In Pursuit of Consequential Learning: Interrogating an Informal Community-Based Engineering Program for Middle and High School Youth

• In Event: STEM, Civic Engagement, and Critical Pedagogy: Examining Opportunities and Barriers to Activism for Community Empowerment

Abstract

This design-based research intervention explores the impact of youth’s participation in an afterschool program designed to position middle and high school youth as learner-contributors who confront energy challenges in their shared neighborhood. The cross-age community-based STEM program connected middle and high school youth with local energy challenges, organizing weekly after-school programming around community-based STEM projects involving 19 middle and high school youth in iterative cycles design during and beyond program events. Using qualitative analysis of interviews and video-recorded sessions across 32 sessions over 8 months, we characterize how the program organized opportunities for consequential learning. Findings demonstrate that the program provided an expansive context in which STEM content and community context productively intersected and created multiple opportunities to foster consequential learning.

Authors

• Michelle Jordan, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Steven J. Zuiker, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carlos Meza-Torres, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author