Making Mentors: Enhancing Access to STEM Careers for Autistic Youth through Mentorship Programs in Makerspaces

Education Development Center, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

Autistic youth and young adults often possess numerous skills that have the potential to substantially contribute to the STEM workforce of the future. However, autistic people remain underrepresented in STEM careers due in part to a lack of transitional supports between high school and college. This project will address this critical gap by providing these transitional supports through a comprehensive, person-centered, near-peer mentorship program in the context of maker clubs attended by over 135 autistic youth and undergraduates. In this program, autistic college students who major in STEM fields will act as near-peer mentors to autistic high school students as they engage in self-directed projects in maker clubs. In partnership with college and high school counselors, the mentors will connect the STEM interests of the high school students with relevant STEM careers and career pathways, while sharing practical advice about resources, networks, and practices that foster self-advocacy and self-determination in post-secondary STEM education and employment. Research will explore whether and how the transition program fosters increased STEM identities, self-advocacy skills, and greater quality of life among the high school students and their mentors. The resulting field-tested and empirically-based transition program will be disseminated widely to makerspaces and other settings, ultimately providing increased access to STEM careers for autistic youth. Autistic high school students and autistic undergraduate STEM majors will co-design a STEM mentorship program, embedded within maker clubs, which will support the transition between high school and college. Diverse mentors and youth will be paired based on attributes that they identify as important to their mentorship experience, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, language, autistic traits, and STEM interests. Participatory, mixed-methods research will investigate whether the co-designed mentorship program is associated with greater quality of life, self-determination, self-efficacy, self-advocacy, and STEM identity among the high school students and undergraduates. Additionally, this research will examine how and why specific aspects of the mentorship experience have an impact on the effectiveness of the program. To achieve these research purposes, statistical analyses will be conducted on pre- and post-surveys, including the Autism Specific Quality of Life Survey and a STEM Self-Efficacy and Career Interest Survey that has been adapted for and validated with autistic youth. The findings from these data will be triangulated with qualitative analyses of pre- and post-interviews with the mentors and youth. The resulting research will advance knowledge of how strengths-based, participatory approaches can support autistic youth in pursuing STEM career pathways. This research will be disseminated widely through conferences and journals for autism researchers and educators, in addition to STEM education researchers and educators. The co-designed, mentorship-based transition program will be shared through a digital Making Mentors Toolkit. Because this toolkit is based in the experiences and expertise of autistic youth and undergraduates, it is likely to support the accurate and authentic translation of research into practice for autistic people. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.