Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dr. Rasheda Likely. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Dr. Rasheda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Since elementary school, science has always been one of my favorite subjects. I was fascinated with the systems, structures, patterns, and cycles and all things outdoors. My attempts to learn big words, ideas, concepts and follow detailed processes continued through high school and leading to a Biology major in undergrad. Despite my unwavering love for science and desire to become a scientist, it became evident that the practice of memorizing vocabulary words emerged as an essential skill for achieving academic success. Even during my experiences of pursuing a Masters of Science in Biology, memorizing and reproducing the content for the test was the most efficient way of being successful. I also learned that academic assessments were the main evaluation method of knowledge and understanding. Memorization skills, in particular, ensured me a high score on standardized assessments. Other forms of assessment such as projects beyond a lab notebook, storytelling, or a narrative format were not used in science spaces. Additionally, my undergraduate and graduate courses, labs thesis advisor, graduate program supervisor were mostly led by white male professors which stood out to me as a Black female student. I took note that in higher education spaces, I had four female science professors, and only one was a woman of color. However, I had learned to do my best to fit into the lab and learning spaces. Some assimilative practices and performances in this context ranged from feeling the pressure to always be fluent in science vocabulary, not asking questions too often in order to seem full of information, consciously representing Black people since I was the only Black person in the lab, and paying close attention my physical appearances, especially that of my hair.
While working as a medical testing scientist, I would volunteer twice a week for a local non-profit organization with twenty middle school Black students. As a mentor, I would engage in conversations about how students maneuvered various challenges at school, solidified friendships, discussed romantic interests, pondered questions about college, and much more. One afternoon, I was discussing an opportunity for one of the girls, Brandi, to try-out for her school’s softball team. Listening in on the conversation with Brandi, Eboni and Makayla, two other girls in the group, asked me, “Do you talk to your kids like this at school?” Confused, I responded with, “What kids at school? Y’all are my kids.” Another girl, Kai, jumped in and said, “You know, your kids you teach at school!” Although I now understood their questions, I was still puzzled and stated, “I’m not a teacher. I’m a scientist.” The group of six girls looked at each other and laughed. I heard comments such as, “She’s not a scientist” and “Come on Ms. Rasheda, you do have a class; your other kids!” As they continued to laugh, I was caught off guard by what was developing. “Really, I’m a scientist. I work at the building around the corner, the Department of Health.” As the girls calmed down and realized I was not joking, Makayla looked at me and said, “Ms. Rasheda, you can’t be a scientist! Scientists are old white men. You don’t do science.” Eboni jumped in and said, “Yea, and you’re not an old white man! You’re not a scientist.” At this moment, I was being told that my intersecting identities as both a Black woman and a scientist were not matching what the girls knew scientists to look like. In the eyes of these girls, what about me meant that I could not be a scientist? Had the girls never seen a Black and/or woman scientist? How did these girls identify what science is or could be a science doer? Were all scientists old, white men? Was that a requirement? Had the girls never explored their potential as future scientists? Was this my experience too?
That conversation led to a career shift from medical testing with next steps being a PhD in Biochemistry to next steps being a PhD in STEM Education with interests in curriculum development, science assessments, and educational research. My dissertation research focused on the development and implementation of a curriculum I wrote titled Lotions and Potions: Science through Hair Care. Black women have developed and cultivated deep community and culture around hair practices. Along those lines, Black women and girls operate as kitchen beauticians, people who make, use, and supplement products using materials typically found in the kitchen. These practices have supported a rich culture of hair over time in a beauty salon with a stylist, at home with a kitchen beautician, and online with a do-it-yourself (DIY) product. Integrating science content with hair culture creates a powerful opportunity to use the wondrousness of curls, coils, and kinks as scientific content.
