Making Children’s Media about STEM More Inclusive

Today, he’s an assistant professor in studying sciences and STEM training at Drexel University’s School of Education, and he leads the college’s Informal Learning Linking Engineering Science and Technology (ILLEST Lab).

EdSurge sat down with Edouard to speak about how his analysis informs his new animated TV present and the way he thinks the media business wants to vary to assist draw extra Black college students into STEM fields.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or use the participant on this web page. Or learn a partial transcript under, calmly edited for readability.

EdSurge: What is the hole that you have seen in youngsters’s leisure round STEM matters that you just’re making an attempt to fill?

Kareem Edouard: The major work with my manufacturing hat is nuance. We have this broad dialogue round fairness and inclusion, however we miss the cultural nuance of illustration throughout the spectrum, notably for younger youngsters. And the work that I do — each in an educational area after which additionally the manufacturing work — is ensuring that the lacking voices, notably of Black and brown college students, immigrant college students and LGBTQ college students, are represented throughout a large [range of media], notably in youngsters’s STEM media.

That does two issues. One, it gives motivation and inspiration, once you see your self mirrored again at you. And the second factor we run into is the shortage of creators [of entertainment shows], the precise creators of the content material that additionally seem like the younger those that we’re trying to attain.

When you have been a child watching youngsters’s reveals, did you are feeling like there was one thing lacking?

As a younger Black male, there was at all times the approaching of age story, and it was at all times white male-focused. So Luke Skywalker in Star Wars — very white male-focused — in addition to all of the cartoons.

And I’m not saying that we did not have any illustration [in media], however the illustration wasn’t direct sufficient to talk to me, to see myself mirrored again the place I felt assured, I felt appreciated and I additionally felt the nuance of who I’m seeing on display screen. And a part of that was that loads of it was by way of a white gaze.

There was a really restricted dialogue on how we represented Black boys, as an example. If you are sufficiently old to recollect the TV present “Recess,” one of many characters was a Black male carrying a basketball jersey and high-tops. There nonetheless was one thing lacking, in the truth that this character was very flat — which most ‘80s and ‘90s cartoons were very flat to start with — but it was really flat, particularly for Black boys and Black girls.

So you’re saying it felt out of stability?

My mother and father are from Haiti, so being not solely Black, but additionally being Haitian was one other a part of the immigrant story that I used to be trying to see mirrored again. And we did not see that. It was at all times a really specific East Coast story of what a Black boy was.

So the work that I do, notably on the ILLEST Lab, is that we glance to problem these constructs and actually attempt to advance this dialog that there are alternatives not solely to see ourselves, however to even be lively creators within the course of.

In your profession, you will have additionally been an elementary and highschool trainer. How has that knowledgeable your considering?No. 1, younger folks aren’t actually listening to you as a trainer, they’re absorbing tradition outdoors of the classroom. So Carol Lee is an educational that I actually maintain pricey in my coronary heart, and she or he frames it by way of this dialog of ‘cultural modeling.’ So you carry what’s outdoors within the tradition into the classroom. And one of many first strains of engagement for younger folks is the media that they are consuming. So the kindergarten academics that I’d hang around with and work with, they’d at all times reference their cartoons. So we might do work critiquing a number of the cartoons that they have been watching and actually having a dialogue of impression their very own growth.

The second factor is simply to be very direct. It’s not simply cartoons. This is a multibillion-dollar business, and it has tracks the place you will get authorities funding. And you then even have a number of streaming platforms which are paying tens of millions for creators to develop. So the younger folks, they’re beginning to perceive and see that, they usually’re now starting to ask questions as to how they will have illustration and entry to content material that basically isn’t just for them and their very own private progress growth, however then additionally the place this content material sits within the cultural zeitgeist.

How did you come to work on a present for PBS making use of your analysis?

The concept already existed — by two fantastic govt producers, Marcy Gunther and Marisa Wolsky at WGBH Boston — who approached me to have a dialog about range and fairness. So that they had the framework, the roadmap of this present, they usually actually wished to determine how they may make this present much more accessible.

