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

Principal Investigators: Joanne E Marciano, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, Vaughn W Watson 

Graduate Students:  Sabrina Zarza and Ishan Santra (PRIME), Katie Bielecki and Faith Longnight (CITE)

Funding: NSF

Dates: 9/15/2024 - 8/31/2029

Award: The Youth Voices Project receives the 2025 Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Teaching on March 20th from MSU Outreach and Engagement!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract:  

Broadening STEM research and education to include the cultural epistemologies of racially, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse communities prompts a wider range of approaches and more imaginative responses to societal challenges. This project addresses and advances the Racial Equity in STEM program goals by expanding epistemologies, methodologies, and evidence-based practices constrained by systemic racial inequities through the applied research approach of developing, assessing, and cultivating Critical, Community-situated Data Practices (CCDPs): the ways in which racially, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse youth collect, analyze, represent, and communicate data within and about their communities. CCDPs center cultural epistemologies of racially, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse youth, and prioritize relationality; CCDPs present an ontological, epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical approach to advancing racial equity in STEM education that situates discovery and innovative responses to societal challenges beyond the “white gaze” of western, white, adult male-centered and rugged individualistic [1-4] STEM knowledge generation. We do this work with youth and adult collaborators in two settings – a multiethnic subsidized housing community of Black, Latinx, white, and refugee youth; and a Black African immigrant and refugee community - each ongoing, sustained partnerships. We are guided by the research questions: 1) What happens when multiethnic and Black African immigrant youth enact CCDPs alongside adult collaborators while they engage in YPAR projects about issues of importance to them?; 2) How might the interplay of making diverse youth participants’ epistemologies visible, 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 its current form embedded in typical academic practices used in academia?; and 3) How does networking with youth and adult collaborators in additional YPAR contexts inform our understandings of how to leverage youths’ CCDPs in their own YPAR projects and more broadly across multiple and varied contexts? We will conduct a multi-year research study with youth examining how youth enact CCDPs during their YPAR projects. We will also create a network of YPAR groups to discuss and get critical feedback about the theory- and evidenced-based frameworks, educative case studies, and guiding principles we design as part of the multi-year research study.