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The Emotional Valence of Hyperrationality in STEM Learning: Reinscriptions and Contestations of Coloniality

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Title: The Emotional Valence of Hyperrationality in STEM Learning: Reinscriptions and Contestations of Coloniality
Language: English
Authors: Natalie R. Davis (ORCID 0000-0001-6215-7861), Thomas M. Philip
Source: Science Education. 2026 110(1):269-285.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 17
Publication Date: 2026
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, STEM Education, Emotional Response, Science and Society, Student Attitudes, Evaluative Thinking, Human Dignity, Humanization, Undergraduate Students, Engineering Education, Ethics, Colonialism, Classroom Communication
DOI: 10.1002/sce.21959
ISSN: 0036-8326
1098-237X
Abstract: As part of the special issue "Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education," this paper examines the emergence and performance of hyperrationality in STEM classrooms. Hyperrationality describes verbal and embodied expressions whereby learners try to maintain an appearance of neutrality and emotional distance to give credence to political, socioscientific convictions, even under conditions where complete emotional detachment would be unconscionable. Hyperrationality in STEM learning environments poses a threat to human dignity (Espinoza et al. 2020) by reinscribing approaches to STEM that devalue the lives and lived experiences of those "othered". We present a comparative analysis of cases taken from our respective (individual) studies focused on ethics, historicity, politics, and STEM learning. The first case is drawn from an undergraduate engineering ethics class discussion of militarized drones. The second case is from a year-long socioscientific unit on water enacted with Black children in a city wrestling with water shut-offs. In our analysis of these two cases, we consider how hyperrationality, the ungrievability of the other and racialized fear become components of interpretative repertoires that learners co-construct to compartmentalize and/or partially reconcile the inherent contradictions arising from these entanglements. Our cases evidence the emotional configurations of colonality that reinscribe imperialism, while also recognizing when/how nondominant communities resist these logics as they surface in STEM classrooms.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2026
Accession Number: EJ1491943
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0190305603;sed01jan.26;2025Dec19.06:03;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0190305603-1">The Emotional Valence of Hyperrationality in STEM Learning: Reinscriptions and Contestations of Coloniality </title> <sbt id="AN0190305603-2">Introduction</sbt> <p>As part of the special issue Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, this paper examines the emergence and performance of hyperrationality in STEM classrooms. Hyperrationality describes verbal and embodied expressions whereby learners try to maintain an appearance of neutrality and emotional distance to give credence to political, socioscientific convictions, even under conditions where complete emotional detachment would be unconscionable. Hyperrationality in STEM learning environments poses a threat to human dignity (Espinoza et al. 2020) by reinscribing approaches to STEM that devalue the lives and lived experiences of those "othered". We present a comparative analysis of cases taken from our respective (individual) studies focused on ethics, historicity, politics, and STEM learning. The first case is drawn from an undergraduate engineering ethics class discussion of militarized drones. The second case is from a year‐long socioscientific unit on water enacted with Black children in a city wrestling with water shut‐offs. In our analysis of these two cases, we consider how hyperrationality, the ungrievability of the other and racialized fear become components of interpretative repertoires that learners co‐construct to compartmentalize and/or partially reconcile the inherent contradictions arising from these entanglements. Our cases evidence the emotional configurations of colonality that reinscribe imperialism, while also recognizing when/how nondominant communities resist these logics as they surface in STEM classrooms.</p> <p>Research on teaching and learning has long focused on the role of emotions and affect (Boler [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref1">8</reflink>]; Fredricks et al. [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref2">28</reflink>]; Vygotsky [<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref3">73</reflink>]; Zembylas [<reflink idref="bib78" id="ref4">78</reflink>]). Much of this work has explored how emotions serve as a conduit for learning by shaping motivations to learn and participate (Vea [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref5">71</reflink>]). This includes pedagogies that aim to elicit deeply felt responses to contemporary socioscientific issues, environmental racism, problems of whiteness and representation in STEM (Porter et al. [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref6">57</reflink>]), and a host of other justice issues (Rivera Maulucci and Davis [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref7">59</reflink>]). Accordingly, recent studies have advanced research that considers emotion as a target of learning (Davidson et al. [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref8">16</reflink>]), and that recognizes the complex collective, political, and ideological understandings represented through affective stancetaking (e.g. Boler and Zembylas [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref9">9</reflink>]; Curnow et al. [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref10">13</reflink>]; Goodwin et al. [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref11">31</reflink>]; Vea [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref12">71</reflink>]).</p> <p>Scholarship in the learning sciences and critical science education tends to privilege analyses of heightened emotional expressions that often coincide with the feelings and experiences of nondominant peoples as they navigate persistent inequities in STEM. While important, we also see a need for attention to the emergence, performance, and affective complexities of a particular genre of rationality, what we refer to in this paper as <emph>hyperrationality</emph>, as a mechanism that works to sustain the status quo in STEM. Hyperrationality describes verbal and embodied expressions whereby learners try to maintain an appearance of neutrality and emotional distance to give credence to political, socioscientific convictions, even under conditions where complete emotional detachment would be unconscionable. Hyperrationality in STEM education spaces poses a threat to human dignity (Espinoza et al. [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref13">26</reflink>]) by reinscribing approaches to STEM that are premised on the discursive erasure of history and, on grossly devaluing the lives (and feelings) of others. By "other," we refer to individuals and collectives who are cast as peculiar, or inferior to a dominant group, and whose full personhood is questioned within a colonial imaginary (Kumashiro [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref14">41</reflink>]; Morrison [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref15">51</reflink>]). In this paper, we consider the conceptual lenses and methodological tools needed to interrogate the emotional valence carried in the performance of hyperrationality in science. We do so with concern for how these performances, regardless of intent, may harm learners in everyday interaction.</p> <p>This paper leverages empirical data to offer theoretical and methodological insight into the role that hyperrational logics and performances play in shaping emotions and STEM learning. Through an exploration of two cases, we are especially interested in identifying when and how hyperrationality masks and/or enables white fears that dictate timescales for action and change. White fears are not limited or inherent to people who are racialized as white; as emotions that are embedded in a legacy of colonialism and racism and operate to reproduce related hierarchies, they can be held and expressed by people who are otherized, even though they consistently and disproportionately benefit whites as a group. For learners who are otherized, living with and responding to racialized fears disguised as rationality and temperance is an overlooked dimension of science learning. Building on Vea ([<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref16">71</reflink>]), we consider a process of analyzing emotional configurations of coloniality that reflects our efforts to understand hyperrationality as a discursive technology in STEM that facilitates socially acceptable expressions of racialized fears while foreclosing on opportunities to learn with/from the affective stances of learners navigating direct threats to their bodies and personhood.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-3">Foundations in the Literature</hd> <p>The significance of affect in processes of teaching, learning, and becoming is well documented in education research (e.g. Boler [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref17">8</reflink>]; Fredricks et al. [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref18">28</reflink>]; Goodwin et al. [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref19">31</reflink>], Jaber [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref20">37</reflink>]; Jones [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref21">38</reflink>]; Uitto et al. [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref22">69</reflink>]; Zembylas [<reflink idref="bib77" id="ref23">77</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib78" id="ref24">78</reflink>]). In <emph>Teaching to Transgress</emph>, hooks ([<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref25">35</reflink>]) opens with a critical reflection on "pleasure" and "excitement" in education as tied to her own history in segregated schools. According to hooks ([<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref26">35</reflink>]), liberatory pedagogies support students' sense of wholeness, nurture feelings of excitement, and allow for a wide range of emotional expression while making meaning of complex phenomena. Vygotsky (1934/[<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref27">73</reflink>]) defined thinking as a process driven by "interests and impulses, and our affect and emotion" (p. 281). Similarly, Freire ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref28">29</reflink>]) argued that we know with our "entire body, with feelings with passion and also with reason" (p. 30). Feelings of frustration or anger, can foreclose on opportunities for cooperation and engagement in instructional activities (Goodwin [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref29">30</reflink>]). Emotion