Leveraging Youth Learning Across In- and Out-of-School Settings Through Professional Development and After-School Making Programs

• In Event: 14.015 - Making Spaces for Youth From Nondominant Communities: New Approaches for Supporting Equitable and Consequential Experiences

Abstract

Introduction & Objectives
Making supports student engagement in STEM learning by building on personal interests (Martinez & Stager, 2013), providing opportunities for multidisciplinary engagement toward a range of purposes (Sheridan et al., 2014), allowing access to ideas, tools, and literacies previously accessible only to professionals (Blikstein, 2013), and supporting STEM identity development (Dixon & Martin, 2014; Fields & King, 2014). However, making has also been an activity for only the privileged, with definitions of knowledge and learning that are too narrow (Buechley, 2013; Calabrese Barton et al., in press; Chachra, 2015).

In an effort to expand the possibilities of making, we created an afterschool making program serving non-dominant youth in an East Oakland school that focused on collaboration, process over product, play and creativity, broader definitions of intelligence and science, and “what-if” cultures of intellectual risk-taking (Bevan et al., in press; Petrich et al., 2013; Vossoughi et al., 2013). The larger goal involved bringing in-school and afterschool educators together to explore how student learning could be valued across learning ecologies (Barron, 2006). Research questions included:
1. What pedagogical strategies fostered in- and out-of-school teachers in recognizing and leveraging youth’s diverse ways of knowing and solving problems across making and non-making spaces?
2. How did these pedagogical strategies impact youth in the afterschool program?

Theoretical Framework
The “communities of practice” framework (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) informed our analysis of how common interests, knowledge, and membership identification were shared across informal and formal educators, educators and researchers, and youth and adults in this project. Definitions of “equitable making” were defined as embracing all epistemologies that legitimize both school and non-school practices toward a range of purposes beyond the creation of objects to sell (Buchholz, et al., 2014; Calabrese Barton et al., in press; Vossoughi et al., 2013).

Methods
In 2016, we created a research-practice partnership (RPP) involving educators, administrators, and researchers across a museum, university, and school. RPPs are sustained, mutual, and pragmatic collaborations producing practically relevant work through jointly negotiated research questions, data collection, and analysis (Coburn et al., 2013). Participant observation methods (Erickson, 1998) were used to collect data sources such as observation field notes of program and professional development, videos, photos, student work, and interviews with teachers and students. The RPP met six times to review program data together, reflecting on program design, pedagogy, and student learning. RPP reflections informed the coding scheme used to iteratively examine data sources.

Findings & Significance
This paper describes how professional development built upon afterschool educators’ funds of knowledge toward supporting equity-oriented teaching practice, then grew to include school-day educators in ways that expanded educator abilities to recognize how youth engage with STEM and creatively problem-solve across contexts. Not only did educators’ perspectives of youth learning and ability shift, but afterschool program youth also saw each other in new ways, voluntarily collaborating on making projects across social cliques.
These findings offer insight into ways of building communication across formal and informal educators, toward more equitable ways of engaging non-dominant youth.

Authors

• Jean J. Ryoo, Exploratorium

• Bronwyn Bevan, Exploratorium