A case study of long-term engagement and identity-in-practice: Insights into the STEM pathways of four underrepresented youths

Abstract

Our longitudinal study unpacks how an informal summer science and mathematics enrichment program influenced the educational pathways of four first-generation college-bound students. Through the lens of identity-in-practice and navigations, we explore their figured worlds of science, positioning and authoring of self in science as they applied to the program, as they participated in the program and later, in light of their college pathways. We explore the range of social and material supports the program made available to the four youth. We also show how they became consequential and for some facilitated navigations into college and STEM degrees while others experienced uncoordinated practices over time that pushed them out of science. Our study of local struggles at three pivotal moments in time attests to the agentive side of youth as they navigate in and out of science and engage in improvisational acts to get educated despite being tangled up in a matrix of oppression. At the same time, our study calls for systemic approaches that bring formal and informal science venues together in a more seamless manner. We call for a strength-based model that recognizes and leverages youths' figured worlds, positionings, and authored selves in science across context and over time in ways that they become consequential, empowering, and supportive of STEM pathways. We also call for more longitudinal studies committed to a theoretical grounding in identity-in-practice and navigations. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53: 768–801, 2016