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STEM的许多领域，包括实验室工作、工程和教学在内的有色人种代表人数不足的情况仍然存在。研究表明，当年轻人有机会在课堂内外与他人发展和分享他们的经验时，在学校和校外都有可能获得更广泛的STEM学习机会。辅导是一项被广泛接受的战略，用于支持包括教育和劳动力发展在内的各种部门的青年学习和身份发展。然而，人们普遍关注的是，需要进行更多的实证研究，特别是与STEM的初中和高中青年有关的研究。年轻人可以在正式和非正式的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学习和积极的身份认同发展，并对扩大参与产生影响。在正式和非正式的情况下，让青年扮演促进者的角色有望使他们认同参与STEM的内容和做法。因此，该项目调查青年如何作为青年中STEM思想和实践的导师、促进者和管理者，建立和发展与STEM的联系。此外，项目成果力求了解正规和非正规学习环境的设计，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，从而支持有色人种青年的身份发展。与波士顿地区的两个非正式学习伙伴和两个正式学习伙伴合作，该项目将与140名14-24岁、96%来自有色人种社区的青年合作，他们参加与STEM地区青年指导倡议有关的活动。这些合作伙伴有丰富的倡议历史，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，指导数学和数字制造工程方面的一年级和二年级学生。该项目旨在调查青年导师如何授课、在哪里成功以及在哪里需要支持，并为学校和校外组织制定专业学习机会的原则。该项目尤其侧重于了解“青年教育发展”(YPD)，即青年正在进行的学习成为导师的过程。探索YPD包括了解青年对STEM思想、识字和教学策略的学习，以及青年如何对STEM和STEM辅导产生认同。青年导师可以接触到大量的学习者，更重要的是，他们可以通过有意义的方式与其他青年进行深入的联系。这一参与性项目借鉴了人种学和案例研究方法，并采用了支持扩大对STEM的参与的工作领域：a)关于青年作为STEM学习导师的先前研究；b)在正式和非正式学习环境中的权力和权力分配；c)学术认同的发展；d)STEM的识字能力。通过收集和分析与拥有相同价值观和做法的组织(包括分布式知晓权威)在四个不同背景下的数据，该伙伴关系旨在理解项目设计原则，这些原则支持学生在STEM识字、学习、身份发展和教学方面作为导师。通过跟踪青年导师两年多的时间，案例研究将突出STEM学习、认同建立和教学方法是如何在青年以导师的身份在较长时间内持续参与的情况下发展起来的。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，对利用辅导实践的其他社区团体和学校有用，并将主办一次会议，所有合作伙伴组织以及来自美国各地使用辅导支持STEM学习和身份发展的团体都将参加。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.