Empowering Youth in STEM and Technological Careers through AI-Enhanced Sustainable and Community-Focused Urban Gardening

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This Developing and Testing Innovations (DTI) project will engage high school youth from historically excluded groups in Massachusetts and Louisiana in transdisciplinary learning of computational science, artificial intelligence, engineering, and plant science through the installation of automated urban gardening robots called restorative gardens. These gardens offer an opportunity to bridge traditional gardening and 21st-century technological skills while fostering community engagement by supporting youth in using emerging technologies to address critical issues such as food security. Drawing upon an emancipatory community design and research approach, the program involves youth participatory action research in which young people use research methods to make sense of and address social problems of community food insecurity by building and programming restorative gardens in their local communities. These gardens will serve as a bridge where youth, community, and younger peers can come together to learn and share how emerging technologies can be used to support and advance improvements in urban farming. The career development component features near-peer mentoring to engage youth in exploring a wide array of related STEM career opportunities. This project offers a much-needed approach to support youth in examining careers across fields of agriculture and computation, rather than a specific field, which is valuable for youth who are beginning their career explorations. The outcomes of this project will reveal valuable insights regarding how to integrate restorative gardening, near-peer mentoring, and youth participatory action research to increase youth STEM self-efficacy and re-engage youth who are opting out of STEM career paths. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts, and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers. This project is also funded through the CS for All: Research and RPPs program. Researchers will use an emancipatory community design and research (ECDR) framework in which youth and community member voices are central to the project's implementation. They will identify locations for restorative gardens, share and conduct research with the local community on what should be grown in the gardens, establish strategies for sharing knowledge about gardening to and from the community, and lead community workshops on the underlying technologies of restorative gardens. The project is guided by the following research questions: (1) How does participating in the restorative garden project (and peer mentoring) impact youth's desire and self-efficacy to pursue and stay in STEM career fields? (2) How does participating in the restorative garden project impact youth's understanding of STEM (coding and AI) concepts and systems thinking skills? (3) How does participating in this project impact youth's place identity and STEM identity? (3)(a) How does participating in youth participatory action research around restorative gardening contribute to youth's ideas of environmental responsibility, food sovereignty, and global citizenship? The research and evaluation will employ a mixed-methods approach to investigate the project's impact on youth's STEM learning, identity, and career aspirations, as well as support their conceptualization of place identity, environmental responsibility, food sovereignty, and global citizenship. One hundred and eighty youth will be tracked over time to evaluate what aspects of the program are critical to their success and STEM identity. This information will be used to better understand how to blend and mesh the robust mentoring network of young people participating in the project, with the goal of developing youth's STEM career awarenesss and adaptability. Project deliverables include restorative gardens equipped with automated urban gardening robots; reports and publications documenting the research findings and best practices developed through the project; near-peer mentoring resources and tools that could be adapted and used by other organizations; educational materials to teach youth about emerging technologies; and youth-generated content such as photovoice stories that showcase the impact of the project on the participating youth and their communities. Project findings will be disseminated through academic conferences and publications, community events, and local media outlets.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.