SABER Seminar Series 2023: Disrupting Paradigms and Practices to Diversify the Biology Education Ecosystem

African American/Black women within the science pipeline; using a critical perspective to unpack the influence of race and gender on their identity development within science. In doing so, participants will be encouraged to explore their own paradigms related to the educational experiences of African American/Black females pursuing biology/science degrees. The goal is to initiate conversation surrounding the importance of: 1) Delineating the experiences of African American/Black women in science distinct from the experiences of women of color 2) Promote the continued investigation of African American/Black women achieving in fields and disciplines like Biology/Science that are perceived to be White male dominated spaces and 3) Developing pedagogies and practices that will promote the academic achievement and identity development of African American/Black women in biology/science courses and degree programs.

The session will draw from a concurrent mixed methods study that explored the science identity, racial identity, and science self-efficacy beliefs of African American female science students who enrolled in southeastern historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The utilization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an analytic lens resulted in the emergence of the meta-theme Negotiating Intersectionality: The Triple Pressure of Being an African American Female Scientist. Further analysis of the students’ accounts yielded the sub-themes: Invisible Black Woman and I’m Determined to Prove-Them- Wrong. The shared experiences of the participants revealed experiences that are distinguished from African American males at HBCUs due to the underrepresentation of African American female faculty. There is a noticeable underrepresentation of African American female students in the highly quantitative science domains (i.e. chemistry and physics), which lends to the CRT notion of the myth of meritocracy. Moreover, highly quantitative sciences are exposed as “white property” that is more readily transferred to African American males than females. The findings also point to the need for African American female students to work harder within their respective science domains as an attempt to disprove sex and gender stereotypes. To this end, gender and sex stereotypes serve as catalysts by which some participants intensely and confidently function within science-related activities.