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Profiles Of Urban, Low Ses, African American Girls’ Attitudes Toward Science: A Sequential Explanatory Mixed Methods Study, Gayle Buck, Kristin Cook, Cassie F. Quigley, Jennifer Eastwood, Yvonne Lucas

Cassie F. Quigley

The purpose of this study was to increase the science education community’s understanding of the experiences and needs of girls who cross the traditional categorical boundaries of gender, race and socioeconomic status in a manner that has left their needs and experience largely invisible. A first of several in a series, this study sought to explore how African American girls from low SES communities position themselves in science learning. We followed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory strategy, in which two data collection phases, qualitative following the quantitative, were employed to investigate 89 African-American girls’ personal orientations towards science learning. By using …