can also be a powerful intellectual mover and driver of resistance, dreaming and social action (Davis et al. [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref30">21</reflink>]; Curnow and Vea [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref31">15</reflink>]; Espinoza and Vossoughi [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref32">25</reflink>]; Hooks [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref33">35</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-4">Affect in Critical Approaches to STEM Education</hd> <p>In the learning sciences and STEM education, empirical studies of emotion demonstrate its role in shaping learning trajectories for teachers and students. As scholars whose work aligns with critical sociocultural frameworks on learning, of particular interest to us is the centrality of emotion to the conceptualization and design of <emph>dignity‐affirming</emph> STEM learning contexts. By dignity‐affirming, we mean "emotional and cognitive conditions" that honor learners' full humanity, ideas, and potential (Espinoza et al. [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref34">26</reflink>]). Critical approaches to STEM value epistemic heterogeneity and ethical relations, taking seriously the consequential nature of domain learning environments as sites to contest coloniality and practice self‐determination (Davis et al. [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref35">21</reflink>]; Bang et al. [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref36">4</reflink>], Barajas‐López and Bang [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref37">5</reflink>]; Morales‐Doyle [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref38">48</reflink>]; Philip and Sengupta [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref39">56</reflink>]; Scott and Philip [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref40">62</reflink>]). Nxumalo and Villanueva's ([<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref41">52</reflink>]) study of water pedagogies show how the activation of relational effect can open up new possibilities for the decolonial refiguring of science education with young children. After learning an Indigenous water song and spending time at a nearby creek, children drew pictures of the water smiling at human onlookers, an indication of their attunement to human and environmental connection (Nxumalo and Villanueva [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref42">52</reflink>]). Research has offered empirical insight into the joyful STEM engagement of Black and Brown girls in community‐based programs, showing how analyses of joy and subjective experience can challenge patriarchal and racist disciplinary norms (e.g. King and Pringle [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref43">39</reflink>]; Sengupta‐Irving and Vossoughi [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref44">65</reflink>]). Relatedly, in Miles and Roby's ([<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref45">47</reflink>]) case study of science learning with middle‐grade students, they argue that liberatory science cannot exist without the presence of Black joy. Across these examples, immersing learners in emotionally nourishing STEM environments is of the utmost priority.</p> <p>In addition to cultivating joy and a sense of possibility in STEM, critical approaches to STEM education also recognize the role that negatively‐valenced emotions may play in shifting teachers' and learners' dispositions toward change. As teachers and learners grow in critical social awareness, this can incite feelings of outrage that drive political imagination and action (Curnow et al. [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref46">14</reflink>]; Zembylas [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref47">76</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib78" id="ref48">78</reflink>]). There is important research focused on the development of critical STEM teacher identities as tied to first‐hand experiences with marginalization in science classrooms and schools (e.g. Kokka [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref49">40</reflink>]; Mensah and Jackson [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref50">45</reflink>]; Morales‐Doyle et al. [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref51">49</reflink>]; Rivera Maulucci [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref52">58</reflink>]). In a study of preservice teachers of color (PTOC), Mensah and Jackson ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref53">45</reflink>]) found that emotional traumas and negative experiences were key motivators in their decision to pursue science teaching. Relatedly, the negative emotional responses that surface as learners engage with issues of injustice in STEM may contribute to a sense of commitment and urgency in pursuing solutions to socioscientific and sociopolitical problems (Akom et al. [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref54">1</reflink>]; Davis and Schaeffer [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref55">20</reflink>]; Morales‐Doyle [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref56">50</reflink>]). Taken together, work in this field suggests that a level of emotional ambivalence, centering joy while negotiating or leveraging negative emotions is often necessary to advance decolonial STEM alternatives.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-5">White Fears, Coloniality, & Emotional Distance</hd> <p>Recognizing the field's emphasis on leveraging collective anger and cultivating joy in justice‐oriented science education, we shift our focus to fear as an important driver of learning and behavior. The emergence of fear, worry, and anxiety for STEM learners has been well documented (e.g. Downing et al. [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref57">23</reflink>]). When students grow concerned about their ability to master the material in STEM majors and careers (including K‐12 teaching), fear of failure may act as a barrier to engaged participation or to entering the profession (Emdin et al. [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref58">24</reflink>]; Hong and Greene [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref59">34</reflink>]). Studies of learning have analyzed the fears experienced by learners while engaging in studies of species typically feared by humans (e.g. spiders), and when presented with information related to scientific malfeasance, environmental sustainability, public health crises, and/or other urgent socioscientific matters (Davis and Schaeffer [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref60">20</reflink>], Carlone et al. [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref61">11</reflink>]; Hufnagel [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref62">36</reflink>]). For example, the concept of <emph>ecophobia</emph> gained traction as a term used to describe the fears that surface for young children as they are introduced to environmental problems that pose a threat to human lives (Sobel [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref63">66</reflink>]; Strife [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref64">67</reflink>]). While not universally applicable (Davis and Schaeffer [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref65">20</reflink>]), it is an example of how individualized fears in STEM classrooms can impede learning for some and undermine science educators' pedagogical goals. Fear can also be a powerful motivating force (Scarantino and de Sousa [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref66">61</reflink>]) that drives learning, identity development (Vakil [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref67">70</reflink>]) and action. When faced with racism inside and outside of science classrooms, nondominant peoples have channeled fears in ways that facilitate their perseverance as aspiring scientists (McGee [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref68">43</reflink>]), their resistance to oppressive conditions, and (in spite of fears and threats of violence) the pursuit of more sustainable, just socioscientific futures.</p> <p>The tendency to focus primarily on the individualized, internalized, and episodic emergence of fear, while important, can obscure the broader context of fear and coloniality that shapes STEM education (Nxumalo & ross, 2019). White fears of the "other" are embedded into the fabric of normative STEM and reflect long politicized histories of epistemic, socioscientific, and physical violence (Philip and Azevedo [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref69">53</reflink>]; Philip and Gupta [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref70">54</reflink>]; Takeuchi and Marin [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref71">68</reflink>]). For example, there is extensive research (e.g. Sealing [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref72">63</reflink>]; Vossoughi and Vakil [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref73">72</reflink>]; Ziols et al. [<reflink idref="bib79" id="ref74">79</reflink>]) on how pseudoscience and other scientific tactics were manipulated to make ridiculous claims about the intellectual inferiority of Black and Brown people and the biological dangers of interracial relationships. Anti‐Black fears and disdain have driven and continue to drive technoscientific developments designed to increase surveillance (Benjamin [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref75">7</reflink>]). Within a "colonial myopia" (Dominguez [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref76">22</reflink>]), what constitutes STEM is largely settled (Bang and Medin [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref77">3</reflink>]), driven by a compulsion to maintain Western power feared to be at risk of being lost. These fears are often left implicit, though they shape the curricular, cultural and professional norms. Efforts to question the underlying logics governing the domain are positioned as "emotional" and irrelevant to the development and application of deep STEM expertise.</p> <p>White fear and hyperrationality are entangled. Fears performed as rationality, even when not internalized as such, do significant work (Zembylas [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref78">76</reflink>]) in reinscribing status quo conceptions of STEM learning. The profound reliance on Western epistemologies as rational truth narrows the domain while also positioning diverse peoples' ways of knowing and feeling as peculiar. In a study on professional development for STEM teachers, Sengupta‐Irving et al. ([<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref79">64</reflink>]) found that white educators openly questioned the scientific legitimacy of cultural practices that they were unfamiliar with. Within a context of normative STEM, incorrect or incomplete scientific understandings that uphold whiteness can become legitimized, particularly when they are performed in a manner that suggests neutrality and emotional distance.