EAST LANSING, Mich. — Urban girls have been put under the microscope.

Studies in science education are examining more closely this segment of the population in an effort to attract and retain urban girls’ interest in science.

Angela Barton, a Michigan State University professor of teacher education, and colleagues at the Teachers College of Columbia University, New York City, found that among girls in urban high school settings that the appropriate use of science projects, storytelling, and identity role-playing were all ways in which girls could get and stay interested in science.

With support from the National Science Foundation’s Research on Gender in Science and Engineering, this study was conducted in New York City, an ideal urban center that, according to Barton, is often underresourced, especially in the schools that tend to serve low-income populations.

Barton’s study involved following a group of 14 girls and intensively observing each one throughout their sixth grade, focusing on their science studies.

Barton said, “Through our research we have identified merging science practices which allow the social worlds of girls and the world of school science to merge in class, allowing girls to engage deeply in science without having to give up their social identities.”

Among the researchers’ ideas: 

• Having the girls develop science projects that more accurately reflect who they are. Examples include writing pop songs with science lyrics that identify the bones in the human skeletal system.
  
• Incorporating the use of storytelling in the classroom, in particular urging girls to provide a scientific basis to “what they know,” including family and community knowledge, popular culture and social relationships.
   
• Allowing the girls to experiment with their identities. For example, letting them assume “new” identities that allow them to build positions of authority while maintaining important social relationships.

Barton’s and colleagues’ research has focused on girls in urban settings. But how these might differ from science practices of rural or suburban girls is easy to see.

“I think what is important to remember is how merging science practices are deeply place-based,” she said. “I believe that if we studied girls in nonurban settings we might see some of the same trends, but how they might look in the day-to-day experience of the classroom will look different because of the particular context.

“The word ‘urban’ both describes the girls' own experiences and the schools they attend. By and large science education in low-income urban schools is underresourced, marked by teacher-centered instruction and focused more on high stakes accountability.”

Barton and colleagues noted certain reasons why girls are “shut out” from active engagement in science or from the wider sphere of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.

These barriers are borne out of well-documented experiences such as teachers preferentially calling on boys and boys being allowed to handle equipment more often than girls, Barton said.

Not to discount the unique needs of urban boys, Barton stressed that urban girls “are more underrepresented in STEM fields overall. We think urban girls deserve our attention in helping them succeed in science.”

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