You’re & Your STEM Education Research

So your research is…Yes.
​So you’re qualitative… Yes.
[Silence]
And you do STEM? Yes. 
And you research STEM? Yes. 
[Hmm.]
And what theories do you use? It depends?
And how is that recieved? By whom?
[Hmm.]
But how can someone do STEM education research and center qualitative inquiry?
Aren’t these incompatible ideologies?
​

Worthwhile-Methodologies

It’s amazing how many people expect researchers of ‘STEM education’ to solely depend on quantitative methodologies of inquiry. Like much of educational research, traditions of STEM education (and the value systems that come with it) are obsessed with ‘worthwhile’-methodologies. 

There is a popular quote about insanity: “the act of doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results”. This casual quote begins to depict an eerie parallel between research methodologies (deemed of worth) on STEM education and the common narrative of ‘insanity’. Like conceptions of ‘insanity’, research methodologies of ‘worth’ are saturated with power-laden conceptions of the human subject, nature, the nonhuman entities, knowledge, and mere being-within this world. 

Researchers of STEM education are often expected to do the same thing over and over (e.g., ‘methodologies of intelligibility’, also known as ‘methodologies of most [financial] worth’). While quantitative research makes particular kinds of contributions to knowledge and practices of STEM Education, I choose to do amplify the unspoken narratives, mechanisms, desires, ideologies of STEM education. This requires new modes of thinking of and with ‘the known’, ‘the seen’, ‘the felt’, ‘the lived’, and... and… and….
​

You’re and Your Research

Another dimension inherent in this phenomenon is how, then, the research someone does (in my case on issues related to STEM and science education) get ascribed to my body, my subjectivity, my worth in the academy. Herein lies another (implicit and explicit) ever unfolding tension of educational research on and of ‘STEM’. 

The distinction between claims of  ‘you’re and your research’ might appear to be subtle semantic preferences of the speaker, but like many accounts of social phenomena contains extremely complex assumptions of ‘doing research’. As a teacher educator, these messy dynamics become even more complex when I consider my professional responsibility to the formal preparation of elementary science teachers. All consuming questions come into play when designing course syllabi, programs of induction, or professional development: 

• What assumptions of ‘good scientific knowledge’ ought to be taught? When? Where? For what purposes? Who and/or how does one benefits? At what costs? 
• How do I embed my research commitments into my course design? What tensions arise when trying to do so? How do I choose to mediate these tensions of externally imposed ‘oughts’ with unintelligible (yet, always-already sensuous) ‘mights’ of STEM education? ​

These are questions that produce unstable ‘answers’. Perhaps that is where my (re)search and responsibility as a STEM teacher educator lies? In the multiplicity of thought? In the contours that exceed representation? In the thresholds that afford generative space to produce the unthought? 

So your research is…Yes.
So you’re qualitative… Yes.
[Silence]
And you do STEM? Yes. 
And you research STEM? Yes. 
[Hmm.]