School of Education Lecture Series: Professor Emily Dawson (University College London)

School of Education Lecture Series 2023/24

Tuesday 12 March 2024
1300 – 1430 hrs

BC114 St Luke’s Campus & Online

Professor Emily Dawson
University College London
 

Inclusion for STEM, the institution or minoritised youth? Exploring how educators navigate the discourses that shape social justice in informal science learning practices

Understanding equitable practice is crucial for science education since science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and STEM learning practices remain significantly marked by structural inequalities. In this talk, building on theories of discourse and situated meaning developed by Foucault, Gee and Sedgewick, I will explore how educators navigated discourses about social justice in informal science learning (ISL) across four UK sites.  I draw on qualitative, multi-modal data across five years of a research-practice partnership between a university, a zoo, a social enterprise working to support girls and non-binary youth in STEM, a community digital arts centre and a science centre. I identify three key discourses that shaped social justice practices across all four practice-partner sites: 1) ‘inclusion’ for STEM, 2) ‘inclusion’ for the institution and 3) ‘inclusion’ for minoritised youth.   I will discuss how educators (n = 17) enacted, negotiated, resisted and reworked these discourses to create equitable practice. I will argue that while the three key discourses shaped the possible meanings and practices of equitable ISL in different ways, educators used their agency and creativity to develop more expansive visions of social justice. I will discuss how the affordances, pitfalls and contradictions which emerged within and between the three discourses were strategically navigated and disrupted by educators to support the minoritised youth they worked with, as well as to protect and promote equity in ISL. This talk contributes to research on social justice in education by grounding sometimes abstract questions about power and discourse in ISL educators’ everyday work.

Professor Emily Dawson is Professor of Education, Science and Society at University College London.  Her research and teaching explore how practices across science communication, education and engagement (i.e. from schools, to museums, to watching TV at home) set certain kinds of people up to feel comfortable when they engage with science, while other people are set up to feel profoundly excluded. She tries to figure out how that happens with a view to reimagining what meaningfully inclusive & transformative practices might involve.

Emily will be attending in person at Exeter to present her talk. Colleagues and students are encouraged to attend the lecture in person if possible for a lively Q&A following the talk.