Effects of Research and Mentoring on Underrepresented Youths’ STEM Persistence Into College

Background: Authentic research experiences and mentoring have positive impacts on fostering STEM engagement among youth from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM. Programs applying an experiential learning approach often incorporate one or both of these elements, however, there is little research on how these factors impact youth's STEM engagement during the high school to college transition. Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the impact of a hands-on field research experience and mentoring as unique factors impacting STEM-related outcomes among underrepresented youth. We focus on the high school to college transition, a period that can present new barriers to STEM persistence. Methodology/Approach: We surveyed 189 youth before and up to 3 years after participation in a 7-week intensive summer intervention. Findings/Conclusions: Authentic research experiences was related to increased youths’ science interest and pursuit of STEM majors, even after their transition to college. Mentorship had a more indirect impact on STEM academic intentions; where positive mentorship experiences was related to youths’ reports of social connection. Implications: Programs designed for continuing STEM engagement of underrepresented youth would benefit from incorporating experiential learning approaches focused on authentic research experiences.

Using Critical Environmental Agency to Engage Teachers in Local Watersheds through Water Quality Citizen Science

This qualitative study explores teachers’ critical environmental agency (CEA) through deepening content knowledge, engaging in identity development, developing a critical consciousness of place, and moving toward civic action. We explored the meanings secondary science teachers made of an on-going professional development (PD) situated in the Okefenokee Swamp (unique ecosystem that drains to Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean) and focused on local watershed citizen science monitoring and the global implications of all water being connected. Data analyses focused on how the nineteen teachers’ experiences and meanings were leveraged to develop CEA and the constraints that restricted their CEA development. Our findings broaden the understanding of how teachers, who teach historically underrepresented youth in low socioeconomic rural areas, come to see themselves as people who care about the environment and become empowered to envision a more sustainable future for their students and communities.

Investigating the Effect of Community-Based Educational Robotics Programs on Underrepresented Youth

Traditional STEM academic programs have a large discrepancy in participation and engagement between low-income and minority students as compared to their peers from other demographics. This underrepresentation is visible beginning in the classroom and carrying through to higher education and the STEM workforce. The Ware Research Group previously studied the STEM learning environments of low-income communities in Lafayette, IN. Study results suggested that traditionally structured classroom environments were not effective in achieving high levels of participation and engagement in STEM material. To address this deficit, the research group is observing how community-centered STEM programs affect participation and engagement from low-income and minority students. The research group is using FIRST LEGO League (FLL), an internationally recognized STEM program for students in grades 4-8, as the vehicle for STEM education. Two FLL teams have been established in community centers serving the same communities previously studied by the research group. These teams focus on the STEM curriculum developed for the FLL program, focusing on action-based projects and the development of STEM and soft skills. The participating students on the teams range in age from 9-14 and offer a snapshot of the community demographic. This study is collecting qualitative data on student growth based on STEM engagement and overall educational outcomes. The team hypothesized students will see measurable improvements in skills such as programming, critical thinking, and communication. Thus far, qualitative observations have supported the hypothesis; however, the study will need to continue before making final conclusions. Community-based STEM programs may improve student representation in STEM programs and fields. If this study is proven to be successful, it could provide a resource for developing similar community-based stem programming.

"GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA?": UNDERREPRESENTED YOUTH PERSPECTIVES ON THE ETHICAL AND EQUITABLE DESIGN OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

This study investigates underrepresented youths’ perspectives on social media design and how these may inform the development of more ethical and equitable social media apps. In contrast to the tradition of universal design in the field of human-computer interaction, this research centers difference to investigate how users’ perspectives and expectations, shaped by their identities, help determine the affordances of social media and their ethical implications. Twenty-five in-depth interviews and youth-guided “think aloud” social media tours were carried out with a diverse range of young people from underrepresented groups. Findings illustrate how young people perceive and experience empowering and disempowering aspects of social media design. Interviewees expressed a palpable sense of underrepresentation in the digital technology design sector and noted several ways in which design elements of social media can exacerbate a sense of inadequacy. The negative implications of user profile design and popularity rating systems that encourage conformity were found to be of particular concern for low-income youth, youth of color, and other underrepresented groups. However, our findings also illuminate youth perceptions on how social media can sometimes serve as a tool to counter negative stereotypes and build social capital. The analysis includes concrete suggestions from underrepresented youth for more ethical and equitable social media design.

COMUNIX WhatsAppers: The Community School in Portugal and Spain

This symposium article investigates the COMUNIX—Active Participation of Young People in the Governance of Common Lands—community school. To do so, I analyze how the community school implemented pedagogical activities based on informal learning, which aims to stimulate young people to exchange communal and practical experiences. On the one hand, this article investigates, while thinking through bottom-up educational pedagogies, how underrepresented youth were challenged to absorb knowledge about common lands. On the other, using the lens of digital sociology it explores how COMUNIX WhatsAppers appropriated digital media to activate their participation through deliberation channels. The article is based on a digital ethnography of group interactions and conversations on WhatsApp chat and Facebook page, complemented by participant observation. It shows how digital media has come to constitute a key platform for deliberation during the community school.

“Good Social Media?”: Underrepresented Youth Perspectives on the Ethical and Equitable Design of Social Media Platforms

This study investigates underrepresented youths’ perspectives on social media design and how these may inform the development of more ethical and equitable social media apps. In contrast to the tradition of universal design in the field of human–computer interaction, this study centers difference to investigate how users’ perspectives and expectations, shaped by their identities, help determine the affordances of social media and their ethical implications. Twenty-five in-depth interviews and youth-guided “think aloud” social media tours were carried out with a diverse range of young people from underrepresented groups. Findings illustrate how young people perceive and experience empowering and disempowering aspects of social media design. Interviewees expressed a palpable sense of underrepresentation in the digital technology design sector and noted several ways in which design elements of social media can exacerbate a sense of inadequacy. The negative implications of user profile design and popularity rating systems that encourage conformity were found to be of particular concern for low-income youth, youth of color, and other underrepresented groups. However, our findings also illuminate youth perspectives on how social media can sometimes serve as a tool to counter negative stereotypes and build social capital. The analysis includes concrete suggestions from underrepresented youth for more ethical and equitable social media design.

Praxis of Refusal: Self-Fashioning Identity and Throwing Attitude in Pérez’s The First Rule of Punk

Teresa Covarrubias’s performance at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights epitomizes the act of refusing that which has been refused to you. Covarrubias invites all the other misfits, all the other “kids like me,” to not capitulate to a gaze that would otherwise define and confine possibilities for Chicanx youth expression. María Luisa O’Neill-Morales (Malú,) the narrator of Celia C. Pérez’s The First Rule of Punk, finds affinity in the figure of Teresa Covarrubias. Malú’s interrogation of her complex bicultural heritage, and her eventual self-fashioning of an integrated identity activates the punk rock ethos to refuse agents of assimilation. This chapter explores how Pérez’s narrative holds up a mirror to all the weirdo outsiders, all the underrepresented youth who are also refused. This chapter argues how Pérez’s project, like Covarrubias’s, models acts of positive refusal that while acknowledging the delimiting systems that seek to shape Malú, also exemplifies through Malú’s agency how Chicanx youth create spaces wide enough to carry all their truths.