Practices for Social-Spatial Justice: A Community Project for Reclaiming the Local Science Center

Abstract

This study investigates how educators, researchers and youth collaboratively sought to engage in a socio-spatial political project of disrupting and transforming normalized injustices against youth of Color in STEM in their local Science Center. Over the course of a year (and still on-going), educators, researchers and youth worked on a project they named, “Reclaiming the Science Center” because it focused on re-designing the text, images and experiences in differences spaces of the Science Center towards making visible and amplifying the lived lives and wisdom of people of Color and women. Drawing upon conceptual frameworks of social-spatial justice and social practice theories, along with longitudinal critical ethnography, we report on the co-creation of spaces, both discursive and material, for critique and imagination of spatial representation. We also describe how educators centered youth-authored material artifacts toward expanding presence. Implications for working towards social-spatial justice in science centers are discussed.