2026 Theses Doctoral

An Ode to Liberation: A Narrative Study of Dark-Skinned Women Science Teachers’ Lived Experiences With and Against Colorism

Deng, Nagity

In this study, I investigated the lived experiences of dark-skinned women science teachers and how colorism shapes their identities, professional experiences, and decisions related to science curriculum development and implementation. Participants in this study were three science teachers who teach grades 7–12 biology-level courses and identify as dark-skinned women. Through two one-on-one interviews and a focus group discussion, participants shared how they experienced colorism growing up and within school environments, how colorism continues to show up in their professional lives, and how their positionality influences their teaching practices.

This study shares both the individual and collective stories of dark-skinned women science teachers using a qualitative narrative and oral history research design. I explored how these teachers remain in the field of science education despite experiencing colorism, discrimination, and marginalization, and how they make meaning of these experiences through storytelling, pedagogy, and community. The study is grounded in Black Feminist Thought, as articulated by Patricia Hill Collins and Intersectionality as an analytic tool to examine how race, gender, and skin tone intersect to shape these teachers’ positionality and experiences within science education.

Findings reveal that early socialization and family influence significantly shape participants’ understandings of colorism and self-worth. In educational and professional spaces, participants encountered colorism through surveillance, misrecognition, and lack of institutional support, demonstrating how colorism functions as a systemic and institutional form of gatekeeping. Despite these challenges, participants exhibited resilience that was learned rather than innate, developed through lived experience, boundary-setting, and resistance to colorist narratives.

The study also found that participants engaged pedagogy as a form of resistance and repair by adapting curriculum, centering representation, and creating science classrooms that affirmed students’ identities and lived experiences. Through collective storytelling in the focus group, participants positioned sisterhood and shared dialogue as powerful tools for knowledge production and healing.

This study contributes to science education by centering the voices of dark-skinned women science teachers, naming colorism as a distinct and often overlooked dimension of inequity, and highlighting how dark-skinned women educators challenge and reimagine science education through their lived experiences and pedagogical practices.

Keywords: Dark-skinned women, science education, colorism, science curriculum, pedagogy