The importance of the democratic and multidirectional exchange of values between scientists, STEM educators, and historically underrepresented members of the community

ABSTRACT

In the 21st century, conversations regarding responsible research and innovation (RRI) place a strong emphasis on the need for inclusion of historically underrepresented communities in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. However, many of the current methodologies for integration with STEM require members of underrepresented communities to gain representation via metrics which assess progress in an institutionalized or university setting. This form of STEM integration is exclusive rather than inclusive because it insists that underrepresented community members participate in institutionalized science to acquire representation. Alternatively, members of underrepresented communities require more diverse avenues through which to participate in science. Diversifying the opportunities for underrepresented communities to contribute offers increased potential for the democratic, equitable, and multidirectional exchange of values between scientists, STEM practitioners, and members of underrepresented communities.

KEYWORDS:

• STEM education
• science
• values
• inclusion
• empathy
• democracy
• 21st century skills

The paradigm of the 21st century – a new age of enlightenment

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) seeks, as a primary goal, to generate science and knowledge in a manner which is inclusive of different cultures and backgrounds. As a consequence, increasing amounts of grants and research proposals from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Horizon 2020 Work Program, and similar agencies are calling for science labs to incorporate tactics for encouraging participation from historically underrepresented communities including women and people of color (Schiebinger and Klinge 2013. In addition, RRI seeks to ensure that the potential societal, political, economic, and cultural consequences of science are considered at all times during stages of scientific discovery (Glerup and Horst 2014; Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012). The impetus for these considerations is to make sure that science is conducted with good intentions to best serve communities (Brouwer 1994), to enhance the impact of science by using a heterogeneous pool of researchers (Page 2008), and to minimize the potential unforeseen consequences, or dual use, of naive science (Brouwer 1994; Waelbers 2009). Great consideration and care must be administered to ensure that inclusion of peoples from diverse and underrepresented communities occurs in a manner that is mutually beneficial for the scientific community and the traditions and values of underrepresented communities.

Most current discussions of RRI are occurring in the context of a new scientific revolution. Since the 18^th century, western civilization has perpetuated a paradigm - an age of enlightenment - which emphasizes knowledge based on a keen sense of rationality established within a materialistic worldview (Daston 1992). Ideas which are considered to be grounded in sound empirical scientific observation take precedence over ideas grounded in customs and traditions. In the paradigm of the 21st century age of enlightenment, science is widely understood to be the most profound and truthful worldview, due to its apparently complete objectivity and emotional sterility; leaving little to no room for subjective conjecture. Science challenges customs and traditions, and asks its community and the underrepresented communities it seeks to include, to reassess their values. In this paradigm, science is emerging as more than a mere phenomenon of culture: science is emerging as culture.

As the western world’s emergent culture, science claims to have solutions for many of the Earth’s most pressing issues. Science seeks to demonstrate how it may potentially feed nine billion people (Godfray et al. 2010); science is developing smart technologies for omniscient global connectivity (Faloutsos, Karagiannis, and Moon 2010); it is enhancing the ability to acquire natural gas (Jackson et al. 2014); to utilize nuclear power more safely (Cao et al. 2016); and sending probes to interstellar space (Gurnett et al. 2013). And, science assumes that the adequately-represented and underrepresented communities it serves agree that everything for which science endeavors ought to be valued. Perhaps the communities whose interests science seeks to serve ought to value genetically modifying agriculture, building complex internet-based social networks, drilling additional fracking wells, and sending people to Mars; or perhaps not.

Science can make subjective value statements about these propositions, but it would be extremely difficult to prove that communities must accept these values as objective truth. The claim that a value statement informed by scientific data contains objective superiority over other prevailing worldviews is a fallacy resulting from the failure to distinguish the objectivity of the scientific method from the subjectivity of scientific value statements based on empirical data collected from the practice of the scientific method (Daston 1992). The consequence of not realizing this distinction is that the value statements of non-members of the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields from underrepresented communities are often deemed as subjective and thus interpreted as conjectural, low-value, and anecdotal data, or anecdata (Herman 2015; Johnson 2014; Krauss et al. 2013).

