The Role of Mentorship in Persistence in Informal STEM Programs for Under-represented Youth

作为加强非正式环境中学习的总体战略的一部分，推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）项目资助了用于各种环境的创新研究、方法和资源。这个AISL项目调查了非正式项目如何通过为来自代表性不足群体的青年建立STEM的社会资本来扩大参与。该项目将社会网络分析与非正式学习研究相结合，并利用一个框架将各个部门的学习联系起来。有证据表明，赞助青年兴趣、基于亲和力的指导以及中介与其他环境和机会的联系可以建立社会资本，并支持对STEM的兴趣和坚持。它代表了对研究的战略性和及时的投资，巩固了这些来自研究和实践的新兴见解，对特别适合非正式项目的STEM兴趣的关系支持进行了重点调查。该项目以两个研究问题为指导：(1)什么形式的社会资本与坚持和连接来自代表性不足群体的青年的非正式STEM项目有关？(2)什么样的项目特色——特别是赞助、指导和中介——能够增加这些社会支持，从而为服务不足的青少年在非正式的STEM项目中坚持和联系提供支持？这些问题是通过对加利福尼亚州奥兰治县三个非正式项目的200名学生进行的为期18个月的混合方法横断面研究来解决的，这些项目提供基于项目的工程和编码项目，支持指导，并关注STEM中代表性不足的群体。样本将包括三个年龄类别，分别是升入高中、高中期间的坚持以及升入大学和职业的过渡。青少年将每隔6个月接受三次面试，跨越这些过渡阶段。这项研究和努力的目的是确定社会资本在这一群体的学习中是否起着非同寻常的作用。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。

As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. This AISL project investigates how informal programs can broaden participation by building social capital in STEM for youth from underrepresented groups. The project integrates social network analysis with research on informal learning, and draws on a framework to connect learning across a variety of sectors. It builds on evidence that sponsorship of youth interest, affinity-based mentorship, and brokering connections to other settings and opportunities can build social capital and support interest and persistence in STEM. It represents a strategic and timely investment into research that solidifies these emerging insights from research and practice, conducting focused investigation into relational supports for STEM interests that are particularly well suited to informal programs.The project is guided by two research questions: (1) What forms of social capital are tied to persistence in and connecting across informal STEM programs for youth from underrepresented groups? (2) What program features--specifically sponsorship, mentorship, and brokering--grow these social supports for persistence in and connecting across informal STEM programs for underserved youth? These questions are addressed through a mixed methods 18-month cross-sectional study of 200 students in three informal programs in Orange County, California that offer project-based engineering and coding programs, support mentorship, and focus on groups underrepresented in STEM. The sample will include three age categories, capturing the transition to high school, persistence during high school, and transition to college and career. Teens will be interviewed three times at 6-month intervals, spanning these transitions. The goal of this research and effort is to determine if social capital plays an extra ordinary role in learning by this group.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.