Lotions and Potions: Science through Hair Care is a culturally sustaining science curriculum that foregrounds cultural elements of Black hair care product making as scientific inquiry and exploration and Black hair as science content. Each lesson had a packet with science content explanations, materials lists, instructions to make a product, journaling section, and activity pages for a total of 67 pages. The content, figures, and models for the curriculum were referenced from The Science of Black Hair by Audrey Davis-Sivasothy. The hands-on activities and DIY products were designed to have the students directly engage with the making process and participate in science and engineering practices. Students make a shampoo, hair lotion, oil, and DIY product video as a part of the curriculum.
When developing the Lotions and Potions: Science through Hair Care curriculum, I leveraged cultural experiences with hair care and my background and expertise as a scientist to construct a science curriculum that centers, affirms, and represents Black girls. Despite the attention afforded to the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning experiences of Black girls, Black girls continue to be marginalized within STEM disciplines due to their position at the intersection of race, gender, and class. I position hair culture as a conduit for science learning and engagement in science and engineering practices in the Lotions and Potions: Science through Hair Care curriculum. Integrating students’ knowledge and culture provides a powerful learning experience that gives students an opportunity to engage content in the classroom and social arenas.
Beyond an internal transformation from scientist to science education researcher, hundreds of students have participated with the Lotions and Potions curriculum since its development. By expanding Lotions and Potions beyond dissertation research, to date, I have instructed over 400 girls ranging between 4th grade and 10th grade in completing lessons from the Lotions and Potions curriculum without grant funding or only for research purposes.
Dr. Rasheda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I currently serve as an Assistant Professor of Science Education in Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University where I teach science methods courses to pre-service teacher candidates. Essentially, I teach future teachers HOW to teach science to elementary students- the science of teaching science. I earned both my Bachelors and Masters of Science in Biology from the University of North Florida with an intent to pursue a career in laboratory science research and testing. However, this trajectory took a major shift after with a conversation during an after-school program. Several students questioned the validity of my career as a scientist because they had not seen a Black woman scientist before. I shared a similar sentiment and chose to move toward impacting the representation of Black women and girls. I decided to leave the lab bench as a scientist and pursued a doctorate in STEM Education from Drexel University.
As I researched and read more about the discipline of science, how curriculum is developed, taught, and assessed, I was also a Floridian living in Philadelphia, PA. After experiencing winter in Philadelphia during the first year of the doctoral program, I started making my own hair and body lotions out of the need for more moisture in the drier, colder North East climate as compared to humid and moist Florida where I was from. I enjoyed making products since it required the same skills and practices of science lab research and testing such as planning, measuring, mixing, and analyzing results. I also was very focused on figuring out a research path during the second year of the doctorate program. There was little to no connection from my personal life and my learning. Science had taught me to separate personal interests and ideas from scholarly research.
I started to explore questions like “Can hair care even be a science practice? When did I ever do hair care in a science lab? Is there even science materials for K-12 students about hair?” Answering these questions led to developing decolonized science curricula, activities, and assessments in the Lotions and Potions Science through Hair Care Curriculum. Overall, I take great delight in building teacher capacity for engaging students in and expanding the evaluation of science and engineering practices. I hope to continue to reimagine learning experiences that reflect and center the brilliance of minoritized students.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson that I learned during my doctoral program that I had not learned at all in the lab is that the researcher/scientist is as important as the research and science they are doing. I had internalized and acted on science norms that were altogether harmful and restricting during my own journey as a scientist. For example, in science, you take a test to evaluate learning. Usually the test has 1 right answer. In reality, findings or outcomes to science investigations have multiple options. There is not 1 correct way to approach an investigation and therefore more than 1 solution to the investigation. From my experience in undergrad, grad school, and a career in the lab, I came to understand science and self-expression in science spaces was something afforded to white people, especially white men. Lab spaces were only for calculated discovery. The physical materials such as glassware, chemical ingredients, goggles, and white coats were used in science labs and only by scientists. Science was serious work exclusive to a certain group of people that had earned their place in the space. From these years of training, I understood that becoming a practicing scientist meant that I did not always use the words and phrasing I did with my friends and family. Over time, behaviors such as, promoted individuality, vocabulary recall, usage of science terminology, and lack of self-expression were no longer choices for participation but based on feedback necessary for survival in said science spaces and to be recognized as thinking or behaving like a scientist.