</p> <p>We emphasize that what passes as rational/irrational and emotional/unemotional in any context is ideological. i.e., their meanings are constantly contested (Hall [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref80">32</reflink>]) across space and time. Similarly, <emph>who</emph> is considered grievable or ungrievable is similarly a matter of ideological struggle (Butler [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref81">10</reflink>]). These dynamics are amplified in colonial contexts, where the "colonizers" construct narratives that legitimize their control and exploitation (Césaire [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref82">12</reflink>]; Fanon [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref83">27</reflink>]; Memmi [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref84">44</reflink>]). While these narratives are largely viewed as logical, they are rooted in assumptions about the less‐than‐fully‐human nature of the "colonized" and a fear of these others. Below, we illustrate the interplay of these dynamics within STEM learning contexts through two separate cases with undergraduate and elementary‐aged students.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-6">Emotional Configurations of Colonality</hd> <p>It is common academic practice to equate sound scientific reasoning and expertise with the perceived <emph>absence of</emph> discernable emotion. Heightened emotional responses in normative learning environments are treated as superfluous (if not counterproductive), even when human dignity and lives are implicated. As a performative affective stance, composure becomes a proxy for scientific acumen, maintaining a facade of safety and intellectual objectivity often at the expense of those othered (Leonardo and Porter [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref85">42</reflink>]). Such composure becomes a taken‐for‐granted dimension of STEM learning contexts, where students are conforming their sensemaking and affective expression to align with the conventions of a colonial imaginary. Yet, there are other instances where overt expressions of emotion, especially certain types of racialized fear, particularly when embodied by white males, are viewed as factual and not driven by affect. Borrowing from Vea ([<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref86">71</reflink>]), in STEM classrooms, the "norms, ideologies and relations of power shape who is allowed to emote, about what, and under what circumstances" (p. 317). What constitutes appropriate forms of emotionality is a moving target that can be weaponized in STEM learning contexts. We see a need for further inquiry into the role of hyperrationality in configuring the intellectual, political emotional landscape of STEM classrooms.</p> <p>An emotional configuration is an analytical tool that makes visible the reciprocal interrelationships between feelings, sensemaking, and practice within spaces of learning (Vea [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref87">71</reflink>]). Expressions of emotion are to be understood in relation to other practices and, with attention to historicity, culture, and power (Curnow et al. [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref88">13</reflink>]; Vea [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref89">71</reflink>]). Building from scholarship on emotional configurations, we consider the centrality of performed hyperrationality in (re)constituting <emph>emotional configurations of coloniality in STEM</emph>. As an embodied and discursive technology, hyperrationality in STEM, when predicated on the ungrievabilty of the other, uniquely works to mask and legitimize white fears. Vea ([<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref90">71</reflink>]) explains, "An emotional configuration does not label the supposed interior content or subjective experience of an emotion, but rather names a set of meaningful relationships between emotionality and the ongoing making of social reality in a particular situation" (p. 315). As such, we view hyperrationality as an emotional configuration of coloniality that does the ongoing, everyday work of sustaining coloniality in STEM learning contexts. Without the veil of hyperrationality, expressed fears about Black and Brown peoples and worries about the fragility of imperial power fall outside of the domain of scientific reasoning. As a display of emotion that is portrayed as <emph>lacking</emph> emotion, hyperrationality allows participants who reproduce dominant logics to emote while denying that right to others. Figure 1. illustrates these relationships and entanglements.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01jan26/sce21959-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21959-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 Hyperrationality within an emotional configuration of coloniality in STEM." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0190305603-8">Context and Method</hd> <p>To demonstrate the complex role of hyperrationality as part of an emotional configuration of coloniality that can be (re)inscribed or contested by learners, our analysis brings together two cases, each representing data collected in STEM classrooms. The first case is based on Thomas's collaborative research in an undergraduate engineering ethics course, with a specific focus on a classroom discussion about militarized drones. The original analysis (Philip et al. [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref91">55</reflink>]) focused on how the engineering students, in the process of negotiating their positions on the use of militarized drones, also constructed West and South Asian civilians as less than fully human. Natalie's case is drawn from an 18‐month ethnographic project conducted with Black children in two elementary schools (Davis [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref92">17</reflink>]; Davis and Barsoum [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref93">18</reflink>]). In one school, there was a year‐long focus on water (justice) that deeply resonated with students as part of a larger history of racism and inequitable access to resources in their city. The science teacher collaborated with school administrators, community educators, and environmental activists to design and enact the "Water is Life" instructional unit. Natalie's analysis of this unit evidenced shifts in Black children's layered meaning‐making, to include their socioscientific sensemaking and affective stancetaking (Davis and Schaeffer [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref94">20</reflink>]).</p> <p>Building from the individual research projects described above, the collaborative work reflected in this paper is the culmination of our co‐thinking over the past four years. Beginning in 2021, we (Natalie & Thomas) took part in a group of researchers who came together to consider how a focus on colonialism, social movements, and possible futures might deepen and/or shift conceptions of learning. As a collective, we grew toward centering histories and genealogies as a common frame of analysis. This group also began to explore the limitations of classical methodological tools in capturing the depth and nuances of interactions. As the collective work developed, we became interested in revisiting the study of emotion in light of our focus on histories and coloniality (Davis and Philip [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref95">19</reflink>]). Across our two studies, we noted parallels in how engineering students and children engaged in STEM discourses of power and expertise in a manner that seemingly embodied emotional detachment. Though the contexts for the study were different, Black children's portrayals of, and implicit critiques of, government authorities mirrored the discourse and dispositions evidenced in the collegiate engineering classroom. We noticed when and how the performance of emotional detachment became legitimized and valued even while discussing the typically emotionally‐provocative topics of violence, death, and human suffering.</p> <p>This paper expounds on the core findings from our prior work and further attunes to paradoxes in the performance of hyperrationality; when and how it functions to obscure, decontextualize, or minimize white fear alongside efforts to contest and imagine more just social futures. To conduct our comparative case study (Bartlett and Vavrus [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref96">6</reflink>]; Miles et al. [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref97">46</reflink>]), we began by identifying an anchoring example of classroom discourse from each of our studies. Each of our data included a STEM‐focused debate that we analyzed first due to the common structure. In Natalie's case, transcripts and video from a culminating film project were also included in the analysis. The film data supplemented the relatively‐brief discussion of water while providing extended examples of how children were making sense of ethics, power, and emotion in science. Individually, and then together, we looked for instances when learners (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref98">1</reflink>) made meaning of the logics used to justify U.S drone warfare or dictate access to clean water, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref99">2</reflink>) used language to signal an "other," and (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref100">3</reflink>) discussed relevant timescales and theories of socioscientific change. This initial analysis highlighted how hyperrationality was coupled with ungrievability and in many cases, legitimized a fear of the "other." We illuminate this coupling, within and across key instances in our cases, by analyzing the emotional expressions and stance taking being performed by learners in interaction.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-9">Summary of Findings</hd> <p>We turn now to revisit comparative cases from our individual work. Noting the nuances and variability within and across our cases, we contextualize our analysis within the larger backdrop of STEM and STEM education as situated in projects of European and American imperialism (Philip and Sengupta [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref101">56</reflink>]; Said [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref102">60</reflink>]) and intertwined with U.S. militarism and economic interests (Philip and Azevedo [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref103">53</reflink>]; Vossoughi and Vakil [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref104">72</reflink>]). We show that through hyperrationality, participants mask and legitimize racialized fear while being predicated on the ungrievabilty of the "other." Within the context of STEM, the value attributed to hyperrationality, however, inflicts harm on marginalized learners. Hyperrationality, with white fear and the ungrievability of the other, works together to compartmentalize and/or partially reconcile the inherent contradictions arising from these entanglements, particularly in view of ideologies of scientific progress and objectivity. Taken together, our cases evidence emotional configurations of coloniality, while also recognizing when/how nondominant communities resist these logics.