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

尽管几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，有色人种社区的代表性仍然不足。研究表明，当年轻人有机会在课堂内外与他人发展和分享经验时，他们在学校和校外都有可能获得更广泛的STEM学习机会。导师制是一种广泛接受的战略，用于支持包括教育和劳动力发展在内的各个部门的青年学习和身份发展。然而，人们普遍担心，需要做更多的实证研究，特别是与初中和高中青少年在STEM方面有关的研究。在正式和非正式的学习环境中，年轻人都可以成为有效的领导者，这种指导和教学法可以引导STEM学习和积极的身份发展，从而扩大参与。在正式和非正式的背景下，让年轻人扮演促进者的角色，有望使他们认同参与STEM的内容和实践。因此，该项目调查了年轻人以导师、促进者和策展人的身份与STEM建立和发展联系的方式。此外，项目成果旨在通过将青年定位为知识渊博的专家，并将重点放在青年作为STEM导师的持续教学发展上，了解支持有色人种青年STEM身份发展的正式和非正式学习环境的设计。该项目与波士顿地区的两个非正式和两个正式学习伙伴合作，将与140名年龄在14-24岁之间的年轻人合作，其中96%来自有色人种社区，他们参加与STEM领域青年指导计划相关的活动。这些合作伙伴在培养高中和大学青年导师方面有着丰富的历史，他们在STEM夏令营中工作，在高中三年级和四年级指导一年级和二年级的学生学习数学和数字制造工程。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。该项目特别侧重于理解“青年教学发展”（YPD），即青年学习成为导师的持续过程。探索YPD包括了解青少年对STEM思想、素养和教学策略的学习，以及青少年如何认同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。这个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)先前对青年作为STEM学习导师的研究；B)正式和非正式学习环境中权力和权威的分配；C)学术认同发展；d) STEM素养。通过收集和分析来自四种不同背景的数据，这些组织拥有共同的价值观和实践，包括知识的分布式权威，该伙伴关系旨在了解项目设计原则，这些原则支持学生作为STEM素养、学习、身份发展和教学法方面的导师。通过对青年导师进行为期两年的跟踪研究，这些案例研究将突出青年在较长时间内以持续的方式作为导师参与时，如何发展STEM学习、身份建立和教学法。除了在学术会议上传播这项工作外，该项目还将建立一个网站，对其他利用指导实践的社区团体和学校有用，并将举办一次会议，邀请所有合作伙伴组织以及来自美国各地使用指导来支持STEM学习和身份发展的团体。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.