So the very first thing I did with my accomplice, Dr. Darlene Edouard, we got here collectively and we watched some early samples of the present and began to suppose about, what are the cultural touchpoints?

One factor was the intro and the musical framing [of the theme]. So we made positive we put some raps in there, and I bear in mind sitting with the younger actors and strolling them by way of hit the completely different factors within the rap to offer them a very clear, nuanced expression of carry out this.

What’s the essential premise of the present?

It facilities across the three wombats — Malik, Sadie and Zeke — and the matriarch of their household, Grandma Super. They all dwell in a tree, and it follows them utilizing computational considering (CT) expertise to resolve issues. And a part of it’s centered round how these younger wombats are participating — not solely fixing issues within the neighborhood, however then navigating the group that is constructed.

So a part of what the wombats do for us so far as having this discourse, notably having a grandmother be the top of the household, is there are lots of of our college students or our viewers who dwell in a household with out a mom and father, however grandma raises them. … Really what we tried to do within the designing of the “treeborhood” was replicate what America seems to be like. And then additionally couching in the truth that we’re speaking about CT expertise and the way vital that’s.

How do you’re employed STEM themes right into a present for such younger children?

So it is a crew factor. I’m sitting right here, but it surely’s nonetheless a crew factor. And my favourite episode is the cornbread episode. So No. 1, we began the cultural framing speaking about, how do you make cornbread? Everybody makes cornbread otherwise, and we wished to have interaction that within the present. But a part of a CT framing is course of, logic and group.

They wished to make Grandma Super’s particular cornbread, however they have been lacking components. So they needed to style various kinds of cornbread to determine and isolate what was the lacking ingredient. And that is the work that you just do once you’re beginning to code and you are going by way of nested “if” statements. But how do you current that to a 3- to 5-year-old, proper? So a part of it’s ensuring that we sofa all of these seven CT expertise inside actions and likewise storylines that later, once you go to the web site, you play the interactive sport otherwise you have interaction in any of the curriculum that you just discover within the classroom, that is the place not solely the video games, however then additionally the academics are in a position to proceed to strengthen the educational that was completed on the present.

Do you suppose issues are altering and enhancing in representations of STEM in youngsters’s media broadly?

No. The inventive and the writing groups are nonetheless not reflective of the viewers that they are trying to strategy. And then second, [there’s a need to] present fellowship and alternatives for the profession pathway for people which are within the underrepresented communities to be part of it.

One of the issues at Work It Out Wombats that we satisfaction ourselves on is that we now have a writing fellowship as a result of myself and my spouse made it very clear that in an effort to create these cultural, nuanced discussions, we’d like writers, not solely writers which are underrepresented, however we additionally want ladies. We additionally want of us from immigrant backgrounds as a result of we now have characters on right here which are from numerous backgrounds. In order to have an actual genuine voice for all of those characters to be introduced, you want the writers to create that.

How does your lab play into that?

The major focus is, how can we create culturally sustaining STEM engagement for Black youngsters? And we now have one thing referred to as the Sneaker Lab the place I’ve about 600 sneakers in there, and we design and create sneakers by way of the idea of fabric science. And being within the animation enterprise and dealing in an area the place creativity is at its actual apex, I made a decision to open an animation lab [in ILLEST Lab] and I’m bringing Black college students from West Philadelphia High School to come back into the lab and interact.

It’s proper now in its starting levels, the place we’re doing a bit little bit of stop-motion work. In the newest Spider-Verse film there’s a [14-year-old] Black male who was making animation on YouTube and TikTok who was asked to come in and create a sequence with Legos for the film. And I feel these are the alternatives that we have to begin cultivating and starting to strategize to get as many younger folks to be on this area to allow them to design and create, in order that method they will get alternatives additional down the road.

Listen to the complete dialog on this week’s EdSurge Podcast.