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-10">Thomas's Case: Engineering Ethics, Militarized Drones, & the Grievability of Civilian Liv...</hd> <p>The first case explores undergraduate students' sensemaking in an engineering ethics class session focused on militarized drones (Philip et al. [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref105">55</reflink>]). The reanalysis presented situates the localized manifestations of affect within the broader historical memories and ideologies of colonialism, imperialism, and nationalism. We show how hyperrationality operated within the class to co‐construct others, in this case, civilians from West and South Asia, as less than fully human and as ungrievable while also masking and legitimizing white fears. We demonstrate that these emotional contexts and responses were not external or tangential to STEM, but fundamental to the co‐construction of what it meant for these learners to become engineers.</p> <p>The undergraduate classroom interactions took place in a discussion section led by a Teaching Assistant (TA), which accompanied the lecture component that was taught by a university professor. Each week, a student was assigned the task of facilitating the discussion. In the section analyzed, a student, Larry, opened and led the day's conversation. Over the course of 58 min, all 12 of the students and TA participated. All the participants presented as male, which adds a layer of gender to the performance of hyperrationality in this context. Michael was the only student in the class who did not identify as "American" (i.e. from the United States). He repeatedly stated during the discussion, especially as he became exasperated with his peers' disregard for West and South Asian lives, that he was from Ghana. Additional details about the students, and Michael's attempt to disrupt the hyperrationality in the class can be found in Philip et al. ([<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref106">55</reflink>]).</p> <p>Establishing civilian deaths as a concern within the students' deliberation about militarized drones was not a given. It had to be interactionally established as relevant in the class. Once it was collectively agreed upon as a matter worthy of attention, there was a bid to approach the matter from a lens of hyperrationality. Larry employed a common engineering practice of cost–benefit analysis to make sense of the inevitability of civilian deaths. His hyperrational use of a cost–benefit‐analysis was, however, predicated on the ungrievability of the other:</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Larry: The question is, if you take out a hundred like enemies</td><td>Uses language of "take out", which is less emotional on its face</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>TA: Yeah</td><td>Throughout, the TA uses "yeah," "right," and laughter to move the conversation forward. We interpret these phrases as his attempt at active listening, which do not necessarily express agreement.</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Larry: at the cost of one civilian, everybody accepts that. A lot of people accept that. Right?</td><td>Establishing logic of claim as universal, which supports hyperrationality</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Will: Sure</td><td /></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Larry: So. Okay. Now, if you take 10 terrorists, right, and nuke one city and you kill a million people, that's not acceptable, right?</td><td>Reasoning with extremes and mathematical language used to diffuse language of "kill" and "terrorist"</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Will: Yeah</td><td /></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Larry: So, there is this value in the middle, that there is an acceptable range. Kind of like uh that there should be</td><td>Continuation of mathematical language, where "acceptable" range refers to the number of people killed.</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Unknown: (Overlapping) acceptable</td><td /></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>TA: (Overlapping) line</td><td /></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Larry: right. Now, what's the number? Like h‐ what's the ratio? Of enemy to civilian?</td><td>Doubling down on the idea that there is an acceptable equation. Repeated posing of questions. Larry takes an authoritative stance in drilling or quizzing the group.</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>All: (Overlapping) Laughter</td><td>Uncomfortable laughter, acknowledging the inhumaneness underlying Larry's argument (see turn 13)</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>Larry: That's acceptable?</td><td /></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Will: You're a monster!</td><td>Sarcastic tone: the only exclamatory statement in this excerpt is offered sarcastically.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>While Larry and his classmates engaged in the seemingly emotionally distant behavior of finding the appropriate ratio of civilian lives worth losing to ensure the killing of terrorists, there was a clear recognition of the lack of humanity in this calculation as expressed by Will's, "You're a monster!" It should also be noted that the presumed emotional distance and neutrality were in fact deeply affective stances since they devalued the lives of civilians, presumed the inherent guilt of "terrorists," and fundamentally positioned their deaths as inevitable and necessary. We stress that the stance of making decisions based on seemingly objective measures, like cost–benefit‐analysis, rather than emotion is in fact a deeply emotional enterprise. As in this case, entirely distancing oneself from the harm and violence caused to others, is not transcending emotion; it is a substantively emotional stance that positions other groups of people as less‐than‐human and therefore ungrievable. Further, dividing the world into civilians and terrorists, citizens and subjects, human and less‐than‐human, are colonial and imperial discourses that have been refined over the centuries (Césaire [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref107">12</reflink>]; Fanon [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref108">27</reflink>]; Memmi [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref109">44</reflink>]). These discourses were readily available to Larry and others. These were ideological categories into which Larry and his peers were interpellated and hailed (Althusser [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref110">2</reflink>]).</p> <p>The hyperrationality of the presumed unemotional stance of the class became even more amplified when Michael raised questions about the nationality of the civilians. Michael's line of questioning prompted a series of exchanges through which hyperrationality masked and legitimized his peers' white fear.</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Michael: But I definitely think that problem, that question, is more complicated than you just asked, because it depends on which civilian life is being lost. Like, when it is an American civilian life, it seems to be more important than when it's of another nationality. Like they make it a bigger deal about an American civilian being killed by a drone attack in a different country than a Yemenese being killed.</td><td>Michael calls out the premise of ungrievability that is driving the cost–benefit analysis. Makes explicit the question of "which civilian life is being lost" that has been unaddressed.</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Joe: I personally don't think that nationality should be a part of it. But, that's irrelevant to my point. My point is that I think it largely depends on who you're targeting. And how uh how imperative you think it is to take them out.</td><td>"Take them out" language returns. Casting Michael's response as "irrelevant" speaks back to the exclusion/de‐legitimization of the lives, feelings, and experiences of the other, in this case Michael as a Black, non‐US peer of Ghanaian nationality.</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>TA: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Joe: Because, for example, if you're trying to target a group who is you know consistently killing hundreds of people a week.</td><td>Leveraging numbers to prompt a sense of urgency.</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>TA: Yeah, yeah.</td><td /></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Joe: I mean, you need to get rid of them so that uh future uh atrocities can be avoided.</td><td>Previous, more passive language of "take them out" substituted with more active language of "get rid of" in light of ambiguous, uncertain future harm.</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Larry: Right</td><td /></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Joe dismissed Michael's concern about the value the class was implicitly attributing to civilians of different nationalities. He then framed the concern as being about ambiguous "groups." The justification for killing members of such groups was dependent on hyperbolic claims of murder and the need to save unspecified people from future atrocities. Simultaneously, the hyperrationality was further predicated on the ungrievability of the other, as reflected in language such as "you need to get rid of them," which eliminated their humanity.</p> <p>Joe's argument, and claims by his peers, unsurprisingly parallelled official government positions. For instance, at the launch of the 2nd Gulf War, then president George W. Bush declared:</p> <p>America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Saddam Hussein has placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military—a final atrocity against his people. (White House Archives [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref111">75</reflink>])</p> <p>Joe and others, albeit unintentionally, revoiced governmental justifications for killing people from other countries who are perceived as threats, which are in turn rooted in longer historical discourses of colonialism.</p> <p>Similarly, consciously or unconsciously, the students' positions drew on official discourses that allowed them to blur categories of those who were perceived to be responsible for wrongdoing and those who were not. Their statements, again, parallelled George W. Bush's comments following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and other sites in the United States: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them" (White House Archives [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref112">74</reflink>]). It is notable that the use of hyperrationality to mask and legitimize white fear by the class participants also dictated a unique timescale of action and change. There was a sense of deep urgency, whereby the "terrorists" needed to be eliminated at all costs with all due speed without any space for pause or deliberation.