- Year 2019
- NSF Award #1660644
- Registration Current Noyce Scholar
- First Name Cassie
- Last Name Campbell
- Discipline Math
- Institution Miami University
Abstract
Over the past year I, along with several of my Urban Cohort peers and a faculty member, have worked with a group of 12 middle school girls in a Youth Participatory Action Research Project (YPAR). Mirra, Garcia & Morrell (2016) define YPAR as “the practice of mentoring young people to become social scientists by engaging them in all aspects of the research cycle, from developing research questions and examining relevant literature to collecting and analyzing data and offering findings about social issues that they find meaningful and relevant” (p. 2). YPAR was originally inspired as a mode of consciousness-raising by the Brazilian educator and activist Paulo Freire (Foster-Fishman, Law, Lichty & Aoun, 2010). We began the year by having conversations about assets and challenges in our lives and our communities. When reflecting on what issues they felt were important to their community, the girls identified drug abuse and bullying. They chose these topics because they saw them as prevalent issues having real consequences for their peers, their neighbors, and themselves. Most importantly, the girls wanted to understand “WHY?”: Why bully? Why do drugs? Through a process of dialogue, action, and reflection, the girls explored symptoms and root causes of each issue. This exploration involved reading, researching, reaching out to community organizations, creating surveys, and much more. As a Noyce Scholar, I was able to learn what it meant to create responsive curriculum and how to use issues that the girls identified to teach mathematical concepts. For example, when we were created a survey for students in the school to learn about other students’ experiences with bullying, we wanted to include a section on demographics. This led to a discussion on fractions, converting fractions into percentages, and analyzing data in a real world context. In doing such, I learned what it meant to create authentic culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995). In this poster I share this and other examples on how to create STEM instruction rooted in the lived experiences of youth.
