualized knowledge production and invites the field of the learning sciences to bring forth collective and dialogic figuring and refiguring, co-thinking, and community/solidarity building. Four sets of paired dialogues will defamiliarize familiar methodologies in the learning sciences (e.g., video-based research, interaction analysis, ethnography) toward fuller consideration of power and radical transformation. These paired dialogues will also open new horizons on the role of arts and affect in research from the perspectives of histories in places and in bodies. Collectively, we will revisit the epistemological assumptions that shaped what were rendered visible and invisible in our research process.</p

Seeing Histories in Bodies, Places, and Disciplinary Learning: Historicizing Methodologies

In this symposium, we will reconceptualize our methodologies and research design centering histories in places, bodies, and disciplinary learning. We re-engage in qualitative methodologies that guided us so far yet limited us in fully accounting for the sociopolitical and sociohistorical nature of our research and analyses. This symposium challenges individualized knowledge production and invites the field of the learning sciences to bring forth collective and dialogic figuring and refiguring, co-thinking, and community/solidarity building. Four sets of paired dialogues will defamiliarize familiar methodologies in the learning sciences (e.g., video-based research, interaction analysis, ethnography) toward fuller consideration of power and radical transformation. These paired dialogues will also open new horizons on the role of arts and affect in research from the perspectives of histories in places and in bodies. Collectively, we will revisit the epistemological assumptions that shaped what were rendered visible and invisible in our research process

Not in their name: re-interpreting discourses of STEM learning through the subjective experiences of minoritized girls

This paper problematizes the enduring conscription of STEM learning in discourses of U.S. global ascendancy, neoliberalism and militarism. Drawing on ethnographic data, we explore how girls of color make meaning of their everyday experiences in two settings: a racially tracked mathematics class in a suburban high school and a STEAM based after-school program in a working class urban community. The stories of these girls–separated by time, place, age, and social histories but bound by sensibilities grown in their Immigrant families and learning contexts–contest U.S. hegemony as the primary rationale for STEM learning; challenge individual gain at the expense of another; problematize what counts as science while insisting on its creative convergence with joy; and honor their ingenuity and humanity. Challenging representational and respectability politics, we consider how dignity may better account for the complexity of their experiences and serve as a resource for research, pedagogy and design