The Journey of Decolonization as a Scientist and Science Education Researcher

Abstract

This study examines the process of grief for a science education researcher during the design and facilitation of an intervention that explored Black girls’ engagement in scientific practices. Deploying a critical autoethnographic methodology, we investigated what it meant for a self-identified Black woman scientist to design and implement a decolonized science curriculum and inquiries that highlighted Black hair and skin care. Analysis of writings from artifacts revealed several findings. The conceptualization, design, and facilitation of science inquiries that centered the life experiences of Black girls and their hair required the researcher to continually engage in a process of challenging her own disciplinary assumptions and settled expectations of what counts as science education. We argue that the researcher’s process of decolonizing her own assumptions and expectations of what counts as science education research through a grief cycle was an essential practice for partaking in research with girls from historically excluded communities from science. Implications for this research are for more development and use of broad, transformative methodologies that explore the personal shifts researchers experience while seeking decolonization and cultural inclusion within science education.