Hearing, acknowledging, and understanding the voice of the underrepresented

The prevalent methodology for granting underrepresented communities representation in science, presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to offer research and training positions to community members so that they can directly contribute to the attainment of objective observations in professional research facilities and find employment opportunities. However, not all members of underrepresented communities are interested in participating in the endeavor of scientific research, which likely plays a significant role in perpetuating their lack of representation. Instead, some may prefer to contribute to science by offering cultural insight and perspective into the subjective dialogue of how science is implemented in their community. This kind of representation in science ensures that the consequences of scientific discovery are democratic and cognizant of the values of underrepresented communities (Glerup and Horst 2014; Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012).

For ten years, I volunteered as a STEM outreach educator, working with impoverished minority elementary youth in rural and inner city schools of a major metropolitan city. During my tenure, I saw the many ways that poverty and marginalization impact an individual’s opportunity to learn. For the bulk of my time as a STEM educator, I preached the importance of studying in school and attending college. This narrative changed when I attended a town hall meeting in one of the underrepresented communities I served and heard the stories and experiences of its occupants. At this event, I met with its organizer and told him about the work of my STEM outreach organization with thousands of elementary students in underrepresented communities. After thanking the organization for its contributions, he posed one simple question: ‘ … have you ever asked this community what it is that they want?’

This made me ponder because not once during the immense amount of time and energy that I devoted to outreach in underrepresented communities had I asked this simple question. Until this moment, my naive assumption was that the path to success for students in impoverished communities was the same upper-middle class path that the people serving in our outreach organization had followed. Rather than presuming that my university colleagues and I had the superior ‘objective’ values of an institutionalized science education, we should have been asking what these underrepresented communities valued so that we could reevaluate our role as STEM educators.

Humility is a good place to start with inclusion of underrepresented communities in STEM. Scientists and STEM educators must accept that an institutional science education is a not a viable path forward for every member of an underrepresented community and that individuals from these communities can offer valuable insight without participating in academia or a professional research lab (Palerm 2000). In addition, the values held by members of the scientific community are not necessarily similar or in agreeance with those of underrepresented communities (Doezema and Benjamin Hurlbut 2017; Mayer 2005; Narasimhan 2001). Thus, those who are and those who are not pursuing degrees in STEM play an equally crucial role in communicating the values of underrepresented communities and ought to be included in dialogue concerning science. This will ensure that the intention to include underrepresented communities in science does not have the unintended consequence of excluding and/or replacing traditional cultures and values from those communities (Freeman 2015; Miller 2016). If science makes no effort to incorporate the values of the underrepresented communities into the values of science, then science is not offering inclusion, instead, it is offering an ultimatum.

Adjusting the paradigm of inclusion for the underrepresented in sTeM

To assist in the promotion of RRI and the inclusion of underrepresented communities in STEM, it is essential to develop unique metrics to measure inclusion. However, the current metrics for measuring the success of inclusionary practices established by the NSF, NASA, Horizons 2020, Achieving the Dream, etc … (Gilligan et al. 2007; Holbrook 2005, 2012; Jones, Barlow, and Villarejo 2010; Stassun 2010) misses a significant portion of the underrepresented community. Assessing inclusion via monitoring student performance in an academic setting through metrics including grades, advancement in institutions, and job placement is inadequate. These metrics are great at enabling the current academic framework to enroll more students and perpetuate its influence via institutional science. However, they fall short in their ability to determine whether the traditions and values of underrepresented communities are represented in the values of science, and they neglect the members of underrepresented communities who are not participating in institutional science. This model is exclusive by default and only offers a means through which to influence individuals with the privilege of employment in institutional science.

When discussing the inclusion of underrepresented communities in STEM fields, it is essential to consider how the customs and traditions of those communities will impact and will be impacted by science. In addition, it is paramount that the values of underrepresented communities be addressed and incorporated into the value statements of the scientific community. For science to be truly inclusive, it must recognize its role in providing underrepresented communities with opportunities to experiment and think critically outside of institutional and research settings while simultaneously reevaluating and forming new value statements based on the changing dynamics of a new generation of science contributors. With this perspective, the cultural values of science are multidirectional: allowing for the mutual exchange of culture from underrepresented communities to science, and vice versa.

