Dream B.I.G.: Reimagining STEM Equity Through Creative Counterspaces for Black Girls

Whitney McCoy Hudson

While research has increasingly documented inequities in STEM education, Black girls’ underrepresentation in technology and engineering is too often framed as an individual deficit rather than a design problem embedded in the cultural, emotional, and spatial conditions of STEM learning environments. Community-based STEM counterspaces remain understudied educational contexts where Black girls cultivate belonging, develop technological identities, and imagine futures beyond the constraints of formal schooling. Grounded in Critical Race Feminism and Community Cultural Wealth, Dream B.I.G. (Boosting Innovation for Girls) is an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study that examines how Black girls engage creative STEM, mentorship, and community-based counterspaces to cultivate technological agency, (re)imagine schooling, and envision future STEM pathways. Integrating survey and focus group data, this study examines how participation in these spaces shapes persistence and educational trajectories. By centering Black girls as knowledge producers and theorists of their own technological futures, this study reorients prevailing frameworks of STEM equity beyond access and participation toward healing, joy, cultural expression, and liberatory imagination. Findings will advance theoretical and practical frameworks for technology, computing, and engineering education that center cultural wealth and youth voice across community- and school-based STEM ecosystems.

About Whitney McCoy Hudson

Whitney N. McCoy Hudson, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. Her community-engaged scholarship sits at the intersection of educational psychology and STEM education. Her research examines how Black girls develop STEM identities and belonging in culturally affirming environments. Grounded in Critical Race Feminism, her work explores how race and gender shape Black girls' STEM learning experiences, identity development, and pathways to engagement. She focuses on well-being, technological agency, and the school–family–community ecosystems that support STEM identity development. Dr. McCoy Hudson draws on qualitative and mixed methods research to study mentoring, intergenerational counterspaces, and STEM learning ecosystems. She is co-director of the L.I.F.T. Lab (Learning Innovations and Future Technologies), a research collective designing STEM counterspaces integrating engineering, computing, creative design, and emerging technologies for youth and families. Through partnerships, the L.I.F.T. Lab has engaged 2,000 participants across North Carolina and beyond. Her research has been supported by the Spencer Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Her scholarship has appeared in Contemporary Educational Psychology, Teachers College Record, Journal of Literacy Research, and Race Ethnicity and Education. Dr. McCoy Hudson received the Samuel DuBois Cook Society Staff Award at Duke University in recognition of her scholarship and commitment to educational equity. She earned a B.S. in Biology from Winston-Salem State University, an M.A.T. from University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Ph.D. in Teacher Education and Learning Sciences with a concentration in educational psychology from North Carolina State University.