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STEM Pathway Explorations in Virtual Reality Game Play: A Critical Youth Project

Sat, April 29, 10:35am to 12:05pm, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Floor: Meeting Room Level, Room 221 C

Abstract

We explore how three low-income and marginalized/minoritized young women partnered with researchers to co-construct a novel virtual experience: a first-person-perspective/point-of-view (POV) video game that invites players to explore their pathways into/through greater participation, legitimization, and development in the power-mediated domains of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). We examine how participants built dynamic bridges toward empathetic change (e.g., between them and their teachers, whom they describe/position in oppositional terms), to communicate the urgency of their efforts in critical relation to the larger worlds of STEM learning/practice. We discuss how this work can lead us to expand the range of approaches for examining youth pathways of learning and development.
Perspectives/Theoretical framework
Within a social justice framework for pedagogy and research, we build on previous critical explorations of youth pathways, particularly where such work considers youths’ critical mobilities for active co/constructions of STEM pathways with agency and purpose (e.g., Calabrese Barton, Tan, & Greenberg, 2016; Calabrese Barton, Tan, & Shin, in press). We engage in critical dialogue with youth participatory action research (YPAR) to examine and situate our efforts in addressing the asymmetrical power dynamics of youth-adult partnerships in media co-construction projects (e.g., Chávez & Soep, 2005).
Methods & Data Sources
Participants include three 12-year-olds who have been members of our afterschool green engineering program for at least 3 years. All identify as Black, female, low-SES, daughters of single parents, and interested in future STEM learning and work. We use YPAR methods integrated with critical ethnography tools in our framework of mobilities of criticality (Calabrese Barton, Tan, & Shin, in press) to co-construct and examine media-rich representations of the multilayered, intersectional contexts of history and geography that frame and root youth actions and emotions across scales. Additional data across 3 years include interviews, participant observations, and researcher field notes.
Results
We report on 3 main findings. First, we describe how youth opened up the boundaries of what adults researchers had named as “possible” in this project. Second, we describe how youth defined representation (i.e., showing their pathway through numbers, text, and/or visuals) versus more visceral empathy channels. They wanted their audience to dynamically feel their pathway—through their point of view—including the violent, dangerous, and hurtful blockades they navigate daily as they move in/across learning spaces. For example, in the first scene youth designed (using stop-motion animation as a “rough draft” for graphics completion) the player is forced out of science class, to spend that learning time awaiting punishment in an empty principal’s office, ignored by apathetic administrators. Third, we discuss how participants leveraged new technologies to make such structural blockades more tangible to adults who control structures of consequence for their STEM pathways.
This study presents pathways researchers with novel, youth-authored methods for “really making people feel” how youth feel as they are continuously asked to fight against structural obstacles for opportunities to develop and learn in/with STEM learning/practice. Such work forefronts the urgency of youth requests for help in achieving the pathways they desire and fight for.

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