"Trying to Solve Darkness": Marginalized Youths' Identity Work as Community-Makers

• In Event: 52.047 - Critical Intersections of Pedagogies and Research Methodologies to Value Youths' Whole Lives in STEM Engagement

Abstract

The chronic underrepresentation of marginalized youth in STEM careers in the US is well-documented. Intervention strategies such as summer STEM programs and informal STEM clubs have been designed for marginalized youth in the hopes of closing the achievement (e.g. NRC 2009) and identity gaps (e.g.Rahm, 2012). The “maker movement” has been touted to hold much promise in potentially “democratizing” access and achievement in STEM (e.g. Hatch, 2014). Makerspaces potentially offer opportunities for youth to engage in STEM knowledge and practices in creative ways (Sheridan, Halverson, Brahms, Jacobs-Priebe & Owens, 2014, p. 528). With the exception of a few studies that pointed to the empowering learning and becoming spaces youth-centered maker environments can be (e.g. Halverson & Sheridan, 2014, Bevan et al, 2015, Calabrese Barton, Tan & Greenberg, 2015), there is as yet scant evidence that the maker movement has been broadly successful at quality inclusivity of diverse participants, especially over time.

This paper explores how African-American youth access, engage and persist in complex ways in a community youth makerspace. We probe how youth situate themselves at the nexus of differing intersecting communities (e.g. school. community club, residential locale) as launching points for the making process, and the resources they drew on. Simultaneously, we investigate the particular pedagogical moves adult facilitators enacted to scaffold the youths’ different approaches and making processes. Research questions are:

1. What are the different ways in which marginalized youth access and engage in an informal, youth-focused, long-term community maker program?
2. What are the kinds of pedagogical methods that adult facilitators use to respond to these differing ways of youth engagement, in supporting productive youth identity work as a community maker?

We draw from social practice theory (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) and identity work (Holland & Lave, 2001). Identity work is shaped by the resources individuals can access and activate at any given moment and is constrained by the historically, culturally, and socially legitimized norms and expectations that operate within the spaces.

Data sources from two years of longitudinal, critical ethnography include field-notes, youth blogs, interviews, and artifacts. Youth Maker Club runs for 90 minutes weekly during the school year and in the summer for two weeks (2 hour sessions).

We present two case studies of African-American youth (aged 10 to 15) innovating two products aimed at making their community safer. Peter and Kevin made a motion-activated, motorized baby gate for elderly or handicapped child caregivers. Tamzin created a “cautious, thinking hat” with an LED light and alarm buzzer, powered by solar energy for children living in homeless shelters. We investigate the salient experiences youth drew upon and the communities they interviewed to frame their problem space and inform their design. We unpack the different pedagogical moves adult mentors undertook to scaffold the youth in these two different projects, while striving not to curb their agency. The particular trajectories and off-shoots of youths’ identity work as community makers, and the relationships between their identity work, resources utilized and pedagogical moves are discussed.

Authors

• Edna Tan, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University