This project examines how curricula and practices in a culturally situated, community-based youth development program nurture and support the STEM engagement of Black and Latinx boys and girls.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amanda CaseSigne KastbergNielsen PereiraJessica Hauser
This Innovations in Development project supports racially and ethnically diverse youth in learning about climate resilience in informal settings, including community centers, afterschool programs, and museums. The project aims to: (1) build the capacity of community organizations to implement youth programming on climate resilience; (2) increase youth knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy associated with climate resilience (also referred to as environmental health literacy for climate resilience); and (3) explore how collaborating research universities and community organizations engage diverse youth in informal STEM learning. Project partners include the UNC Institute for the Environment, the University of Washington-Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Diseases, Genomics and Environment, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Juntos NC, and the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC). Juntos NC and DRCC actively engage Latino and Indigenous youth in their programming and seek to implement resilience-focused programming that supports youth science learning and leadership development.
Together, informal educators and participating youth will develop locally relevant solutions to climate impacts in their communities. Youth will interact with university-based climate scientists and educators to collect and analyze data and will participate in resilience-focused dialogue, planning, and actions in their communities. Youth will share what they learn with their families and peers through family events and teen summits. The project will engage dozens of educators in community organizations and at least 250 youth, who will share what they learn with their families and communities, reaching hundreds more people through communications and local action projects. Mixed-methods assessment will provide insight into the extent participating youth (a) develop environmental health literacy for climate resilience, and (b) take action to address resilience in their home communities. The team will assess how these outcomes vary by location, and the implications of any variation on potential for project replication. A participatory evaluation, led by an external evaluator, will provide insight into empowerment outcomes. Findings will be disseminated to professional audiences at local and national conferences; and curricular materials from this project will be disseminated through the project website.
Mentoring is a widely accepted strategy for supporting positive socioemotional and cognitive development across a variety of sectors including education, workforce development, and the justice system. An estimated 2.5 million volunteer mentors support youth development in the United States each year. However, there is broad concern that practice has outpaced empirical testing, with significant gaps in the research literature on important modifiers of mentoring relationships and their impacts. This is especially true for mentoring youth ages 10-14 in STEM. Studying highly successful programs may be one way to better understand the role of mentoring and moderators of mentoring effectiveness. The Science Club, a community-based STEM mentoring program for middle-grade youth in the Chicago area, will provide multiple sites for a research study to examine three important issues for advancing theory and practice for STEM mentoring. These issues include (1) understanding STEM mentoring for youth in the middle grades, (2) identifying outcomes and motivations for scientist mentors to more fully participate in mentoring programs, and (3) examining a model of middle-school-focused STEM mentoring collaboration.
Through a series of three studies, the team will investigate which elements of the mentoring relationships are associated with the demonstrated STEM identity gains in youth participants. The work will also contribute much-needed data on the impact of STEM mentoring relationships on the mentors themselves. Study 1 is designed as a retrospective study of program alumni, both youth and mentors, about the nature and extent of each their STEM identity shifts during their time in Science Club. A purposeful sample of 160+ youth and 100+ mentor alumni will participate. Study 2 is a prospective study of three consecutive cohorts of active Science Club participants, built on data and findings from Study 1. In Study 2, the team will design and implement a new Identity-Focused Mentoring Observation Instrument specifically aimed at exploring the nature and quality of mentoring relationships and their role in science identity development longitudinally. Three independent cohorts of 40 youth and 20 mentors each will participate. Study 3 is retrospective, examining how participating individuals and organizations perceive and are impacted by mentoring. The three studies employ a mixed methods approach utilizing surveys, observations, individual interviews, and document review.
This proposal will fill critical gaps in the mentoring literature regarding the formative middle school years through novel, empirical research. Building on the current literature and practice, outcomes of the work will inform practice and enhance knowledge-building in the field on both mentoring relationships and the collective impact of university-school-OST partnerships.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.