Change Makers: Urban Youth Food Justice Ambassadors

作为加强非正式环境中学习的总体战略的一部分，推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）计划旨在推进非正式环境中STEM学习的设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解。这个变革者项目将在马萨诸塞州的三个城市建立食品正义大使团，在那里年轻人将安装、管理和学习水培技术的基础科学和技术。该项目采用近同伴指导的方式，使高中青年能够带头改善少数民族和低收入居民获得健康农产品的机会，并通过学习水培科学，帮助中学青年了解新鲜农产品在饮食中的价值。青年们将制作故事地图，以可视化他们社区的食物可及性。高中青年将与他们的社区合作，在中学课后场所建立水培农场。种植的食物将通过农贸市场提供给社区。青年们将在马萨诸塞州城市农业会议上与更大的城市农民社区分享他们的工作。该项目旨在了解该模式的三个组成部分对青年发展的贡献：(1)嵌入社会正义框架的STEM学习，(2)近同伴指导，以及(3)青年目标和职业发展。这将使研究人员更好地了解该项目如何使年轻人学习STEM技能；将它们应用于现实生活中的问题；学习STEM技能与解决个人、职业抱负和社会正义问题的相关性；培养与STEM领域相关的使命感和抱负；并指导其他年轻人完成同样的过程。该项目将采用混合方法、多地点纵向研究，利用定量调查、结构方程建模和定性访谈来研究项目组成部分的交叉点。因此，该研究将解决三个关键问题：1)青年和导师如何看待和体验他们作为教学法参与者的角色？2)干预对青少年的目标感、认同感、职业适应性、工作意愿、批判意识、学校投入、STEM兴趣和STEM意向性有何影响？3)关系/指导和心理社会/职业适应方面的青年环境对他们从该计划中受益的能力，以及在学校和STEM中发展和维持目标和参与的能力有什么贡献？大多数城市青年（和成年人）对他们的食物来源知之甚少，学习如何种植农产品以及发展相关技能的机会有限，这些技能可以导致他们在STEM领域的职业生涯。这尤其令人不安，因为55%的非洲裔美国人居住在中心城市（90%在大都市地区），超过一半的拉丁裔美国人居住在中心城市（美国人口普查局，2011年）。该项目需要从科学领域代表性不足的人群中招募低收入青年参与一个项目，通过发展STEM知识和技能来阐明、分析社会正义问题（粮食正义、粮食安全）并采取行动。具体而言，该项目认识到城市青年成为知识渊博的公民的潜力，他们可以利用自己的STEM知识和技能来解决食物沙漠等社会不公正问题。如果成功，该项目将提供一个可转移到类似背景的模式，以帮助扩大STEM的参与。

As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This Change Makers project will establish Food Justice Ambassador corps across three cities in Massachusetts where youth will install, manage and learn the science and technology underlying hydroponics. The project takes a near-peer mentoring approach that empowers high school youth to take the lead in improving ethnic minority and low-income residents' access to healthy produce and to help educate middle school youth regarding the value of fresh produce in one's diet by learning the science of hydroponics. Youth will create story maps to visualize food accessibility in their communities. High school youth will work with their communities to establish hydroponic farms in middle school after-school settings. The food that is grown will be provided to the community through farmers' markets. Youth will share their work with a larger community of urban farmers at the Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference.This project seeks to understand the contribution on youth development by the model's three components: (1) STEM learning embedded in a social justice framework, (2) near-peer mentoring, and (3) youth purpose and career development. This will enable researchers to better understand how the project enables youth to learn STEM skills; apply them to a real life problem; learn the relevance of STEM skills for addressing personal, career aspiration, and social justice issues; develop a sense of purpose and aspirations related to STEM fields; and mentor other youth through the same process. The project will use a mixed-method, multi-site longitudinal study utilizing quantitative surveys, structural equation modeling, and qualitative interviews to study the intersections of the components of the project. As such, the study will address three key questions: 1) How do youth and mentors perceive and experience their roles as participants in the pedagogy? 2) What is the impact of the intervention on youth' sense of purpose, identity, career adaptability, work volition, critical consciousness, school engagement, STEM interests, and STEM intentionality? 3) What is the contribution of relational/mentoring and psychosocial/career adaptability aspects of the youths' contexts on their capacity to benefit from this program and to develop and sustain purpose and engagement in school and STEM? Most urban youth (and adults) have little knowledge of where their food comes from and have limited opportunities to learn how to grow produce as well as develop related skills that can lead to a career in a STEM field. This is particularly disconcerting as 55% of African Americans live inside central cities (90% in metropolitan areas) and over half of all Latino/as live in central cities (United States Census Bureau, 2011). This project entails the recruitment of low-income youth from populations underrepresented in science into a program where social justice concerns (food justice, food security) are illuminated, analyzed, and acted upon through the development of STEM knowledge and skills. Specifically, this project recognizes the potential for urban youth to become deeply knowledgeable citizens who can mobilize their STEM knowledge and skills to resolve social injustices such as food deserts. If successful, this project will provide a model that should be transferable to similar contexts to help broaden participation in STEM.