The Contested Space of STEM-Art Integration: Cultural Humility and Collaborative Interdisciplinarity Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kerry Dixon Graduate Program in Education: Teaching and Learning The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Valerie Kinloch, Advisor Dr. Patricia A. Brosnan Dr. Candace Jesse Stout ii Copyrighted by Kerry Dixon 2016 ii Abstract This dissertation study is part of Project ASPIRE (Apprenticeships Supported by Partnerships for Innovation and Reform in Education) (U.S. Department of Education Award Number U336S090049), which created a new model for urban teacher education based on principles of equity, diversity, and social justice. That model was focused on preparing highly qualified teachers in hard-to-staff content areas to teach in high-need public middle and high schools. This dissertation focuses on one component of the overarching ASPIRE project: a teacher inquiry group comprised of veteran secondary science, mathematics and world language teachers charged with determining how arts- integrated teaching and learning could inform the preparation of pre-service urban teachers in their content areas. Specifically, the study explores how four of the inquiry group members—one mathematics teacher and three science teachers—engaged with and enacted arts integration in their own classrooms. While many arts supporters have advocated for the inclusion of the arts within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education policy, funding and practice, there is currently little research-based consensus on what exactly constitutes high quality STEM-Art integration. Furthermore, there is scant research-based guidance on how such integration can be systematically enacted to meet the needs of all students. Drawing on theories of interdisciplinarity (Boix Mansilla, 2006; Becher, 1989; Klein, 1990), Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and teacher inquiry (Cochran- ii Smith & Lytle, 2009), this dissertation study examines how the four study participants negotiated the interdisciplinary co-construction of knowledge about visual art with the inquiry group and within their own classrooms. In addition, it explores how they conceptualized the purpose of visual art integration within the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Findings indicate that the four study participants explored STEM-Art integration with a notable lack of paradigmatic defensiveness as it related to the culturally-bound knowledges and practices of their (science and mathematics) disciplines. This disciplinary (cultural) humility allowed them to view visual art as well as their own subject areas with high levels of reflexivity. This, in turn, led them to enact authentic, collaborative, and enduring STEM-Art integration. The concept of cultural humility in the context of STEM-Art integration extends interdisciplinarity as a theory of action and locates it within a critical paradigm. As such, these findings have implications not only for the development of more consistent and rigorous STEM-Art integration methodologies, but also for the enactment of equity-oriented, asset pedagogies, particularly by teachers belonging to dominant groups and whose cultural identities do not match those of their students, as is often the case in urban school settings. Keywords: STEM; art; interdisciplinary; urban education; teacher preparation; cultural humility; secondary STEM education; equity; multicultural; arts integration; education reform iii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my grandmothers, Helen Marie Hager and Eva Elizabeth Dixon. iv Acknowledgements There is a Hopi saying that one finger cannot lift a pebble. So too, one person cannot produce a dissertation. While this dissertation was authored by me, it is indelibly marked by the many special people who helped me along the way, and without whose support, it would not have come to be. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge and thank—from the bottom of my heart—Dr. Valerie Kinloch. Your willingness to take me on as your advisee when I was already far into my doctoral journey and greatly in need of your guidance was a game-changer. Thank you for the profoundly humanizing approach you took to supporting my learning journey, especially for the beautiful balance you struck between respecting my thoughts and pushing me to confront the slipperiness of my own whiteness through critical thinking and reflexivity. Project ASPIRE and the Innovative Curriculum Design Team changed my life; you gave me the tools to articulate my thoughts about how that experience relates to broader, pressing issues of equity, diversity, and social justice. And, you gave me a shining example of how one can live these principles, both in word and in deed. I will be forever in your debt. To Dr. Patricia Brosnan and Dr. Candace Stout I extend my deepest appreciation for your willingness to serve on my dissertation committee. Patti, your