Leaving No Child Behind . . . Little Black Boys and Girls in the Bahamas, Caribbean, and Latin America Matter Too: Exploring a Solutions Approach to Counter Racial and Gender Disparities in STEM Education By Patrice Juliet Pinder, Ed.D. Professor Global Humanistic University Curacao, Caribbean
This paper explores a first-of-its-kind global innovative strategic academic intervention, which infuses African-centered teaching and learning of historical and cultural elements into STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading/wRiting, Engineering, Arts, and Math) activities for early learners of color. In delivering such an intervention initiative to preschool and elementary teachers and their students, we are hoping to counter some of the troubling ongoing issues of racial/ethnic and gender disparities in STEM achievement seen across the world. We are also hoping to address the urgent calls by educators, researchers, and some world leaders for more to be done to motivate and encourage participation of underrepresented groups of students in STEM. Across the globe, from the picturesque, laid-back, sunshiny beach paradise islands of the Caribbean—from the Bahamas in the Northern Caribbean, an archipelagic nation made up of 700 tiny islands, islets, and cays, to the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago in the eastern southernmost Caribbean, over to the busy hustle-and-bustle continental areas and countries of the United States (U.S.) and the continent of North America, to the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the continent of Europe, to the motherland and the continent of all continents, Africa, the troubling phenomenon of Black and African children’s underperformance and low achievement rates in K–12 and college STEM courses and disciplines has been well documented. Thus, many studies from around the world have examined and reported on the achievement gap between white and Black students or between white, Asian, Hispanic, and Black students (Campaign for Science & Engineering, 2014; Codiroli, 2015; Giraldo-Garcia & Bagaka, 2013; The Globalist, 2014; Haughton, 2013; Norman et al., 2001; Norman et al., 2006; Norman et al., 2009; Pinder, 2008; Pinder, 2010; Pinder, 2012; Pinder, 2013; Pinder, 2016; Pinder, 2020a; Pinder, 2020b; Royal Society of Chemistry, 2006; Strand, 2006). The problem becomes even more vexing for females 149
