STEM as Social Justice Syllabus

I’ve wanted to do a syllabus for the public for a long time -really back in 2016 when Candice Benbow published the Lemonade syllabus (yes, Beyonce is the soundtrack of much of my work!) From 2015-2020, I had the opportunity to teach a service-learning course at the University of Washington as a part of the Pipeline Project, now known as Riverways Education Partnerships. The program has a serious commitment to social justice and racial equity in assigning current undergraduate students to tutor in Seattle public schools, with specific attention to schools with high enrollment of historically excluded students, high proportions of students receiving school meal benefits, as well as schools with high academic needs indicated by standardized tests and other statewide assessment measures. I taught the seminar section that had typically been titled “Math and Science” since students were to tutor math and science at the K-12 school or program in the district of their choice. Like many teach engagements, I inherited a syllabus, but it was dry to me. There wasn’t much attention to social justice, more so just the idea of teaching strategies around math and science. My own experience and reading prepared me to take the class to a new level. In each iteration of teaching, I brought in new and different topics to be responsive to my students as well as challenge their ideas of what STEM education is actually for and for whom and their role in an educational system with an agenda.

This syllabus contains readings I’ve assigned for the course, or not, read on my own, used in research or other projects, but are references for how I envision STEM as Social Justice. One day, I’ll write the paper or publish the course, but for now here’s the reading list. Definitely check your library for options of reading these books at no cost, but I have included affiliate links to my Bookshop.org shop in case you’d like to get your own version of the books.

Context for the Syllabus

Over the cycles of teaching the course, I have explored and thought more deeply about social justice as more than a moral value set or the program framework, and shifted to thinking about engineering as social justice in tangible form. STEM as Social Justice took a new frame in my work as an engineering educator and a person who has drawn their own professional and personal goals through that frame. In order to teach a course on STEM as social justice, I had to think critically and deeply, as well as read and explore the idea of modifying the relationship of STEM (education) and social justice for the class. Rather than STEM-and, STEM-with, or STEM-next to social justice, I began reimagining STEM as a vehicle of social justice.

In order to do that, and to teach a course titled as such, and embody a teaching philosophy that is described in social justice terms, I needed to operationalize my thinking. As a result, I chose three concepts that are relevant in STEM education - process, product and knowledge. What would engineering processes look like if they were socially just from the onset and only used for social justice ends? What would engineering products do or do differently if they were only designed for social justice purposes? How would engineering and STEM education be different if the knowledge of STEM prioritized social justice as a criterion to achieve other learning outcomes?

There were 4 major things I wanted to do in the class: help students develop skills as STEM tutors, understand STEM education systems, understand the intersections of sociology and STEM, and consider big issues and little problems that arise in a tutoring context. How one is aware, effective, and intentional at the macro and the micro became the real reason for the course. Doing this while existing at the intersection of race, gender, STEM education, and technology as a Black woman in predominately White spaces in the tech industry and higher education was an exercise not just in teaching but also an opportunity for deep self-reflection.