Counter-Narratives:

Creating Counter-Narratives that Challenge Dominant Narratives

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This lesson in action:

Lesson Objectives

Students will be able to:
  1. Explain why counter-narratives are important for all of our growth and development
  2. Identify specific counter-narratives that have been important to their own growth and aspirations
  3. Identify specific counter-narratives they would like to strengthen or create themselves

Learning Standards

  • LfJ 1. Students will develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society.
  • LfJ 5. Students will recognize traits of the dominant culture, their home culture and other cultures and understand how they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces.
  • LfJ 13. Students will analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world, historically and today.

Learning Activities: If you have 15 minutes

Greeting:

If you won a million dollars, what would you buy?

Reading:

“Growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.” – Junot Diaz

Ask Students:

  • What does this quotation get you thinking about?

Learning Activities: If you have 45 minutes

Initiative:

Hand out paper, pencils, crayons or markers, and ask your students to each draw a picture of a scientist. (Alternatively, you can ask students to imagine scientist in their minds.)
Once students have finished, ask students to tape their drawings to the front board, and give students a chance to look at their classmates’ drawings.

Ask Students:

  • What do you notice in these drawings?

Typically, students will notice that the majority of drawings are of men, and, oftentimes, white men with lab coats and glasses.

Initiative:

Guide students through the definitions of dominant narratives and counter-narratives.

Ask Students:

  • What is the dominant narrative of who is a scientist?

Initiative:

Share with your students about the original Draw-A-Scientist Study in 1983.
There was a famous study in 1983 where 5,000 elementary schoolers in the U.S. and Canada were asked to draw a picture of a scientist. Only 28 of those 5,000 children drew a picture of a woman scientist. Those statistics have gotten a little better over the past 35 years. When researchers replicated that study a year or so ago, about 1 in 4 children draw a woman scientist. So that’s better, but still far from optimal. And, in that recent study, about 80% of the scientist drawings were pictures of White scientists, which also seems far from optimal. 

Ask Students:

  • Why do you think this dominant narrative about scientists exists?
  • Who does it harm?
  • What could or should be done about it?

Learning Activities: If you have 2 hours

Initiative:

Share with students some actions that have been taken to challenge this dominant narrative and strengthen counter-narratives about who is a scientist. For each example, ask students how a dominant narrative is being challenged—and a counter-narrative is being strengthened— about who gets to be a scientist.

“This is what a scientist looks like”: A website created to spotlight the diversity of the many different types of people who become scientists.

Visit the site

Hidden Figures: A book and major motion picture highlighting the role of African American women mathematicians in bringing about the Friendship 7 space launch (the U.S.’s first successful effort to put an astronaut into orbit around the Earth in 1962).

Iron Heart: A comic book character currently authored by Eve Ewing that focuses on a 15-year-old African American girl from Chicago who goes to MIT to study engineering (where she reverse engineers Iron Man’s suit). Iron Heart plays a significant role in the movie, Black Panther 2.

Big Manny: A British social media star with over a million followers who performs “public science” experiments and posts them on Tik Tok. 

Visit Big Manny's TikTok

Ask Students:

  • Which of these examples of counter-narratives about scientists feels most impactful to you? Why?

Debrief (Slide 19):

  • What did you like about today’s lesson?
  • Did you learn anything new about yourself or anyone else?
  • What could make it better?
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