insights on my data and your fundamental decency and compassion have carried me through this process, from the early days of my dissertation writing to my defense. I’d like to especially thank you for sharing your thoughts on my work with my family; it meant so much to them and to me. Candace, thank you for fitting me into your busy schedule and for carrying out such a thoughtful reading of my work. Your fair, incisive and rigorous questioning made me feel as though I was being both prepared for scholarly work and carefully initiated into its cultural practices. I’m honored to have my work critiqued and supported by you. I would also like to thank Project ASPIRE’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Sandra Stroot. Sandy, what can I say? You and Rebecca Kantor-Martin gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. Thank you for taking a chance on the arts and for believing in the ICDT. Thank you also for fiercely protecting my work and for helping me to better understand it in the larger context of education reform and urban teacher education. I have learned so much from your masterful leadership, and I thank my lucky stars that I got to watch you in action for these past six—nearly seven—years. Being apprenticed into scholarship and educational leadership by you and Valerie has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. And, speaking of Project ASPIRE . sometime about mid-way through its six-year duration, LaShaun “Shaun” Carter insisted that our project team’s efforts be directed at v ensuring that ASPIRE become part of the very DNA of our program graduates. In striving to fulfill that objective, ASPIRE became part of my DNA too. Therefore, I’d like to say a very special thank you to those whom I will always consider my kin: the Project ASPIRE administrative team. As Lave and Wenger (1991) so eloquently pointed out, learning means “becoming a different person.” (p. 53) For all that you have taught me and helped me to become, thank you again, Sandy, Rebecca, Valerie, and Patti; and thank you anew, Shaun Carter, Tanya McClanahan, Marguerethe Jaede, Peggy Kasten, Mandy McCormick Smith, and Audra Slocum. Shaun, it has been an honor to observe your tireless, eloquent advocacy for urban youth—especially urban youth of color. Your intellectual prowess, deep compassion, and linguistic skill have lifted my spirits and inspired me forward more times than I can count. Tanya, thank you for your ongoing collaboration and support. Above all, thank you for leveraging your incisiveness, intellectual humility, and graceful professionalism to further the work of the ICDT. I aspire to these qualities, which you so easily embody. Marguerethe, you are a fierce warrior for justice and decency, and I am honored to be your colleague and friend. Thank you for sharing your wicked sense of humor, brutal honesty, and razor-sharp mind with me. If ever there were someone I could trust to not leave a comrade behind on the battlefield, it is you. Peggy, thank you for being part of a special team of women who so selflessly looked out for the next generation of women scholars. Your warmth, wisdom and encouragement through this process of becoming a researcher have given me comfort and strength. Mandy, thank you for your friendship as we made our way through the dissertation journey together. Having you as a fellow Project ASPIRE Graduate Associate was just a dream, and I am deeply grateful for all the times you selflessly shared your knowledge about science education and Conceptual Change Theory with me. You have provided a shining example of how to persist in the face of adversity with courage, determination, and smiles. Audra, you were there in the early days of Project ASPIRE, and in many ways, you understood what we were doing in the ICDT much better than I did. I cannot thank you enough for your perceptiveness and for helping to maintain the integrity of the space within which the ICDT seeded its ideas. I will forget neither your kindness nor your appreciation of what the arts can mean for young people. To the ICDT as a whole, I hope that I have faithfully represented the work we did together, and I thank you profusely for the hours and hours we spent in each other’s company, dedicated to Project ASPIRE and holding fast to belief that we could contribute meaningfully to an education reform premised on equity, diversity, and social justice. In particular, I’d like to thank Madith Barton, Olga Delinikos, Dawn Hasselbach, Christy vi Hoerig, Erin Hollen, Kathleen Kleemeyer, Alexandra “Sacha” Miller, Margaret Peponis, Mary Ann Shrum, Thomas Trang, Kelly Weinfurtner, and, the four amazing educators who selflessly agreed to be part of my dissertation study: Teresa Bombrys, Pam Snyder, Caren Truske and Rebecca Woods. While each of you is unique—as I hope will be made clear in the pages that follow—you share a number of qualities, which have enriched not only this dissertation study, but also my life more broadly.