‘STEAM success stories’: refocusing the framework of intersectionality

Abstract

In this article, we first explore the metaphor of wearing culture, drawn from the work of Anne Phillips, which challenges some of the precepts underpinning theories of intersectionality. We then go on to celebrate successes rather than failures, a departure from the broad ethos of intersectionality and illustrate how wearing of STEAM culture can be enacted throughout women’s ‘STEAM lives’, employing a pedagogy for success. We make use of phenomenographic approaches to gather and present women’s ‘STEAM success stories’. Autobioracy is the term we coin here, in contrast to autobiography, to describe our capture of these oral accounts. We use data from three cases – Fatima, Su-Li and Anna-Maria – to illustrate their adult re-engagement with elements of STEAM, having long since disengaged from early formal school-based science and technology. We finally resist a template process for the interpretation and presentation of their storied accounts and adopt, instead, a montage approach to place instances and descriptions side by side to illuminate their complex, often contradictory and unpredictable ways of knowing.