Thelma Akyea - Ruptures in Canadian Physics and Astronomy: Narrative Analysis of Black Women’s Encounters with Normative Curricula
Black women’s experiences in physics and related fields are receiving growing attention. Emerging scholarship documented discrimination against Black women in physics (Norman et al., 2013; Rosa & Moore, 2016), theorized the White dominance structuring physics knowledge production (Prescod-Weinstein, 2020), and analyzed the structural barriers Black women navigate within the field (da Rosa, 2013; Dickens et al., 2020). Such research, which demonstrate Black women’s responses to discrimination in physics, provide a conceptual foundation for critically examining physics and astronomy in Canada. The guiding question, What can Black women’s experiences tell us about physics and astronomy curricula?, structures this inquiry by using lived experience as a critical lens on disciplinary transformation. To address the research question, I draw upon Black feminist perspectives and critical curriculum theorizing. I use women’s lived experiences as an exploratory lens to illuminate the norms embedded within post-secondary physics and astronomy curricula. Using narrative analysis methods to examine semi-structured interview data, I examine rupture, a central emergent theme. Incidents of rupture showed how study participants disrupted curricular norms and confronted discrimination. Paradoxically, at times, participants’ rupturing of discriminatory norms also stabilized physics and astronomy norms. In doing so, these moments temporarily relieved the physics and astronomy education system of responsibility for dismantling discrimination and structural oppression. According to this study’s findings, Black women’s interventions in Canadian normative physics and astronomy curricula exposed sites of systemic oppression. In these sites, Black women were positioned to facilitate systemic transformation. The study’s findings demonstrate that systems of oppression regulated Black women’s participation in physics and astronomy, requiring them to contend with discrimination frequently. Stakeholders in Canadian physics and related fields must intervene to dismantle the curricular norms that sustain discrimination and assume institutional responsibility to effect meaningful, sustainable systemic change.