</p> <p>Hyperrationality allowed for statements to be made with the weight of factual accuracy, even when they lacked warrant. For instance, Will made the following set of claims to further support Joe:</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Will: Yeah, um, I'm not too sure if there are statistics for this, but the comparison of how many civilians are killed, because an unfortunate common tactic is –</td><td>Uses "common tactic" to universalize forthcoming claim even though he cannot support it with evidence.</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Mark: It's unfortunate</td><td /></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Will: Whoever you're trying to target, they are going to be hiding behind civilians, like in schools,</td><td>Invokes language of human shields</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>TA: right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Will: hospitals</td><td /></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Larry: umhuh</td><td /></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Will: And that's a real thing</td><td>Reiterates the universality of the claim.</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>TA: Yeah</td><td /></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Will: So, if you don't know (Voice trails off)</td><td>Sets up the argument that if one can't distinguish between a civilian and "terrorist," it is right to assume that everyone might be a threat.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Will acknowledged that he was not sure about the statistics, but also felt confident that the use of so‐called human shields is a "real thing" that is ubiquitous, justifying Joe's position. Hyperrational talk about human shields is based on the dehumanization and ungrievability of the other (i.e. civilians cannot be mourned since they have become willingly or unwillingly complicit in the acts of presumed terrorists).</p> <p>While Larry consistently made bids for a seemingly emotionally distant, hyperlogical tradeoff analysis, it is notable that he undercut the use of logic only when Sam questioned the very logic of warfare and the presumed "humaneness" in militarized drones:</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Sam: I think that maybe labeling warfare as humane is kind of a misnomer in general.</td><td>First instance that a student besides Michael questions lens and framing</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>TA & Larry: (Overlapping) Laughter</td><td /></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Mark: (Overlapping) Yeah, that's true.</td><td /></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Adam: But what is like? What is considered humane?</td><td>Builds on Sam's opening to question the humanity of war.</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Mark: It's not humane relatively.</td><td>Growing agreement with Sam.</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Adam: What kind of killing is humane? Like in your personal opinion? (Directed to Larry) No, what would you consider humane?</td><td>Adam presses Larry for a direct answer.</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Mark: It's not. Nothing. Nothing.</td><td>Mark makes a conclusive statement that no killing can be humane.</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Larry: Strategy and warfare defy some sort of logic. And it's the same problem we had in the Challenger case and the Pinto case. It's all about like a tradeoff analysis.</td><td>Larry closes off the ethical questions by displacing the role of such "logic." Doubles down on the cost–benefit analysis.</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>TA: Laughter</td><td /></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Larry: You're just trying to see which one is the better choice. So, it [war] exists, it's one of the fundamentals of nature.</td><td>Universalizes war and killing as a fundamental of nature and reiterates that one is always limited to making the best choice.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Larry emphasized that "strategy and warfare defy logic" to undercut Sam's bid, but immediately returned to his stance of a tradeoff analysis to determine the right number of civilians who could be killed to justify the elimination of a certain number of "terrorists." The hyperrational position was reasserted by Larry's stance that war is a "fundamental" of nature. These discursive moments point to the multiplicity of perspectives and possibilities that always exist, as well as the propensity for hyperrationality to be invoked in this genre of STEM discussions.</p> <p>The braiding of hyperrationality, fear, ungrievability, and urgency are further amplified as the discussion proceeds. Below, Carter argued that the irrationality of others ("they are literally willing to blow themselves up") can only be dealt with through the immediate and indiscriminate use of force by U.S. troops. Even confirming whether the presumed "terrorists" are a risk becomes too precarious. Thus, the presumed irrationality of others justified their indiscriminate killing, which was framed as the only rational response.</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Carter: I mean I feel like, it's because it's a completely different um kind of warfare where people are literally willing to blow themselves up. And just because they're not um. Rather, I don't think um they'll necessarily run away as easily as um that</td><td>White fear most explicitly stated. Carter claims the need for different rules for warfare because "people are literally willing to blow themselves up," while maintaining hyperrationality.</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Michael: But in that case for example, like those guys were never confirmed to have been moving toward the battlefront.</td><td>Michael continues to emphasize the potential innocence of those killed.</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Carter: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Michael: And that's my point. Like wouldn't you rather like wait for them to come to the front of battle. [...]</td><td /></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Michael: But then, that's the only way to confirm intent like</td><td>Michael questions killing people without knowing their intent, let alone guilt.</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Carter: But I guess that just speaks to the larger issue of how how how</td><td>Carter sidesteps the particulars of Michael's question by returning to the "larger issue" of "people willing to blow themselves up."</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Michael: I understand where you're coming from</td><td /></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Carter: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Michael: But I don't think that it's fair to treat everyone</td><td>Michael's repeated attempt to establish the potential innocence of the "other."</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Carter: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Michael: as a possible hostile just because you're scared that they could like</td><td>Michael names fear as a mover and driver of action amongst his peers.</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>TA: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Michael: whether they are hostile or not hostile you should give them the benefit of the doubt. How would you feel if you were killed just cause</td><td>Michael appeals to logics of "innocent until proven guilty." Michael increasingly uses "you" as directed to his peers.</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>TA: Someone thought</td><td /></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>Michael: you were in the vicinity of an attack</td><td /></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>TA: Right, right.</td><td /></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>Michael: you weren't given the, you weren't given the possibility</td><td>Michael's use of "you" indicates an attempt to have his peers empathize with the people who were killed.</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>TA: warning or something</td><td /></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>Michael: no fair trial nothing. You just shot 3 people who are far away from battlefield.</td><td>Through a declarative statement, Michael emphasizes that 3 people who were likely innocent were killed out of fear.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Toward the end of the class discussion, the students collectively established the rationality of their fears of the other. Barring Michael, they largely converged on the idea that saving the life of one American soldier was worth any cost. The hyperrationality employed by Larry, Joe, Will, Carter, and others worked to exclude and delegitimize the emotions and experiences of the "other," in this case Michael.</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Carter: I feel like in this kind of warfare, that you have to lower your benefi‐ your threshold for benefit of the doubt.</td><td>Carter returns to the cost–benefit analysis. Given the presumed illogical behavior of the "other," the bar has to be lowered.</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>TA: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Carter: to keep yourself safe.</td><td>Carter returns to one's own safety, blurring the boundaries between him and his peers and US military, to express white fear.</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Eddy: So, like if you had let the people come in to reinforce, it would, it might have, killed more [American] soldiers. I think it was a much more justifiable situation</td><td>Eddy introduces more hypotheticals that support Carter's hyperrationality.</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>TA: I see. Right. That's true</td><td /></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Eddy: Like, I don't think it was such a good idea to</td><td /></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>TA: Right</td><td /></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Eddy: do it so quickly. But I think it was like you can at least justify that it might have been actually beneficial. Like you can't say whether it was or not.</td><td>Eddy acknowledges that the killings may or may not be beneficial, but they are still justified.</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Michael: You really think three people could have turned the tide of the battle</td><td /></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>TA: Laughter</td><td /></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Eddy: No, they could have killed one more [American] person.</td><td>The hypothetical loss of one American life justifies the potential killing of innocent "others."