Critical Youth Action for Justice With STEM

• In Event: Activism in Education and Community: Youth + Adults = Partners for Change

Abstract

Objectives
We present an analysis of young people’s STEM-rich actions to address social injustice for their communities. Stark inequalities in opportunities to meaningfully engage in STEM persist for youth from marginalized communities (NAE, 2014). We are interested in promoting meaningful civic engagement in STEM that is grounded in youths’ critical agency to push against social injustice as community leaders that utilize STEM knowledge/practices. We examined how middle-school aged youth engineered solutions to community problems and how they took action by developing knowledge/practices to inspire change. We developed two cases in depth, around two group projects: a Little Free Green STEM Library, and a STEM-rich educational YouTube channel by/for kids.

Theoretical and Methodological Framework
Drawing from Freirean critical pedagogy for social justice (Freire, 2014) and studies of youth-led community action with STEM (Birmingham & Calabrese Barton, 2014), this study uses the participatory tools of critical ethnography (Calabrese Barton, 2001) to descriptively explore the change-oriented actions of youth members of a community-based, equity-oriented makerspace. Understanding youth as owners of STEM knowledge/practices helped us investigate how and why youth used STEM as activist tools to expand democratic access to learning in communities.

Data Collection and Analysis
Participants included members of our afterschool STEM program at a local Boys and Girls Club, youth ages 11 to 18 who identify as Black, white, Latinx, Biracial, and Asian American. We have known/worked with participants for at least one year (some, up to five years). Data include youth work artifacts, youth-created photos/videos/blog posts, critical ethnographic interview transcripts, and 4 years of participant observation field notes as after school teachers. Our theoretical framework drove our constant comparison analysis across data.

Findings
Youth took action with STEM knowledge/practices, becoming change agents and community leaders as well as content experts. For example, one group built a Little Free Green STEM Library to increase access to STEM books when they discovered a “library desert” in their city. They designed for youth who could not pay library fees or find a ride to the library across town, and for peers who wanted to learn aspects of science they were not getting exposure to in schools. Another group designed a STEM-rich educational YouTube channel to expand informational access for youth, in a format meant to be more engaging than school and designed “by kids, for kids.” They began their channel immediately after the 2016 US presidential election, in direct response to their fears about out-of-school STEM educational programs receiving funding cuts as well as their frustrations at continued resource disparities for STEM learning in schools. Supporting, defending, and representing their communities with STEM expanded peer access to resources for empowerment, pride, and exploration of possible futures.

Scholarly Significance
As youth pushed back against regional and national sociopolitical injustices, they used their STEM designs as activist tools for localized revolution. These stories hold lessons for the field on leveraging youth-adult relationships towards both supporting in pedagogy, and critically understanding in research, young people’s efforts for change through learning.

Authors

• Day W Greenberg, Michigan State University

• Angela Calabrese Barton, University of Michigan