"Caught in the STEM Borderlands: Negotiating Hybrid Computer Scientist and Math Identities"

American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting
Theme: Leveraging Educational Research in a “Post-Truth” Era: Multimodal Narratives to Democratize Evidence
Toronto, Canada
April 5-9, 2019

Title: Caught in the STEM Borderlands: Negotiating Hybrid Computer Scientist and Math Identities (Paper)
Session: Chicano/Latina Identities in the Borderlands: From Their Perspectives
Author: David Da Wei Liu

Abstract: The underrepresentation of Latinas in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) has consistently been the lowest. To address this problem, this ethnographic case study describes the recognition work of one fifth grade Latina when engaging in technology and computer-based activities. Drawing from Anzaldua’s (1987) Borderlands and recognition work, this study captures how one Latina student negotiates a desire to be a computer scientist and app developer. Yet she is positioned by her teachers and peers as a delinquent computer hacker. The findings for this study show that the processes of developing STEM identities as both cumulative and contentious and how recognition work can stabilize and destabilize identities. Implications on how recognition practices promote STEM identities for Latinas are discussed.