Rowhea Elmesky

Interim Chair of Education
Associate Professor of Education
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    • Department of Education
    • MSC 1183-228-107
    • Washington University
    • 1 Brookings Drive
    • St. Louis MO 63130-4899
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    Rowhea Elmesky understands education as a primary mechanism for creating more socially just communities and perceives research as a critical vehicle for bringing the voices of those traditionally silenced into the field. She is committed to critical and collaborative research models that interlink theory and practice in ways that transform teaching and learning contexts, schools, neighborhoods, and communities.

    For two decades, Rowhea has been involved in research activities that are focused upon understanding how education, and specifically, science education can be a transformational force in the lives of culturally marginalized and economically disadvantaged children. Her work considers the ways in which cultural and social capital, material and human resources, as well as ideology from social fields outside of schools—shape the events unfolding inside of schools and while curriculum is enacted within classrooms. Although her content area training and curriculum focus is science (specifically physics), Rowhea's research and teaching is centered on studying the sociocultural dimensions of urban educational contexts so as to improve marginalized students' access to an education that is supportive of their overall physical, emotional, and social wellbeing as well as conducive to the development of their academic identities. She is fully committed to research that catalyzes change and transforms urban schools and communities. 

    Her roles as a faculty affiliate of the Interdisciplinary Program in Urban Studies & Center on Urban Research and Public Policy, as a faculty scholar for the Institute for Public Health and as a faculty fellow with the Institute for School Partnership speaks to her recognition across campus as a scholar who engages urban science education in an interdisciplinary, community-focused manner.

    Rowhea works directly with school districts to engage in research that is responsive to stakeholder concerns and catalytic in affecting real change. Prior to arriving at Washington University, she completed a three year postdoctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania where she and an expansive research team worked together with various schools (neighborhood, charter, magnet) within the Philadelphia area. Out of this project, she developed a research database of video, audio and written artifacts from inner city high school chemistry and physics classrooms and has followed some of the student and teacher researchers in a longitudinal manner for twenty years. Rowhea’s work in the northeast resulted in a co-edited book, Improving urban science education: New roles for teachers, students and researchers, which won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic titles in 2006. She is writing a manuscript to share a narrative of the longitudinal documentation of those involved in the study, entitled, Black Youth Rising Above Systemic Violence in Education and STEM: Listening and Learning From their Longitudinal Stories.

    Rowhea is additionally working on another longitudinal critical ethnographic research study, in the midwest, “Cogenerating a Community of Trust, Respect and Shared Responsibility," where over the past six years, she has been working collaboratively with a local school district to utilize research as a catalyst to lead a school-driven, cultural change initiative at the secondary level. This work has facilitated and supported the transformation of a high school in the district from an institution that was once aligned with punitive policies to one focused on relationships, student wellness, and a schoolwide restorative culture. 

    As her work has expanded to include international perspectives, she is the lead editor on a recently published  (2017) volume entitled, The Power of Resistance: Culture, Ideology and Social Reproduction in Global Contexts, which was dedicated to sharing research being done within communities suffering from inequality, uneven opportunity, and oppression in global contexts.

    Rowhea perceives research as a critical vehicle to bringing the voices of those traditionally silenced into the field. She is a scholar who understands education as a primary mechanism for creating more just communities, and a qualitative researcher who values critical and collaborative research models that interlink theory and practice in ways that can transform teaching and learning contexts, schools and neighborhoods.

     

    Selected Publications

    Marcucci, O., & Elmesky, R. [under review]. Racialized educator discourse: Implications for cultures of antiblackness in an urban school. Journal Article.

    Elmesky, R., & Marcucci, O. [under review]. Beyond Cultural Mismatch Theories: The role of antiblackness in school discipline and social control practices. Journal Article.

    Elmesky, R. (in preparation). Black Youth Rising Above Systemic Violence in Education and STEM: Listening and Learning From their Longitudinal Stories.

    Elmesky, R. (2021) Humanizing Science Education, Wellness and a More Just World. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 16.

