ERIC Number: EJ1471982
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Apr
Pages: 35
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0042-0859
EISSN: EISSN-1552-8340
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Principals, Paradigms, and Possibilities: STEAM Education Reform and the Centering of Black Life
Tesha Sengupta-Irving1; Lara Schiffrin-Sands1
Urban Education, v60 n4 p925-959 2025
This analysis explores how middle school principals in the southern U.S. made sense of a multiyear STEAM education reform. Principals' retrospective and prospective accounts, conveyed in interviews (n = 9), are dominated by neoliberal paradigms and seldom reflect Black families' everyday cultural life as a resource for learning. We conclude that without redirection, the reform stands to continue divesting from Black life in schools. In an exercise in Black specificity, we propose Black Futurity STEAM as an alternative reform imaginary that centers the creative impulses and capacities of Black children and cultural life in disciplinary learning.
Descriptors: STEM Education, Art Education, Middle Schools, Principals, Educational Change, Administrator Attitudes, Neoliberalism, African American Students, Culturally Relevant Education, African American Culture, Cultural Capital
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA