Project led by:

Ayana Allen-Handy, PhD
Michelle Rogers, PhD
Valeria Ifill
Raja Schaar

Project Partners:

Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLAMS)
West Philadelphia Promise Neighborhood

This sponsored research project entitled Black Girls STEAMing through Dance (BGSD) is a transdisciplinary after-school and co-curricular program for 7–12-year-old Black girls in (the West Philadelphia Promise Zone) that engages Black Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math-related activities. BGSD was founded by four Black women faculty and is supported by Black women graduate and undergraduate students with the intention to merge our disciplinary expertise in urban education, dance, product/industrial design, and computing to discover new knowledge about Black girls’ STEAM learning and self-concept formation. This project combines Coding, Design, and Dance to motivate the Black Girls in the West Philadelphia Community to explore STEAM skills and connect with their bodies. Through Dance, Design, and Coding activities, the girls experience STEAM in a culturally responsive environment that encourages them to cultivate their STEAM identities.

Need

Equitable change concerning (1) grave underrepresentation of Black women across STEMM academic and marketplace spaces as well as (2) rectifying the intentional exclusion of Black women found in lack of pipeline education opportunities and based in sexism and white supremacy.

Objectives

The objectives of this research is to take advantage of the emerging interest at the intersection of the Arts and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) by engaging Black girls with the field while positively reinforcing their self-concept through dance-based programming which resonates with the centrality of dance in African American culture.

Potential Impact

The potential impact of this research is creating a better understanding of how Black girls make meaning of their identities in a STEAM space by disrupting anti-Blackness in STEM education through optimizing cultural wealth to encourage Black girls that the pursuit of STEMM is also very much for them. Long-term, the impact of engaging Black girls in STEAM projects, led by a team of primarily Black women, is the increased probability of them entering the field as well as that of future generations seeing themselves represented in STEAM, gradually drawing future generations of learners to defy the inequitable exclusion commonly experienced in the space.