Ingenieros Ingeniosos (Ingenious Engineers): Connecting Latinx Youths' Workplace Practices with Engineering through Out-of-School Time Programs

数以百万计的14岁至18岁的拉丁裔青年从事正式或非正式工作，为自己或家人提供收入。在这些工作场所的背景下，拉美裔青年展示了许多对工业工程至关重要的技能，例如最大限度地减少工作场所伤害或优化流程以最大限度地提高效率。然而，他们在职场上的独创性和技能往往得不到教育系统的认可。为了应对这种缺乏认可的情况，该项目的目的是反复开发和研究一项针对在职拉丁裔青年的校外工程计划。该计划旨在通过将年轻人与工业工程概念和实践(如用于促进工人安全的概念和实践)联系起来，识别并建立年轻人的工作经验。这个项目也是为年轻人设计的，旨在阐明工业工程的变革性愿景，这些愿景扩展了当前该学科普遍接受的目标、价值观和方法。这项为期一年的计划将由现有校外课程(如数学、工程和科学成就)的教育工作者与专业拉美裔工程师协会的本科生导师和其他服务于拉美裔青年的当地组织(如行动中的拉美裔人)合作推动。预计将有大约220名青年参加该方案。研究人员将探讨青年参与者是否以及如何发展工程学身份，以及教育者和导师如何理解和实施以青少年经验为基础的以资产为基础的校外工程教育。研究人员还将确定在不同地点和背景下，随着时间的推移，支持或阻碍该计划持续实施的个人、制度和系统因素。该项目将产生一套经过经验检验的双语方案材料，并将广泛传播给致力于校外方案编制和为拉丁裔青年服务的专业组织。该项目将产生一个可本地化、可转移和可持续的课外时间计划模式，承认和扩大拉美裔青年的工作场所知识资金，并利用这些资金促进青年驱动的工程愿景和应用。该项目将与青少年学习生态系统中的其他人和站点建立联系，以跨语言、变革性指导以及教育尊严和认可为原则。在与青年参与者的合作中，研究人员将使用一项社会设计实验来探索以下研究问题：在职高中青年的工程身份轨迹是什么，身份谈判和认同的特定时刻如何与项目会话中的更广泛模式以及随着时间的推移个体参与者的身份轨迹相关？为了回答这些问题，项目前、项目中和项目后的工程认同量表、项目实施的录音、访谈和青年文物将使用各种方法进行分析，例如批判性多模式话语分析。在多个站点实施该计划后，研究人员将使用基于设计的实施研究来回答以下问题：教育工作者和导师如何理解和实施旨在促进跨站点认可的基于资产的教学法？哪些制度和系统特征(设计的或自然主义的)支持或阻碍项目的生产性调整和实施？这些问题将通过对数据来源的持续比较分析来回答，例如对项目教育者和导师的采访、对项目实施的观察、对专业发展会议的观察以及公共文件。将使用响应文化的教育性评估来反复改进该计划。由此产生的研究和方案材料将通过致力于拉美裔青年、工程教育和校外学习的专业组织广泛传播。这一发展中的创新项目由推进非正式STEM学习(AISL)计划资助，旨在：(A)促进对非正式环境中STEM学习的设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解；(B)为扩大获得和参与STEM学习经验提供多种途径；(C)促进对非正式环境中STEM学习的创新研究和评估；以及(D)让所有年龄段的公众在非正式环境中学习STEM。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。

Millions of Latinx youth, aged 14 to 18, work formal or informal jobs to provide income for themselves or their families. In the context of these workplaces, Latinx youth demonstrate numerous skills that are essential to industrial engineering, such as minimizing workplace injuries or optimizing processes to maximize efficiency. However, their workplace ingenuity and skills are often underrecognized by educational systems. To counter this lack of recognition, the purpose of this project is to iteratively develop and research an out-of-school engineering program for working Latinx youth. This program is designed to recognize and build from youths’ workplace experiences by connecting them with industrial engineering concepts and practices, such as those used to promote worker safety. This program is also designed for youth to articulate transformational visions of industrial engineering, which expand current goals, values, and methods commonly embraced within this discipline. This year-long program will be facilitated by educators of existing out-of-school programs (e.g., Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement), in partnership with undergraduate mentors from the Society for Professional Hispanic Engineers and other local organizations that serve Latinx youth (e.g., Latinos in Action). Approximately 220 youth are expected to participate in the programming. Researchers will explore whether and how youth participants develop identities in engineering, as well as how the educators and mentors understand and enact assets-based, out-of-school engineering education grounded in youths’ experiences. Researchers will also identify the individual, institutional, and systemic factors that support or inhibit sustained implementation of the program over time in different sites and contexts. This project will result in a set of empirically tested, bilingual program materials that will be disseminated widely to professional organizations dedicated to out-of-school programming and to serving Latinx youth. This project will result in a localizable, transferable, and sustainable model for an out-of-school time program that recognizes and amplifies Latinx youths’ workplace funds of knowledge and leverages them toward youth-driven visions and applications of engineering. This program, which will connect with other people and sites in youths’ learning ecosystems, is grounded in principles of translanguaging, transformational mentorship, and educational dignity and recognition. In partnership with youth participants, researchers will use a social design experiment to explore the following research questions: What are the engineering identity trajectories of working high school youth, and how do specific moments of identity negotiation and recognition relate to broader patterns across program sessions and identity trajectories for individual participants over time? To answer these questions, a pre-, mid- and post-program Engineering Identity Scale; recordings of program implementations; interviews; and youth artifacts will be analyzed using various methods such as critical multimodal discourse analysis. After implementations of the program across multiple sites, researchers will use design-based implementation research to answer the following questions: How do educators and mentors understand and enact assets-based pedagogies designed to foster recognition across sites? What institutional and systemic features (designed or naturalistic) support or inhibit productive adaptations and implementations of the program? These questions will be answered using constant comparative analyses of data sources such as interviews with the program educators and mentors, observations of program implementations, observations of professional development sessions, and public documents. Culturally responsive, educative evaluation will be used to iteratively improve the program. The resulting research and program materials will be disseminated widely through professional organizations dedicated to Latinx youth, engineering education, and out-of-school learning.This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.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.