Our preliminary findings showed that when teachers are trained to position students' as linguistic and epistemic agents and understand how to explicitly subvert deficit-based perspectives, they are more likely to see students' backgrounds as valuable assets. As a result, students demonstrate a greater investment in their learning of science. However, our longitudinal findings suggest that disrupting language-based deficits is necessary but not sufficient to support youth’s developing identities as science people. We wonder about your experience, observations, and perspective, and whether you think language and asset-based interventions are enough to support youth identities in science. 

Hi Shakhnoza and team! I really enjoyed the video and the authentic engagement of students who are clearly being positioned and positioning themselves as competent and valued science knowers and learners.

I love the idea of supporting students in learning to explicitly subvert deficit perspectives. Could you share an example of what this looked like in the project?

Dear Cory,

Thank you for your kind words and your questions. Teachers have utilized multiple approaches to subvert language-based deficits. Some examples in which these approaches were directly enacted by teachers during learning included teachers' explicit encouragement of youth to use multiple modalities and home/community languages to make and express meaning as science people. Teachers would also explicitly enact translanguaging as a part of valid science communication. Because young people's home and community language were celebrated as valuable forms of science communication in a classroom, teachers often positioned themselves as the learners of language and science. In addition to pedagogical moves, teachers and the team had dedicated time to discuss with the youth, through purposeful activities (e.g., inner and outer voices; inner-self outer-self portraits; identity maps), and disrupt various language-based deficit stereotypes and ability perceptions.  

Hi Dr. Kayumova! I'm so excited to see your work represented in the showcase. As a multilingual learner myself, having migrated to the U.S. well after having constructed a sociocultural language frame in a non-English language, I resonate with the population of students you work with and the major findings of your work. I'm very curious about the role you see language learning playing in science identity development both from the perspective of the ages of the youth at the time of the study and the number of years they they have lived in the US if born in another country. Relatedly, whose work do you turn to when thinking about the intersection of language development from a developmental perspective and social identity development? This is a space I keep coming back to in my own work and I'm curious about your thoughts (and others').

This is very exciting and interesting work!  I love how project centers on the assets of participants.  I would love to learn more about the content of teacher training.  I am curious about the translanguaging aspect of the program. Where the teachers multilingual themselves? Lastly, college what mentioned in the title. Was college preparation was addressed in the project? If so, what type? 

Unfortunately, deficit-based models are still prevalent in projects aimed at serving youth, especially those from marginalized communities. Positioning culture, social and linguistic identities as assets is critical to engaging marginalized students in STEM learning. What thoughts has your team given to engaging these youth beyond the two week program? What recommendations would you make to hold youth's attention in STEM when they are interacting with their daily environments away from the program?

Dear Dr. Pinckney,

Thank you for your comments and your question. Your point is excellent and reflective of the realities we are experiencing and witnessing with unintended consequences of the projects aimed at serving youth from racialized multilingual communities! We are making conscious decisions and practical interventions not to come into young people's lives, making "temporary disruptions" and "leaving" them at the end of the two weeks. Some of these decisions include following the same set of youth and staying in touch with their families beyond the summer weeks and over the years (we have been in touch with some of our families and youth for over three years now). One of the features of the project is to equip youth with tools to reposition themselves in the face of deficits that could be cast on them away from the program. These tools include awareness of the structural and cultural issues at the macro and meso levels, as well as opportunities to disrupt deficit-based discourses by recognizing young people's and their families/communities' cultural, linguistic, and epistemic brilliance.   

When I saw this title, "STEAM your way to college", I thought you would be doing science with arts (performing, visual, digital, etc.). But it doesn't look like you are doing art or defining art that way. You are doing language arts and language learning. Is that correct, or did I miss something? I am fascinated by this work though. To what magnitude are you seeing changes in the students identity as scientists?

Hello Heather,

Thank you for your questions and comments. Youth do engage in art projects, but as you said A stands for broader notions including language arts and is not necessarily the sole focus of the program. We definitely see the changes in the ways students identify themselves as science or STEAM people, however, our research is not complete yet in relation to understanding the necessary and sufficient conditions for such change.  

Thank you for sharing this thoughtful project, very clearly described.