In and Out: A Case Study Examining Adolescent Black Girls' STEM Engagement and STEM Identity in Informal STEM Education Programs
Curriculum and Instruction, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
How they used Delve
A doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte used Delve to code interview transcripts, questionnaires, and written prompt responses from four adolescent Black girls in informal STEM programs, applying inductive, descriptive, and in vivo coding in a collective case study on STEM engagement and identity.
“During this phase, the researcher analyzed the data using a combination of inductive, descriptive and in vivo coding. The researcher used Delve qualitative software to complete coding and triangulation of the data. From the coding and analysis process, the researcher noticed themes.”
- Field
- STEM education; informal learning; Black girls' STEM identity
- Data
- Two semi-structured interviews each with 4 adolescent Black girls who attended informal STEM education programs, plus a background questionnaire and a written prompt response from each participant
- Approach
- Collective case study; thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Nowell et al., 2017) with inductive, descriptive, and in vivo coding; Critical Race Feminism and Black Feminist Thought as analytic lenses
- Data types
- Interviews, Open-ended survey responses, Documents
Abstract
The underrepresentation of Black women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a long-standing issue. According to the National Science Foundation (2019), Black women hold less than 10% of STEM degrees, while only 2% work in STEM fields. These disparities can be attributed to structural inequities related to the STEM pipeline. Therefore, to mitigate these disparities, informal STEM education programs can help increase participation in STEM and create more opportunities for Black women and girls. Thus, this collective case study addressed the following research questions: 1). How do adolescent Black girls engage in and respond to informal STEM education programs? 2). How can informal STEM education programs develop adolescent Black girls’ STEM identity and increase participation in STEM? 3). What pedagogical practices effectively engage adolescent Black girls in STEM? Purposeful criterion sampling was used to recruit participants for this study. The research process included interviewing four adolescent Black girls who attended informal STEM education programs. To understand each program’s process and climate, participants described their experiences through questionnaires, interviews, and written prompt responses. Furthermore, this research used Critical Race Feminism and Black Feminist Thought to analyze five prominent themes from the data.
Citation
Deneen S. Dixon-Payne (2022). In and Out: A Case Study Examining Adolescent Black Girls' STEM Engagement and STEM Identity in Informal STEM Education Programs. UNC Charlotte Niner Commons.