    Marcucci, O., & Elmesky, R. (2020). Advancing culturally relevant discipline: An ethnographic microanalysis of disciplinary interactions with Black students. Urban Education. DOI: 10.1177/0042085920909165

    Elmesky, R., Camp Yeakey, C., Marcucci, O. (2017). The power of resistance: Culture, ideology and social reproduction in global contexts. (Eds.). Emerald Group Publishing Limited: United Kingdom.

    Elmesky, R. (2017). Science education reform: Can students learn science while navigating oppressive schools within an oppressive society? In Bryan, L. & Tobin, K. (Eds.), Thirteen Questions: Reframing Education's Conversation: Science. (391 – 400). NY: Peter Lang.

    Marcucci, O., & Elmesky, R. (2016). Roadblocks on the Way to Higher Education: Non-Dominant Cultural Capital, Race, and the “Schools are Equalizer” Myth. In W. F. Tate, N. Staudt, & A. Macrander (Eds.), The Crisis of Race in Higher Education: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue (Diversity in Higher Education, Volume 19) (85–107). Bingeley, United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

    Elmesky, R. (2015). Video selection and microanalysis approaches in studies of science education.  In C. Milne, & K. Tobin (Eds.), Sociocultural Studies and Implications for Science Education. The Netherlands: Springer.

    Elmesky, R. (2012). Collaborative research models for transforming teaching and learning experiences. In B. Fraser, K. Tobin, & C. McRobbie (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Science Education (81-90). The Netherlands: Springer.

    Elmesky, R. (2012). Building Capacity in Understanding Foundational Biology Concepts: A K-12 Learning Progression in Genetics Informed by Research on Children’s Thinking and Learning. Research in Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11165-012-9286-1.

    Elmesky, R. (2011). Rap as a roadway: Creating creolized forms of science in an era of globalization. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6 (1), 49-76.

    Elmesky, R., & Seiler, G. (2007). Movement expressiveness, solidarity and the (re)shaping of African American students' scientific identities. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2 (73-103).

    Seiler, G., & Elmesky, R. (2007). The role of communal practices in the generation of capital and emotional energy among African American students in science classrooms. Teachers College Record, 109, 391-419.

    Noblit, G., Hwang, S., Seiler, G., & Elmesky, R. (2007). Forum: toward culturally responsive discourses in science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2 (105-117).

    Elmesky, R., Olitsky, S., & Tobin, K. (2006). Forum: structure, agency and the development of students’ identities as learners. Cultural Studies of Science Education (First Online—DOI: 10.1007/s11422-006- 9034-9).

    Tobin, K., Elmesky, R., & Seiler, G. (2005). Improving urban science education: New roles for teachers, students and researchers. NY: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Elmesky, Rowhea (2005, August). Rethinking Qualitative Research: Research Participants as Central Researchers and Enacting Ethical Practices as Habitus [20 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 6(3), Art 36. Available here.

    Elmesky, R. (2005). "I am science and the world is mine:" Embodied practices as resources for empowerment. School Science and Mathematics, 105, 335-342.

    Elmesky, R., & Tobin, K. (2005). Expanding our understandings of urban science education by expanding the roles of students as researchers. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42, 807-828.

    Elmesky, R. (2006). Poverty and science teaching and learning. In K. Tobin (Ed.), Teaching and learning science: A handbook. Westport, CT: Praeger.

    Improving Urban Science Education: New Roles for Teachers, Students, and Researchers

    Improving Urban Science Education: New Roles for Teachers, Students, and Researchers

    Many would argue that the state of urban science education has been static for the past several decades and that there is little to learn from it. Rather than accepting this deficit perspective, Improving Urban Science Education strives to recognize and understand the successes that exist there by systematically documenting seven years of research into issues salient to teaching and learning in urban high school science classes. Grounded in the post structuralism of William Sewell_and brought to life through the experiences of different students, teachers, and school settings in Philadelphia_this book shows how teachers and students can work together to enact meaningful science education when social and cultural differences as well as inappropriate curricula often make the challenges seem insurmountable. Chapters contain rich images of urban youth and each strives to offer insights into problems and suggestions for resolving them. Most significant, in spite of the challenges, the research offers hope and shows that fresh approaches to teaching and learning can lead students_some who have already been pronounced academic, even societal, failures_to becoming avid and deep learners of science.