Kareem Edouard has been researching for years on how to make children’s media more inclusive. And these days he’s putting those ideas into practice, on a big platform.
He is applying his research as a creative producer for a new show on PBS called Solve it Wombats!aimed at teaching computational thinking concepts to children from 3 to 6 years old.
Edouard is no stranger to media creation. Before becoming an academic, he spent years producing television commercials and music videos. He then changed careers to become a kindergarten teacher and then a high school teacher before going back to earn a doctorate in education from Stanford University.
Currently, he is an assistant professor of learning sciences and STEM education in Drexel University’s College of Education, directing the university’s Informal Learning Linking Engineering, Science, and Technology (ILLEST Laboratory).
EdSurge sat down with Edouard to talk about how his research informs his new animated TV show, and how he thinks the media industry needs to change to help attract more black students to STEM fields.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Cloudy, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or use the player on this page. Or read a partial transcript below, lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: What is the gap you’ve seen in children’s entertainment around STEM themes that you’re trying to fill?
Karim Edward: The main job with my production hat is shading. We have this broad discussion about equity and inclusion, but we miss the cultural nuance of representation across the spectrum, particularly for young children. And the work that I do, both in an academic space and in production work, is to make sure that the voices that are missing, particularly Black and Latino students, immigrant students, and LGBTQ students, are represented to a broad [range of media]particularly in STEM media for kids.
That does two things. One, it provides motivation and inspiration, when you see yourself reflected in you. And the second thing we find is the lack of creators. [of entertainment shows]the actual creators of the content who also resemble the youth we are seeking to reach.
When you were a kid watching children’s shows, did you feel like something was missing?
As a young black man, there was always the coming-of-age story, and it was always focused on the white man. So Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, very focused on white men, as well as all the cartoons.
And I’m not saying we didn’t have any representation [in media]But the representation wasn’t direct enough to speak to me, to see myself reflected where I felt confident, felt appreciated, and also felt the nuance of who I’m seeing on the screen. And part of that was a lot of it was through a white gaze.
There was very limited discussion about how we represent black children, for example. If you’re old enough to remember the TV show “Break”, one of the characters was a black man wearing a basketball jersey and high top sneakers. Something was still missing, in the fact that this character was very flat, which most ’80s and ’90s cartoons were very flat to begin with, but it was really flat, particularly for black boys and black girls.
Are you saying it felt off balance?
My parents are from Haiti, so being not only black, but also Haitian was another part of the immigration story that I wanted to see reflected. And we didn’t see that. It was always a very particular East Coast story of what it was like to be a black kid.
So the work that I do, particularly in the ILLEST Laboratoryit’s that we seek to challenge those constructs and really try to advance this conversation that there are opportunities to not only see ourselves, but also to be active creators in the process.
In his career, he has also been a primary and secondary teacher. How has that influenced his way of thinking? No. 1, the kids aren’t really listening to you as a teacher, they’re soaking up the culture outside of the classroom. So Carol Lee she’s an academic that I really hold dear to my heart, and she frames it through this conversation of ‘cultural shaping.’ So you bring what’s outside of the culture into the classroom. And one of the first lines of participation for young people is the media they consume. So the kindergarten teachers I hung out with and worked with would always reference the cartoon of him. So we would work by critiquing some of the cartoons that they were seeing and really discussing how to impact their own development.
The second thing is to be very direct. They are not just cartoons. This is a multi-billion dollar industry and you have clues where you can get funding from the government. And then you also have multiple streaming platforms that are paying millions for creators to develop them. So young people are starting to understand and see that, and now they’re starting to ask questions about how they can have representation and access to content that’s really not just for them and their own personal growth development, but then also where this sits. contained in the spirit of the cultural age.
How did you come to work on a show for PBS applying your research?
The idea was already there, from two wonderful executive producers, Marcy Gunther and Marisa Wolsky from WGBH Boston, who approached me for a conversation about diversity and equity. So they had the framework, the roadmap for this show, and they really wanted to figure out how they could make this show even more accessible.
So the first thing I did with my partner, Dr. Darlene Edouard, we got together and watched some early previews of the show and started thinking, what are the cultural touchpoints?
One thing was the intro and the musical framing. [of the theme]. So we made sure to put some raps in there, and I remember sitting down with the young actors and walking them through how to get to the different points in the rap to give them a very clear and nuanced expression of how to pull this off.
What is the basic premise of the show?
It centers on the three wombats, Malik, Sadie, and Zeke, and their family matriarch, Grandma Super. They all live in a tree and the tree follows them using computational thinking (CT) skills to solve problems. And part of it centers around how these young wombats get involved, not just solving problems in the neighborhood, but also navigating the community that’s being built.
So part of what the wombats do for us in terms of having this discourse, particularly having a grandmother as the head of the household, is that there are many of our students or our viewers who live in a family with no mother or father, but the grandmother elevates them. … Really, what we tried to do in designing the treeborhood was reflect what America looks like. And then also narrow down the fact that we’re talking about TC skills and how important it is.
How do you work STEM themes in a show for such young children?
So this is a team thing. I’m sitting here, but it’s still a team thing. And my favorite episode is the cornbread episode. So first of all, we start the cultural framework by talking about how cornbread is made. Everyone makes cornbread differently and we wanted to include that in the show. But part of a TC framework is process, logic, and organization.
They wanted to make Super Grandma’s Special Cornbread, but were short on ingredients. So they had to try different types of cornbread to figure out and isolate which ingredient was missing. And this is the work you do when you’re just starting to code and you’re going through nested if statements. But how do you present that to a 3-5 year old, right? So part of this is making sure that we include all those seven CT skills in activities and also stories that later when you go to the website, play the interactive game or participate in any of the lesson plans that you find in the classroom classes. , that is where not only the games, but also the teachers can continue to reinforce the learning that was done in the program.
Do you think things are changing and improving in the representations of STEM in children’s media in general?
No. The writing and creative teams do not yet reflect the audience they are seeking to reach. And then second, [there’s a need to] provide camaraderie and career path opportunities for people in underrepresented communities to be a part of it.
One of the things at Work It Out Wombats that we’re proud of is that we have a writing grant because my wife and I make it very clear that in order to create these nuanced, cultural discussions, we need writers, not just writers who are underrepresented, but also we need women. We also need people with an immigrant background because here we have characters from diverse backgrounds. In order to have a real, authentic voice for all these characters to introduce, you need the writers to create it.
How does your lab play into that?
The main focus is, how do we create a culturally sustainable STEM engagement for black children? And we have something called the Sneaker Lab where I have about 600 sneakers in there, and we design and create sneakers through the concept of materials science. And being in the animation business and working in a space where creativity is at its peak, I decided to open an animation lab. [in ILLEST Lab] and I will bring black students from West Philadelphia High School to come to the lab and participate.
It’s in its early stages right now, where we’re doing a bit of stop-motion work. In the latest Spider-Verse movie there is a [14-year-old] Black man who was doing animation on YouTube and TikTok who asked to go in and create a sequence with Legos for the movie. And I think those are the opportunities that we need to start cultivating and start strategizing to get as many young people into this space so that they can design and create so that they can get opportunities later on.
Listen to the full conversation on This Week’s EdSurge Podcast.
