Investigating the Development of STEM-Positive Identities of Refugee Teens in a Physics Out-of-School Time Experience

由于流离失所后学校教育有限或中断等因素，难民青年特别容易被剥夺STEM权利；限制STEM教育；以及语言、文化、民族、社会经济和少数民族地位。难民青年可能在STEM技能和知识方面存在差距，参与家庭和社区所必需的身份与期望在STEM环境中取得成功的身份之间存在冲突。为了开展研究以更好地了解这些挑战，将开展一系列相互关联的活动。首先，年轻人将通过与物理学家一起参与宇宙射线研究来学习物理和计算原理，并使用基于他们家乡语言和文化的教学方法。然后，年轻人定期在家庭和社区科学活动中与父母、兄弟姐妹和科学老师分享他们在宇宙射线研究中所学到的知识。最后，青年在项目过程中对自己的STEM身份发展进行反思性研究。将在这三个方面开展学习研究，以更好地了解难民青年如何发展stem积极身份。该项目将通过(1)为难民青年创造参与物理研究和发展计算技能的机会，(2)产生有关STEM身份发展的知识，这些知识可以更广泛地应用于改善STEM教育，从而改善STEM的公平性和多样性，从而造福社会。项目成果包括：(a)关于STEM身份和学习的研究出版物；(b)为会多种语言的青少年提供物理及电脑教学的课程资源；(c)在线数字讲故事展览，提供关于STEM研究归属的叙述，可以与STEM利益相关者（政策制定者、科学家、教育工作者等）分享；(d)建立一个宇宙射线数据的在线数据库，供全世界的物理学家用于研究目的。本发展创新提案由推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）计划资助，该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。这包括提供多种途径，扩大STEM学习经验的获取和参与，推进非正式环境中STEM学习的创新研究和评估，以及发展参与者对深度学习的理解。该课程旨在提供多种背景，关系和模式，可以研究个体学生的身份工作，以寻找趋同或分歧。为了实现这一目标，本研究采用了一种语言人类学框架，将话语分析嵌入到更大的民族志中。本研究收集的数据包括实地记录、宇宙射线研究和其他项目活动中自然互动的音频和视频记录、多模态人工制品（如学生的数字故事）、学生的工作成果、访谈和调查。至关重要的是，这种方法将身份形成的分析与反思性任务和个人叙事的产生（例如，在数字故事和采访中）相结合，因为它在即时对话中展开（在STEM学习期间，以及关于STEM和STEM学习的对话中）。在这些数据来源中记录STEM身份的趋同和分歧，为该领域提供了方法和理论贡献。该研究将对难民青年的话语实践进行详细描述，以揭示他们如何构建与STEM和STEM学科相关的身份（例如，在宇宙射线研究期间，同时创建数字故事），关系（例如，同伴，父母，老师）以及他们所说的语言（例如，英语，斯瓦希里语）。这些发现将对非正式学习经验的教学设计师具有潜在的价值，包括那些与课外、博物馆、科学中心等工作的人、教育工作者和学习和身份的学者。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。

Refugee youth are particularly vulnerable to STEM disenfranchisement due to factors including limited or interrupted schooling following displacement; restricted exposure to STEM education; and linguistic, cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and racial minority status. Refugee youth may experience a gap in STEM skills and knowledge, and a conflict between the identities necessary for participation in their families and communities, and those expected for success in STEM settings. To conduct research to better understand these challenges, an interrelated set of activities will be developed. First, youth will learn principles of physics and computing by participating in cosmic ray research with physicists using an instructional approach that builds from their home languages and cultures. Then youth periodically share what they are learning in the cosmic ray research with their parents, siblings, and science teachers at family and community science events. Finally, youth conduct reflective research on their own STEM identity development over the course of the project. Research on learning will be conducted within and across these three strands to better understand how refugee youth develop STEM-positive identities. This project will benefit society by improving equity and diversity in STEM through (1) creating opportunities for refugee youth to participate in physics research and to develop computing skills and (2) producing knowledge on STEM identity development that may be applied more broadly to improve STEM education. Deliverables from this project include: (a) research publications on STEM identity and learning; (b) curriculum resources for teaching physics and computing to multilingual youth; (c) an online digital storytelling exhibit offering narratives about belonging in STEM research which can be shared with STEM stakeholders (policy makers, scientists, educators, etc.); and (d) an online database of cosmic ray data which will be available to physicists worldwide for research purposes. This Innovations in Development proposal is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.This program is designed to provide multiple contexts, relationships, and modes across and within which the identity work of individual students can be studied to look for convergence or divergence. To achieve this goal, the research applies a linguistic anthropological framework embedding discourse analysis in a larger ethnography. Data collected in this study include field notes, audio and video recordings of naturalistic interactions in the cosmic ray research and other program activities, multimodal artifacts (e.g., students’ digital stories), student work products, interviews, and surveys. Critically, this methodology combines the analysis of identity formation as it unfolds in moment-to-moment conversations (during STEM learning, and in conversations about STEM and STEM learning) with reflective tasks and the production of personal narratives (e.g., in digital stories and interviews). Documenting convergence and divergence of STEM identities across these sources of data offers both methodological and theoretical contributions to the field. The research will offer thick description of the discursive practices of refugee youth to reveal how they construct identities related to STEM and STEM disciplines across settings (e.g., during cosmic ray research, while creating digital stories), relationships (e.g., peer, parent, teacher), and the languages they speak (e.g., English, Swahili). The findings will be of potential value to instructional designers of informal learning experiences including those working with afterschool, museums, science centers and the like, educators, and scholars of learning and identity.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.