</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>As evidenced in this case, hyperrationality, ungrievability, and fear of the other, and a warped sense of time and urgency characterized STEM learning in this undergraduate engineering ethics course. Within the taken‐for‐granted nature of dominant narratives about the "other," rooted in colonial histories, it is easy to overlook how racialized fear or other emotions are drivers of STEM learning. By naming these emotions explicitly, and illustrating their salience, we hope to contribute to a broader examination of how the perceived absence of emotion in STEM and STEM learning are deeply embedded in colonial logics with material and symbolic consequences for people living with the continued legacies of coloniality.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-11">Natalie's Case: Black Children Learning about Water (In)Access</hd> <p>The second case draws data from a project that investigated Black children's meaning‐making during a classroom unit on water (Davis and Schaeffer [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref113">20</reflink>]). This work centered analyses of the socioscientific and felt dimensions of learning about water justice, a topic that can also be viewed as multidimensional and embedded in longer histories of coloniality and power. This case demonstrates how Black children challenged hyperrationality to humanize those affected by inequitable access to clean water and to critique the accompanying white fear. Over the course of the unit, children were agentic in resisting the paradigm of hyperrationality in STEM, often performing expressions of power to highlight absurdities, evoke compassion, prompt urgency, and/or underscore the sanctity of Black lives. As illustrated in Figure 2 (below), a valuing of human dignity and lives destabilized and recalibrated the emotional configuration of coloniality in STEM (Figure 1). Within this context where collective histories of racism and communal resistance were not taken for granted, children leveraged disciplinary, sociopolitical and affective knowledge to advance solutions and imagine alternative futures. To illustrate these claims, we present data from two key exercises.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01jan26/sce21959-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21959-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 Contestations of hyperrationality to destabilize emotional configuration of coloniality." /> </p> <p></p> <p>After a series of learning activities focused on water, a community educator staged a debate to explore the assertion, "Water is a Human Right." Insights and arguments were to be drawn from personal experiences and prior knowledge developed over the course of the school year. Children were instructed to migrate to different areas of the classroom to indicate their agreement or disagreement with the prompt. Once in place, an educator asked the children to share their thoughts. The chart below captures the conversation that ensued, along with notes to support an understanding of the emotive features of the dialogue:</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table><tbody valign="top"><tr><td>Turn</td><td>Student Talk & Debate Flow</td><td>Notes</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Iris:After publicly announcing that she will play "devil's advocate"...Ok, guys.... silence!! Government has to be paid.</td><td>"Silence!..." mimics the tone of a theatre director. "Gov. has to be paid" line stated matter‐of‐factly</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Omar: Nobody can go without water.Omar begins to make a point about lead water but is interrupted by Camden</td><td>Declarative</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Camden: ...and then it kills you! It's a different kind of death!</td><td>Loudly. Tone of exasperation</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Jay: You can go without water for 3 days so you don't really need it.</td><td>Declarative</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Camden: ...since Flint's mayor didn't tell us like ten years ago...</td><td>In a sarcastic tone.</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Iris: It's a money issue</td><td>Declarative. Same matter‐of‐fact tone as above</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Anthony: But what if people abuse it?</td><td>Voice inflection as typical to indicate questioning</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Asia: You can get it yourself. But what if they make you pay based on how much the government knows you have?</td><td>Declarative. "But what if..." voiced in a tone of suggestion</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Omar: Nothing wrong with paying for water, but if you don't have it, you shouldn't have water shut off. If you can't afford it, shutting off water is practically a death penalty.</td><td>Confidently declarative</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Iris: Economy might fail...</td><td>Same tone as above</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>An influx of students move from the middle of the room to indicate a shift in stance. Teacher asks one of the children to explain why they just moved.</td><td>Confidently declarative</td></tr><tr><td>Asia: I moved from the middle to agree. Water is a human right because you need it. For certain people, it should be free like [for] people on the street</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>background chatter makes it difficult to hear</td><td>Stated authoritatively, like a "calling out" of perceived improper behavior</td></tr><tr><td>Iris: I need you (points to a group of three girls who appear to be playfully discussing something)to break it up and start participating.</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Girls look surprised and offended, someone says, "We were over here talking"</td><td>Soft tone, seemingly annoyed</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>Iris: if it doesn't apply, don't worry about it</td><td>Louder than above. Stated matter‐of‐factly</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>Allurah: We should have a program to help them.</td><td>Declarative</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>As the class group was shuffling around in preparation for the debate, Iris said aloud that she would play "Devil's Advocate" (turn 1). "Devil's Advocate" is a colloquialism typically used to indicate contrarian thinking or performance, particularly when the stance taken is likely to cause unrest. Beginning with the assertion that "the government has to be paid," Iris sought to embody the role of an individual who ascribed to a commonly‐held ideology that no matter the circumstances, people are accountable to pay the government what they owe. Iris's stance as a devil's advocate fits our definition of hyperrationality: verbal and embodied expressions whereby learners try to maintain an appearance of neutrality and emotional distance to give credence to political, socioscientific convictions, even under conditions where emotional detachment would be unconscionable. That is, Iris took the position that the government is owed payment for water, even though the lack of water amounts to people's death—a point her peers quickly raised.</p> <p>The manner and content of Iris' contributions were evidence of her sensemaking around how power gets legitimized and performed in science learning contexts and society. Iris's tone and disposition were matter‐of‐fact, almost casual. Without elevating her voice or offering emotional transparency, Iris was being intentionally provocative to elicit a response from her classmates. The performance of emotional distance here cannot be disentangled from the affective consequences Iris sought to evoke. In the performance of rationality, Iris tried to initiate a pedagogical opening for her peers to respond to the dominant narratives that while not prevalent in this classroom, are nonetheless advanced and sustained in damaging ways within society more broadly.</p> <p>While the other children who were vocalizing ideas during the debate likely heard Iris's inputs, no one directly responded to her statements. Students may have realized that Iris's contributions to the discussion were in character (i.e. not a reflection of her personal ideas) and consequently not worthy of a direct response. Asia's mention of payment in turn 8 could be understood as evidence of her considering and ultimately contesting Iris's repeated references to money as an "issue" to be solved without consideration of individuals' means/circumstances (turns 1 & 6). Still, in both content and delivery, children consistently contributed to the debate in ways that contrasted with Iris' performance. For example, where the tone of Iris's articulations was apathetic, many of her classmates' expressions were delivered with an elevated tone and/or featured emotionally‐charged language. In turn 3 Camden remarked about "kills" and "death," which was followed by Omar's (turn 9) reference to lack of water access as a "death penalty." By elevating the emotions and experiences of the "other," the children resisted Iris's performance of hyperrationality to humanize the "other" and position their lives as grievable again. By shifting the focus away from money and commodification, two drivers of colonialism, children contested the idea that residents' lives were ungrievable and conveyed a sense of urgency based on humans' fundamental needs. We view the economic argument as another manifestation of white fear—the fear that providing basic needs outside of capitalist infrastructure, particularly to minoritized groups, threatens the stability of society. Interestingly, when Iris dropped out of character to redirect her classmates in turn 12, she too shifted from apathetic to suggest annoyance and concern. This affective shift underscored the distinction between her own understanding of the significance of the exercise (and frustrations with those taking it less seriously) and her working conceptions of those in power as lax and indifferent.</p> <p>Children participating in this debate were practicing and exploring what constitutes legitimate forms of talk and emotional expression in relation to socio‐scientific issues. Both through Iris's contributions and Anthony's (turn 7) question, "But what if people abuse it?", children conveyed an awareness of looming fears that universal clean water access might be unsustainable, if not potentially destabilizing for status quo society. But despite acknowledging concerns about government sustenance and ethical use, as a collective, children seemed to land somewhere else not dictated by these fears of an imagined "other." In this case, collective knowledge of histories of water (in)access were leveraged to consider alternative realities that placed a higher value on living. The focus at the end of the debate centered on the development of programs and structures to ensure that all people, even those without homes "on the street," would have access to the water needed to sustain life. In stark contrast to Case #1, the emotions and experiences of the "other" worked to resist, shift, and transform the hyperrationality that initially framed this discussion.