The "Narrative Effect" and Its Impact on Implementing Equitable Science Education Practices

Presenter: Megan Allen

Faculty Sponsor: Enrique Suarez

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Education & Educational Research

Session: Poster Session 6, 4:15 PM - 5:00 PM, Auditorium, A36

ABSTRACT

Examining science educators’ internal biases and how to disrupt them is an important goal of teacher education, one that has become even more crucial in the current socio-political climate. Several studies have researched the role of social interaction in developing teacher pedagogy; however, the influence of emotionality in passing down anecdotal information (i.e., narratives) has remained relatively unexamined when considering its influence on educators and their ability to implement equitable teaching practices. Drawing on Social Psychology constructs, we defined the “Narrative Effect” as described in this study to be the process of prioritizing peers' experiential information at the expense of one's own experiences and reflexivity. Subsequent to our implementation of an equitable Science Education PD workshop for Biology graduate students who teach middle schoolers in an after-school program, we analyzed both pre-teaching and post-teaching interviews, coding for utterances that contained information on expected and/or actual experiences in the classroom. Our analysis indicates that there was (1) a tendency for participants to form generalized narratives based on their interactions with not just the students in the program, but with one another, and (2) a pattern in which participants adapted their lessons based on these narratives despite having little to no interaction with students prior. Our findings suggest that unless science educators are made aware of this pattern and intend to intervene in their own practice, this “Narrative Effect” can exacerbate inequitable access to Science Education for minoritized groups. 

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