TE Research Talk: Colin Hennessy Elliott

“Robotic learning: A diffractive critique of the STEM education project with an urban high school robotics team”

Robotics teams have become an interestingly large part of many youth’s STEM learning experiences, engaging them in the collaborative work of designing, fabricating, building and organizing that leads to participation in competitions.

Drawing on a three-year digital video ethnography that includes participatory and microethnographic methods, Colin Hennessy Elliott will discuss the relationships across human and non-human actors that comprise youth learning from one specific urban high school robotics team comprised almost exclusively of youth from traditionally marginalized groups. Focused on developing educational justice for racial and gender equity in STEM education, he will share the stories of learning, power and agency from multiple theoretical perspectives that value sociopolitical, material and relational contributions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Colin Hennessy Elliott is a Ph.D. candidate of science education at New York University. His work explores the materiality of learning and spacial production as a necessary part of developing more equitable STEM learning spaces for youth and working for educational justice. He previously taught physics in Newark Public Schools (New Jersey) and currently is the volunteer executive director of the all-volunteer non-profit IGNITE Greater Newark.