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-13">Performance of Power & Personhood in the Film</hd> <p>A second set of illustrative examples can be drawn from a culminating film project, where 4th & 5th grade children were supported in developing a film on local water shut‐offs, appropriately titled "No Water, No Life." Reflecting on the purpose of the short film as an act of resistance, student Kendall said, "Our movie is responding to assumptions that we are wasting water...We're just kind of exaggerating like the real situation so that [people watching] can learn about the water shut‐offs and stuff." Another child described the film as a creative tool that allows people to "see that we are feeling empathy for them" a key distinction given the patterns that evidence a privileging of systems over the lived experiences of those suffering. Children's use of their own and others' emotions and experiences transformed hyperrationality. In contrast to Case #1, where white fear dictated timescales of action that called for the use of lethal force against West and South Asians, the children's troubling of hyperrationality instead shifts timescales to make clean water accessible to everyone.</p> <p>In analyzing the emotive and performative aspects of the film, Black children interpreted and critically responded to the hyperrational arguments dehumanizing individuals without access to clean running water. Understanding to some extent the context of coloniality and histories of water (in)access, where Black and brown communities have had their water sources compromised as part of disputes over land sovereignty (e.g. Hartwig et al. [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref114">33</reflink>]), children's responses centered the everyday lives of those most impacted. This theme is evident in the film as children contrast the harsh, stoic, or aloof dispositions of government officials with the expressions of local residents. Finally, children's performances suggest an emergent understanding of how time, along with socioscientific understandings, can be wielded as a tool for emotional and everyday forms of violence. These ideas surfaced throughout key scenes in the film.</p> <p>In an early scene depicting city officials discussing whether or not to proceed with the water shut‐offs, the leader (child wearing a suit jacket, seated center) said to the group, "Here's the deal. The city is running out of money, and so is the water department so we need ideas quickly." He stood up such that he was hovering over the group, tapping his hand on the table with each statement (Figure 3). This portrayal invokes fear to dictate the timescale of action. It is important to note that both the mayor and governor in power at this time were white men. The students perceived a disconnect between the motivations driving the decisions of leaders and the needs of the (primarily Black, working‐class) residents from their city.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01jan26/sce21959-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21959-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 Scene with government officials discussing city water." /> </p> <p></p> <p>Speaking in a matter‐of‐fact tone that mirrored Iris's tone from above, the leader framed the discussion as one arched toward the urgent goal of replenishing the city's depleting monetary resources. As characteristic of hyperrationality, the leader elicited an oversimplified solution to the unsupported fear of economic collapse. His use of the word "quickly," combined with his stature and tone, worked together to manipulate a timescale for action that did not take into consideration residents' needs or the complexity of the issue at hand. After some brainstorming, the group leader decided to shut‐off residents' water who had missed a payment. The rest of the group then cheered and one of the child actors said, "you should win an award." With this moment (and as the children struggled to hold back their laughter), the legitimacy of the group as sound, ethical, and reasonable was brought into question. When the cheering ceased, the leader stated that the shut‐offs were to begin tomorrow. Two members of the group questioned the decision by saying, "isn't that a little too soon?" which sparked crosstalk as others began to question the timeline. To quiet the group, the leader again stood up and said, "Silence!" (also like Iris, above) in a tone meant to evoke fear and quiet resistance to his proposed timeline and decision‐making process. He slammed both hands on the table for emphasis and authority (Figure 4).</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01jan26/sce21959-fig-0004.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21959-fig-0004.jpg" title="4 Children performing power & complacency." /> </p> <p></p> <p>In this dramatic interaction, Black children presented government officials as either passive or otherwise ineffective (larger group) under the rule of an authoritative leader. The leader offered his ideas in a stoical and matter‐of‐fact manner. He shifted to anger when the legitimacy of his decisions was contested. Children were exploring through the film what it meant to embody leadership lacking in socioscientific or ethical grounding. Taking the full scene into account, children challenged prevailing conceptions of expertise through caricatures that lacked compassion and depth. At the same time, they depicted their working conceptions of government processes and practices that render the lives of Black people as ungrievable. In their embodied actions, they demonstrated how leaders' hyperrationality was predicated on ungrievability and the colonial privileging of commodities. The persons presumed to be knowledgeable were performed as incompetent and money‐driven, virtually unaffected by the consequences of their actions for residents. Presenting government officials as callous and aloof was a recurring theme throughout the film. In subsequent scenes, the script featured a disgruntled and dismissive receptionist (Figure 5, top) and a government call center representative emerging from under the table after sleeping on the job (Figure 5, bottom). Importantly, the use of humor further challenged hyperrationality and represented their sensemaking around the absurdity of the circumstances. Through shared laughter, they also demonstrated an emotional dexterity that contested the ideologies driving decision‐making.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01jan26/sce21959-fig-0005.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21959-fig-0005.jpg" title="5 Emotionally detached, incompetent leaders and frustrated, determined residents." /> </p> <p></p> <p>Where those with power and government authority were often portrayed as emotionally distant, those subjected to environmental injustices were often portrayed with more nuance and overt emotional depth. Recall Kendall's comment above about the movie responding to "assumptions" about people and their ethical use of natural resources. Throughout the film, there was clear evidence of children challenging the fears of an impractical, wasteful "other" through the representations of people living with, feeling, and combating the water shut‐offs. Heightened emotional expression, in contrast to performed hyperrationality, coincided with the dispositions necessary to fight and work toward socioscientific solutions. Additionally, children offered critical commentary on time and the lack of urgency in response to resident needs. In Figure 5 above, the child "resident" acted out what we interpret as weariness while waiting for several hours on the phone for a human response. In the scene, the caller held the line with fortitude, even while visibly frustrated, with the hope that someone might address her concerns.</p> <p>The scene in Figure 6 opened with a pregnant mother dancing before her son enters to share the news that their water had been cut off. Together, the two traveled to the mayor's office to request an immediate meeting. The receptionist working on behalf of the city did not show outward compassion for the mother and child's experience. She stared and dismissed the mother's impassioned demand for assistance, thus also rejecting the proposed timescale through delayed response. Here, the children scripted a scene characterized by emotional turbulence and a range of felt experiences that corresponded with their deepening understandings of water. The mother shifted quickly between embodied actions that typically communicate affective stances of joy (i.e. smiling and dancing), concern, frustration and rage. While the performance of detached hyperrationality suited the characters of those in power, children seemed to find this mode of engagement ineffective in representing the experiences, and strivings of Black people impacted by water instability.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/SED/01jan26/sce21959-fig-0006.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMMvl7ESepq84yOvsOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="sce21959-fig-0006.jpg" title="6 Children portraying emotional dexterity and connection." /> </p> <p></p> <p>Taken together, these examples show children making sense of emotions as resources in resisting colonial imaginaries while foregrounding human dignity as a core object of STEM learning. Further, it illustrates that the children have at least implicitly experienced the confluence of ungrievability, hyperrationality, fear, and urgency that directly impact their lives. Through these activities in a STEM classroom, the children not only surface and contest these colonial logics, but also offer new possibilities that center human dignity.</p> <hd id="AN0190305603-18">Discussion & Conclusion</hd> <p>The contrasting cases illuminate key elements of the framework proposed in Figure 1, <emph>Emotional Configurations of Coloniality</emph>. Case 1 emphasizes the role of hyperrationality in a STEM learning context that was predicated on the ungrievability of West and South Asian others. In this instance, hyperrationality worked to mask and legitimize the white fear of the students (and Western colonial nations more generally). This fear, in turn, dictated timescales of action to justify the killing of innocent civilians. Michael's attempt to surface the emotions and experiences of the "other" was thwarted at every turn as the hyperrational stances excluded and minimized these perspectives. In Case 2, on the other hand, Black children were aware of hyperrationality through their own lived experiences. In both classroom discourse and the film project, children performed hyperrationality, often in an exaggerated fashion, and for the purpose of critiquing it. Starting from the bottom left hand corner of the diagram (revised in Figure 2), children leveraged the emotions and experiences of the "other" to resist, shift, and transform discourses of hyperrationality. In doing so, they not only contested the ungrievability of the other; they took steps toward humanizing the people grappling with water (in)access. To an extent, children in this context unmasked the racialized fears that undergirded water policy, which allowed them to advocate for new timescales of action that centered the humanity of the other (and themselves and their families).