Leveraging Cross-Continental Issues in STEM Education Research: Disciplinary and Cultural Practices in Context

This related paper set brings together STEM scholars who engage in transnational and cross-cultural work to move towards equity and dignity in STEM education. Across multiple continental contexts, our work focuses on creating supportive learning environments for communities in STEM while disrupting ideas of who can be in STEM and what it means to engage in STEM practices. We draw our collective attention and expertise to imagine possible futures where the experiences and identities of people are critically considered in thinking about the transnational and multicultural experiences of people in STEM. The ideas presented call on us to be inspired by the richness of resources in these communities when designing learning environments while reorganizing educational spaces with attention to care and relationships in mind for STEM education. Distributed Experiences in Engineering Community experiences are a spectrum in Haitian-Dominican communities. This distributed sense of community may influence the extent to which students draw on their localized resources (language and culture) which are important for learning (Nasir & Cook, 2009). Drawing on rightful presence (Calabrese Barton et al., 2021) and translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014), we investigate in what ways youth leverage their community resources to learn about engineering and robotics in multilingual/multidialectal ways in two Bateyes of the Dominican Republic. Preliminary findings suggest that a distributed concept of Blackness prevails among youth with connections to lineage, language, and skin color where being Black in engineering meant engaging in (or reframing from) Haitian Kreyòl when solving problems and/or blending spirituality with engineering practices. Engineering Students’ Cultural Learning in Community-Based Projects Abroad Scholars have called on engineering educators to implement learning activities that foster “sociotechnical” learning outcomes in engineering. While strategies for catalyzing students’ sociotechnical repertoires abound community-based projects remain a common approach in engineering education that has been critiqued for their tendency to harm the communities engineers sought to empower (Harrington et al., 2019). This research will describe a collaborative, community-based design project between American mechanical engineering students and faculty and community members in Cartagena, Colombia. The goal of this research and design project was to develop strategies for implementing community-based engineering learning experiences that (a) prioritize community leadership, (b) position students to co-define, co-ideate, and co-design design projects, and (c) utilizes community feedback as core evaluation strategies. Research on Study Abroad in Science and Engineering Education Global education is thought to be a high-impact practice that supports student learning outcomes, such as this ability to interact across cultures (Netz, 2021). However, common research methods for examining the impact of study abroad programs (e.g., pre-post survey designs and reflective activities) often fail to detail the types of learning activities that foster learning outcomes associated with studying abroad. This ethnographic study examined American undergraduate engineering students’ participation in two study abroad programs in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Lisbon, Portugal. We will describe the varying program components of each program, as well as the learning outcomes associated with each program component, with implications for program design. Blackness as Mosaic and Postsecondary STEM Promoting equity or justice through postsecondary STEM education policies and practices requires critical, nuanced examinations of race and how it shapes students’ realities. To support advancing racial equity and justice in postsecondary STEM for all Black students in the US, this study introduces and employs mosaic ethnography to unpack their individual and collective realities. More specifically, this study examines how Black students’ ethnic, pan-ethnic, generational status to the US, geographic location, and other salient identities (e.g., gender, religion, etc.) inform their perceptions and experiences in postsecondary STEM. This insight includes their freedom dreams for STEM learning spaces and innovations and how they can be reflected in STEM curriculum, policies, and practices. Navigating the Labyrinth: A Tri-Continental View on the Leadership Trajectories and Institutional Barriers for Academics of Color in STEM This paper explores the leadership trajectories and opportunities for academics of color within STEM faculties, contextualized within the broader discourse of the seemingly intractable lack of diversity in global STEM education, exacerbated by unequal power dynamics and institutional barriers. Drawing on discourses from 15 semi-structured interviews and 5 focus groups, we address the nuanced interplay between leadership milieu and the career trajectories of academics of color across the United States, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Key findings highlight and trouble hegemonic institutional cultures and practices and re-author how STEM faculty of color take a political stance by inherently occupying leadership roles historically preserved for whites. References Calabrese Barton, A., Schenkel, K., & Tan, E. (2021b). Collaboratively engineering for justice in sixth grade STEM. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 58(7), 1010-1040. García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Language, bilingualism and education. In Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education (pp. 46–62). Palgrave Pivot. ??Harington, C. N., Erete, S., & Piper, A. M. (2019). Deconstructing community-based collaborative design: Towards more equitable participatory design engagements. In Proceedings of Computer Supported Collaborative Work, 3, 1 – 25. Nasir, N. I. S., & Cooks, J. (2009). Becoming a hurdler: How learning settings afford identities. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 40(1), 41-61. Williams, L. D. A. (2023). Because technology discriminates: Anti-racist counter-expertise. Springer.