Community-Situated Data Practices in Multiethnic, Youth-Led Research Partnerships

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

Broadening STEM research and education to include the cultural epistemologies (i.e., perspectives that guide how one sees the world) of racially, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse communities prompts a wider range of approaches and more imaginative responses to societal challenges. This project supports multiethnic youth in expanding epistemologies, methodologies, and evidence-based practices by developing and cultivating Critical, Community-situated Data Practices (CCDPs). These practices will support how diverse youth collect, analyze, represent, and communicate data within and about their communities. This work contributes to the emerging literature in data science, and it has implications for how diverse students participate in and contribute to the field. The project will foster youth agency and future interests in doing research in about data science. The research team is guided by the research questions: 1) What happens when multiethnic and immigrant youth enact CCDPs alongside adult collaborators while they engage in youth participatory action research (YPAR) projects about issues of importance to them?; 2) How might the centering of youth participants’ epistemologies and attending to relationality and discourses of adultism within CCDPs help to conceptualize frameworks and design methodological approaches and practices more appropriate to YPAR collaborations than typical academic practices used in academia?; and 3) How does networking with youth and adult collaborators in additional YPAR contexts inform the researchers’ understandings of how to leverage youths’ CCDPs in their own YPAR projects and in other contexts? The team will conduct a multi-year qualitative research study with diverse youth across two research sites to explore how youth enact CCDPs as they design YPAR projects related to their lived experiences. Additionally, the team will also create a network of YPAR groups that will convene to discuss and get critical feedback about the theory- and evidenced-based frameworks, educative case studies, and guiding principles they collaboratively design as part of the multi-year research study. This project is funded by the EDU Racial Equity in STEM Education activity, which is supported by the Directorate for STEM Education (EDU). This activity supports research and practice projects that investigate how considerations of racial equity factor into the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce. Awarded projects seek to center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by systemic inequities within the STEM enterprise. Programs across EDU contribute funds to the Racial Equity activity in recognition of the alignment of its projects with the collective research and development thrusts of the four divisions of the directorate. 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.