The Space Outside of the Box: Fostering Fugitivity for Black Girls in STEM through Endarkened Storywork
Creators: name: Washington, Michole
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Endarkened storywork
subject: Black Girls in STEM
subject: Educational Escape Rooms
subject: Fugitive Spaces
subject: STEM Game Design
subject: African-American Studies
subject: Education
subject: Social Sciences

description: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, students were required to transition into a broken online educational experience. However, this unfortunate shift, proved to be an opportune escape route to distance Black girls from traditional anti-Black STEM experiences. This was an opportunity to create educational STEM experiences and environments that appreciates Black girls’ creativity, and freedom to dream, rather than stifling their brilliance. This dissertation examines how an innovative, Black-centered STEM experience (i.e., SpaceBox) attracts the conditions to form a fugitive space for Black girls in STEM. That is, a place of refuge for Black folks to push back on anti-Black ideologies in order to gain a liberatory education. These fugitive STEM spaces/experiences enhance Black girls’ confidence and engagement in STEM by celebrating their brilliance and equipping them with the necessary tools to overcome systemic barriers in their education. This study relied on two Black-focused lenses to make sense of how this particular fugitive space nurtured Black girls’ creativity in a STEM context. The BlackCreate Framework (Mims et al., 2022) defined the relationship between fugitivity and creativity thus giving me a lens to identify moments within the data that pay homage to both concepts. Then there is the Endarkened Storywork (Toliver, 2022) framework which allowed me to use Black storytelling as a way to surface the patterns and themes from the identified data. The data generated was gathered through having a group of Black girls engage in a SpaceBox gameplay, while gathering observations, audio recordings, and leading focus groups. Combining both the BlackCreate framework and Endarkened Storywork revealed that the “space outside of the box”, rather than SpaceBox itself, determined the impact of the fugitive STEM experience. My findings revealed the transformative power of supportive communities that respect the autonomy and cultural contributions of Black girls. Thus, this dissertation contributes educational practices aimed at disrupting and dismantling anti-Black STEM practices while offering ideas of what a liberatory STEM education could look like for all students, but most importantly for Black girls. This study is also in conversation with educational game design principles with a few design recommendations on how to develop educational STEM games aimed to engaging Black girls. Lastly, this study not only explored the innovative applications of Endarkened Storywork in STEM education discussions, but also critically examined how this framework supports discussions around fugitivity and fugitive spaces. This research underscores the importance of listening to and valuing the voices of Black girls and women as valuable alternative sources and approaches to engaging with qualitative research.