STEM Literacies, Learning, and Identities through Cascading Models of Near-Peer Mentorship

尽管数十年来一直在努力扩大STEM的参与，但在许多领域，包括实验室工作、工程和教学等，来自有色人种社区的人在STEM中的代表性不足。研究表明，当青年有机会在课堂内外发展并与他人分享他们的经验时，就有可能在学校内外获得更广泛的STEM学习机会。辅导是一种广泛接受的战略，可在包括教育和劳动力发展在内的各个部门支持青年学习和身份发展。然而，人们普遍担心，需要进行更多的实证研究，特别是与STEM中的初中和高中青年有关的研究。青年人可以在正式和非正式学习环境中成为有效的领导者，这种指导和教学方法可以导致STEM学习和积极的身份发展，对扩大参与产生影响。在正式和非正式的背景下，让青年扮演促进者的角色，有希望认同参与STEM内容和实践。因此，该项目调查了年轻人如何构建和发展与STEM的联系，以作为年轻青年中STEM思想和实践的导师，促进者和策展人。此外，该项目的成果寻求了解正式和非正式学习环境的设计，支持STEM身份的发展，为青年的颜色，面向青年作为知识渊博的专家，并侧重于青年的持续教学发展作为导师在STEM。该项目将与波士顿地区的两个非正式和两个正式学习伙伴合作，与140名14-24岁的年轻人合作，96%来自有色人种社区，他们参加了与STEM领域青年指导计划有关的活动。这些合作伙伴有着丰富的计划历史，专注于培养高中和大学青年导师在STEM夏令营工作，以及高中三年级和四年级学生在数学和数字制造工程方面指导新生和新生。该项目打算调查青年导师如何教学，他们在哪些方面取得成功，在哪些方面需要支持，并为学校和校外组织的专业学习机会制定原则。该项目特别侧重于了解“青年教学发展”，即青年不断学习成为导师的过程。探索YPD涉及了解青年学习STEM思想，识字率和教学策略，以及青年如何认同STEM和STEM指导。青年导师可以接触到大量的学习者，更重要的是，他们可以以有意义的方式与其他青年建立深刻的联系。这一参与性项目借鉴了人种学和案例研究方法，并采用了支持扩大STEM参与的工作领域：a）关于青年作为STEM学习导师的先前研究; B）正式和非正式学习环境中的权力和权威分配; c）学术身份发展;以及d）STEM扫盲。通过收集和分析来自四个不同背景下的数据，这些组织具有共同的价值观和实践，包括分布式权威知识，该伙伴关系旨在了解支持学生作为STEM素养，学习，身份发展和教学法方面的导师的计划设计原则。通过对青年导师进行为期两年的跟踪，案例研究将突出强调当青年以导师的身份持续参与更长时间时，STEM学习、身份建设和教学法是如何发展的。除了在学术会议上传播这项工作外，该项目将有一个网站，将是有用的其他社区团体和学校，利用辅导的做法，并将举办一个会议，将涉及所有合作伙伴组织以及来自美国各地的团体谁使用辅导，以支持STEM学习和身份发展。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

Despite decades-long efforts to broaden STEM participation, the underrepresentation of people from communities of color persists in STEM across many areas, including, for example, laboratory work, engineering, and teaching. Research suggests that more expansive STEM learning opportunities are possible in school and out of school when youth have opportunities to develop and share their experience with others, both in and beyond the classroom. Mentoring is a widely accepted strategy for supporting youth learning and identity development across a variety of sectors including education and workforce development. There is broad concern, however, that more empirical research needs to be done, especially related to middle school and high school youth in STEM. Young people can be effective leaders in both formal and informal learning contexts and such mentorship and pedagogy can lead to STEM learning and positive identity development with implications for broadening participation. In formal and informal contexts, having youth act in facilitator roles holds promise for identification with engaging in STEM content and practices. As such, this project investigates the ways in which young people construct and develop affiliations with STEM in their capacity as mentors, facilitators, and curators of STEM ideas and practices among younger youth. Additionally, the project outcomes seek to understand the design of formal and informal learning environments that support STEM identity development for youth of color by orienting to youth as knowledgeable experts and focusing on youth's ongoing pedagogical development as mentors in STEM. In partnership with two informal and two formal learning partners in the Boston area, this project will work with 140 young people, aged 14-24, 96% from communities of color, who participate in activities related to youth mentoring initiatives in STEM areas. These partners have a rich history of initiatives focused on developing high school and college youth mentors to work in STEM summer camps and juniors and seniors in high school to mentor freshmen and sophomores in mathematics and digital fabrication engineering. The project intends to investigate how youth mentors teach, where they are successful and where they need support, and to develop principles for professional learning opportunities for schools and out-of-school organizations. The project focuses, in particular, on understanding “youth pedagogical development” (YPD), or youth’s ongoing process of learning to be mentors. Exploring YPD involves understanding youth’s learning of STEM ideas, literacies, and pedagogical strategies and how youth come to identify with STEM and STEM mentoring. Youth mentors can reach large numbers of learners, and more importantly they can connect deeply with other youth in meaningful ways. This participatory project draws on ethnographic and case study methods and employs areas of work shown to support broadening participation in STEM: a) prior research on youth as mentors in STEM learning; b) distributions of power and authority in formal and informal learning contexts; c) academic identity development; and d) STEM literacies. By collecting and analyzing data from four different contexts with organizations that have shared values and practices, including distributed authority for knowing, the partnership intends to understand program design principles that support students as mentors in regard to STEM literacies, learning, identity development, and pedagogy. By following youth mentors over two years, the case studies will highlight how STEM learning, identity building, and pedagogy are developed when youth participate as mentors in sustained ways over longer stretches of time. In addition to disseminating this work at academic conferences, the project will have a website that will be useful to other community groups and schools that utilize mentoring practices and will host a conference that will involve all partner organizations as well as groups from around the US who use mentoring to support STEM learning and identity development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.