In order to create such a curriculum, I had to participate in a deep, personal process of unlearning and detaching from ten years of traditional training, teaching, and research as a biological scientist. Designing and implementing an asset-focused, culturally-based decolonized curriculum without a template or precedent, required intentional design for disruption of settled hierarchies within science education. I had to separate myself from these foundations of science which led to intense grief due to the loss of attachment to what I knew as science. I knew I had to consider the impacts of historically and perpetuated norms with intersectional identities like a Black woman within the field. “The intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately” (Crenshaw 1991 p. 1244). Black girls have experiences at distinct intersections that have impacted their interest and persistence in these STEM disciplines. I went through a time of deep grief as I grappled with my own racialized and gendered experience.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I defended my Dissertation Proposal in June of my third year to a committee of five faculty members. I had chosen four faculty members in addition to my Black male advisor to serve on my dissertation committee, two Black women and two Black men. These faculty members had deep expertise in areas of curriculum and instruction, identity development, and STEM education. I was certain that they were the best people to offer feedback on my evolving thoughts around a hair care science curriculum and appropriate assessment development.
Based on their feedback, I had not fully applied my foundational framework to my project. Each of the committee members made expressions such as “What’s more important, the curriculum or the students?” which challenged where the focus of my dissertation was placed. The one comment that was most jarring during that review process was “Either you’re going to decolonize or you aren’t” which prompted me to review my entire dissertation proposal document. A brief content analysis of the sixty-nine page proposal revealed the word decolonize was used only twice throughout the entire plan for the dissertation project. What the committee expressed is what I had been struggling with up to this point mainly the question “Does making hair care products constitute as science?” The committee strongly suggested refocusing the research to highlight decolonization in curriculum and assessment, ultimately leading directly to my parts of grief such as disorganisation and despair around finding a better way to express the connections of hair care to science.
Personal journal notes from a month after the proposal include “I didn’t know how angry I was. I didn’t know who I was angry at. I just knew I was angry. I had to re-do THIS MUCH… the regular science stuff isn’t expected of me. People aren’t asking me to do what I know. Repeat what I know to be science learning and evaluation. But they aren’t telling me what it should be! I’ll acknowledge this anger, but what’s the point? I have to use this energy some kind of way. Channel it into a better way to do science I guess. But I don’t know how to do that OBVIOUSLY.”
As a result, the first drafting of the Lotions and Potions curriculum had not fully removed traditional science experiences such as classroom power dynamics, high stakes testing, and limited expression of science understanding. Additionally, although I was centering hair care, the curriculum had the potential of being additive to current curricular resources rather than transformative. Ultimately, I desired to develop a transformative science curriculum that centered and affirmed Black hair culture, yet I had not fully imagined a decolonized science experience for Black girls. The attachment to science was most familiar and could be replicated easily since it had been internalized; however, the dissertation projected was focused on decolonizing and disrupting these attachments.
After defending the dissertation proposal, the feelings of disorganisation and despair were still very strong, but I had committed to teaching three of the lessons of the Lotions and Potions curriculum in two summer programs. After engaging with the summer program students who most of which identified as Black and observing the ways they were asking questions, developing and using models, and engaging in argument from evidence, I was encouraged to reorganize the overall plan for the Lotions and Potions curriculum in a way that was informed by decolonization regardless of my personal attachments to colonizing science.
After leading students through the making of hair products, I revisited the committee’s feedback on the dissertation proposal. I used those teaching moments to attempt to apply the feedback that led to truly decolonize science content, experiential learning activities, and formative assessments that reordered power in a science learning space, centered student choice, and made way for the opportunity for students to be experts in their own learning. The reorganisation after hearing the committee’s feedback and engaging with students while making hair products led to a large reorganisation of the full dissertation research by detaching from science norms. I had to decide that the Lotions and Potions curriculum development and implementation would seek freedom for those marginalized and oppressed by science and science education.
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