To ensure that the flow of values between science and underrepresented communities is equitable, it is necessary to develop new frameworks through which to evaluate efforts for inclusion and broadening participation in science. This ideology is in concert with a primary objective (G2/O2) of the NSF’s strategic plan for 2014–2018:

… to leverage our research and education activities to engage the public and help citizens develop a better understanding of science–one that can inform opinions about issues faced in daily living, in participation in the democratic process [emphasis added], and in helping to advance science. (National Science Foundation 2014)

Vital to achieving this objective is to enable participation in the democratic process from underrepresented communities. For this to occur, scientists and STEM educators must develop a metrics-based system to assess these kinds of broader impacts that does not require participation in a professional or academic laboratory (Koenig 2011). The National Research Council (NRC) suggests that embodying scientists and underrepresented community members with 21st Century Skills including responsibility, independence, outgoing character, persistence, emotional stability, initiative, social skills, and empathy is a good place to initiate dialogue for contributing to a pluralistic democracy (Arghode, Yalvac, and Liew 2013; Glerup, Davies, and Horst 2017; Koenig 2011; NRC 2010).

Determining the attainment of 21st Century Skills and community insight may come from leading focus groups and gauging responses from multiple learning dimensions, including: scientific literacy, feelings and emotions, attitudes and perceptions, and transversal competences (Heras and Ruiz-Mallén 2017). Concerns from underrepresented community members should then be integrated into the values of science and the evolution of the utilization of scientific data monitored over time (Glerup and Horst 2014). Implementation of these or other measurement techniques which emphasize the importance of 21st Century Skills offers science and underrepresented communities an avenue to: participate in the democratic process, tailor subjective scientific and traditional value statements in an open forum, and acquire complex communication and expert thinking skills that are outpacing the utility of traditionally emphasized routine manual and cognitive skills (Koenig 2011, Levi and Murnane 2004).

Granting representation to traditionally underrepresented communities in STEM via emphasis on empathy and 21st Century Skills requires a new framework through which to assess representation in science. This requires a reevaluation of the traditional methodologies used to communicate STEM. Essential under this new framework, is emphasis on the importance of narrative (Nisbet and Scheufele 2009) in science and the incorporation of fine arts (Robelen 2011) and humanities (Clark and Button 2011) into discussions about STEM (or STEAM) and community values. Through this new framework, scientists and underrepresented communities have the potential to responsibly progress research, innovation, and science in a manner which is inclusive, equitable, and respectful of divergent cultural values.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to acknowledge Tess Doezema from Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society for inviting the author to provide this perspective. The author would also like to thank all of the members of Camp Sparky- an educational outreach organization which served thousands of underrepresented youth in the greater Phoenix area for almost 20 years. Lastly, the author would like to acknowledge the appreciation and kindness of all the teachers, students, faculty, and staff that were essential to the success of the organization’s outreach goals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Bradley Lusk, PhD earned his degree in Biological Design from Arizona State University, where he also acquired his BS in Biology and a certificate in the Philosophy of Science. As a research scientist, he investigates utilizing extremophilic microorganisms in biotechnologies to filter wastewater, convert organic wastes into power sources, and to recapture precious metals from contaminated mines. He currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Precient Technologies- a start-up company which uses membrane biofilm reactor technology to recover precious metals from contaminated mines using bacteria. In 2016, he founded ScienceTheEarth, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit initiative which emphasizes the importance of empathy and narrative for communicating science. For this initiative, he presented in over 40 universities, science conferences, and public spaces representing greater than 30 countries and more than 30 states within the USA, and shared his narrative in an open online forum. He also participated in STEAM outreach in Title One elementary schools in the greater Phoenix area for ten years, serving as chair, vice chair, membership development coordinator, and as a general member for Camp Sparky. He has also served in STEAM educational outreach in many other capacities including: serving as chief judge coordinator and grand judge at the Arizona Science and Engineering Fair; serving as grand judge at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair; organizing and participating in science related panels and workshops at Phoenix Comicon; presenting and engaging in community dialogue at local libraries in science cafes; volunteering and presenting at events for the Association for Women in Science, the Society for Women in STEM, and the Arizona Science Center; co-initiating a summer film series with Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination titled the History of the Future; and as chief marketing officer for Helping Hands for the Homeless- an organization which raised funds for a local school for homeless children.

ORCID

Bradley G. Lusk http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3094-805X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Science The Earth: [Grant Number 1].