</p> <p>Scholarship on affect and learning understandably focuses on the presence of emotion and significance of emotional stancetaking to learning environments. Building upon work on emotional configurations (Vea [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref115">71</reflink>]), a goal of this work is to sharpen and expand our lenses of emotionality in STEM, to include attention to the normed maintenance of embodied "objectivity" and detachment. Vea ([<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref116">71</reflink>]) writes, "The way humans come to assess the emotional configurations of others as normative or not also has power implications, such as in the historical associations between women's emotional practices and charges of irrationality" (p. 339). STEM contexts have historically also perpetuated similar logics that often go undetected or challenged, though they can play a substantive role in shaping learners' imaginations and theories of change. Through our reanalysis of two cases, we have shown that the seeming absence of emotion when addressing issues of power and the sanctity of life is in fact significant in shaping the domain for STEM learning. In an engineering ethics class, claims that sought to legitimize murder by drone warfare went largely uncontested when presented as part of a composed, cost–benefit analysis. The profoundly emotional nature of these seemingly unemotional interactions are only made clear through a lens of coloniality, especially when hyperrationality is shown to be predicated on the ungrievability of the other and irrational fears. Through these lenses, the STEM meanings and emotional stances being recognized and challenged by Black children learning about water also become more visible.</p> <p>A growing body of research has called for explicit attention to whiteness and persistent racism in STEM and STEM education. These efforts are critical in advancing a larger project toward justice in STEM teaching. Our findings also suggest that hyperrationality, as part of an emotional configuration of coloniality within STEM spaces, needs to be acknowledged if we are to fully address whiteness as a complex technological and sociopolitical enterprise (Benjamin [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref117">7</reflink>]). We recognize that what we can extrapolate from these cases might be limited, especially since our claims are based in two cases that were overtly political. While we acknowledge that our analysis is thus exploratory, we believe that our findings may have direct implications for learning about racialized, socioscientific issues more broadly. Socioscientific issues inherently entail competing interests between groups. For groups that are differentially raced and powered, their relationships are also marked by varying degrees of ungrievability and fear of the other. Our analysis is a step in articulating the significance of hyperrationality in STEM learning, as a mechanism that may inadvertently be working against decolonial innovations (Dominguez [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref118">22</reflink>]). <emph>How</emph> learners engage in robust STEM learning communities is just as important as the <emph>what</emph>, e.g. content focus and the design of curriculum that explicitly takes up topics and questions of race/racism, ethics, sustainability, and human dignity.</p> <p>We see this work as integral to understanding what it might look like to participate and operate outside of a colonial imagination, by designing STEM environments that are explicit in naming hyperrationality as a potential barrier to expansive, dignity‐conferring forms of learning (Espinoza and Vossough [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref119">25</reflink>]). One way that this dynamic surfaced in our analysis is through the warping of time. Our attention to hyperrationality highlights how urgency and timescales impact ethical learning in STEM. Across both cases, the students expressed or problematized the contrasting narratives that swift, costly action on behalf of the government was acceptable, while swift actions that would minimize harms, save lives, and redress the needs of other communities were deemed illogical. To advance an argument for swift government action, engineering students drew from discursive scripts that were nearly identical to the language found in official government statements. While their laughter suggested a level of discomfort, this discomfort was not enough to shift the discourse or redirect students' sense of urgency. And yet, the second case demonstrates that these perspectives are not inevitable. They can be resisted, as children in this case did often through humor and with conviction. Rather than rely on official scripts that justify imperialism, Black children were beginning to consider alternatives to hyperrationality. Histories of resistance, communal knowledge, and everyday discourses and priorities were treated as valid data points to be considered in socioscientific decision making.</p> <p>The vast distinctions across our cases as tied to theories of sociopolitical change prompt us to also consider if/how hyperrationality in STEM also has implications for scholarship on civic engagement. As evidenced in the case about water shuts‐offs and the Flint water crisis, the learning activities surfaced these Black children's apprehensions about city officials and anger surrounding policy decisions. Without adult redirection or consequence, the children were able to articulate their critiques of hyperrationality in these officials' dealings with the local community. Civic engagement in STEM education glosses over the complexities of social change that these children had learned through their lived experiences, often framing the avenues for change in overly simplistic ways. Learning to challenge colonialism and pursue justice‐oriented STEM futures must include opportunities for students to access and express the full range of human emotions. Analogously, in the case of the engineering students, their full range of emotions was constrained by the irrational fear of the other and being disconnected from the ungrievable other. These students might have also benefited from additional support around civic engagement that makes visible the bodily and emotional traumas faced by people combating colonialism and genocide globally. We can and should feel compassion and lament the lives devastated and lost. 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  Data: The Emotional Valence of Hyperrationality in STEM Learning: Reinscriptions and Contestations of Coloniality
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Natalie+R%2E+Davis%22">Natalie R. Davis</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6215-7861">0000-0001-6215-7861</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Thomas+M%2E+Philip%22">Thomas M. Philip</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Science+Education%22"><i>Science Education</i></searchLink>. 2026 110(1):269-285.
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  Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
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  Data: 17
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  Data: 2026
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  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Higher+Education%22">Higher Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Postsecondary+Education%22">Postsecondary Education</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Abstract+Reasoning%22">Abstract Reasoning</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22STEM+Education%22">STEM Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Emotional+Response%22">Emotional Response</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Science+and+Society%22">Science and Society</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Student+Attitudes%22">Student Attitudes</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Evaluative+Thinking%22">Evaluative Thinking</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Human+Dignity%22">Human Dignity</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Humanization%22">Humanization</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Undergraduate+Students%22">Undergraduate Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Engineering+Education%22">Engineering Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Ethics%22">Ethics</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Colonialism%22">Colonialism</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Classroom+Communication%22">Classroom Communication</searchLink>
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  Data: 10.1002/sce.21959
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  Data: 0036-8326<br />1098-237X
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  Data: As part of the special issue "Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education," this paper examines the emergence and performance of hyperrationality in STEM classrooms. Hyperrationality describes verbal and embodied expressions whereby learners try to maintain an appearance of neutrality and emotional distance to give credence to political, socioscientific convictions, even under conditions where complete emotional detachment would be unconscionable. Hyperrationality in STEM learning environments poses a threat to human dignity (Espinoza et al. 2020) by reinscribing approaches to STEM that devalue the lives and lived experiences of those "othered". We present a comparative analysis of cases taken from our respective (individual) studies focused on ethics, historicity, politics, and STEM learning. The first case is drawn from an undergraduate engineering ethics class discussion of militarized drones. The second case is from a year-long socioscientific unit on water enacted with Black children in a city wrestling with water shut-offs. In our analysis of these two cases, we consider how hyperrationality, the ungrievability of the other and racialized fear become components of interpretative repertoires that learners co-construct to compartmentalize and/or partially reconcile the inherent contradictions arising from these entanglements. Our cases evidence the emotional configurations of colonality that reinscribe imperialism, while also recognizing when/how nondominant communities resist these logics as they surface in STEM classrooms.
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  Data: 2026
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      – SubjectFull: STEM Education
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      – SubjectFull: Emotional Response
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      – TitleFull: The Emotional Valence of Hyperrationality in STEM Learning: Reinscriptions and Contestations of Coloniality
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