Making Sense of Science: An Ethnographic Study of Somli American Students’ Funds of Identities

Abstract

The overall achievement levels of Somali students in Minnesota’s urban schools are considerably lower than their peers. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), 2023) reported that only 5% of all tested Black or African American students identified as English language learners met or exceeded the standards in science, 21.7% in reading, and 18.9% in mathematics. This study employed the Funds of Identity theoretical and conceptual framework to investigate the multiple identities Somali diaspora youth navigate and the cultural assets they bring to the classroom while trying to make sense of scientific concepts. This study utilized ethnography as a methodological framework to understand the nature of Somali diasporic middle-grade students’ funds of identities, epistemological struggles, and disconnect between who the students wanted to be and what they wanted to pursue in science and life. The data were collected over one year using classroom observations, one-on-one interviews, focus group interviews, interview circles, and student artifacts. The qualitative inductive analysis of the data showed that Somali students are strongly aligned with identities supported by their funds of knowledge, which is their funds of identities; the struggle to reconcile between science knowledge and knowledge as stated in the Islamic (Quranic) texts, thus creating epistemological challenges to make sense of science learning and Islamic learning, nature of communication styles generating misunderstandings, students’ identities, precisely that of the girls, shaped by their future goals, specifically what science learning meant personally and for the family, and a strong sense of certainty on the issues of human evolution. The findings of this study suggest the presence of several “funds of identities” exhibited by Somali youth who participated in the study, which confirms previous research findings, including continuously navigating multiple identities and contradicting epistemologies as well as global and transnational identities. Additionally, this study found that participants' epistemological struggles were so enormous that the existing research in this area of literature could not adequately capture its dynamics. Most struggles occur in the Metaphysical realm, where youth question the validity of scientific knowledge, the nature of truth, and living in spaces that simultaneously hold contradictory views.