Learning Beyond the Lab: Designing for Identity Development and Relational Equity for Youth and Scientists

Abstract

This dissertation provides insights on how graduate-level scientists navigated developing their skills and identities as educators, across two different research contexts. Using a Design-Based Research lens, the design of a two-year scientist-youth mentoring program was investigated to understand how relational equity, or symmetrical power relations, can be fostered between participants. Mentoring scientists’ identity development was also studied through a case study approach, to highlight the differential identity pathways that both motivated and were impacted by their developing practice in youth engagement. Finally, a graduate seminar on education research for scientists provided a counter-context to the mentoring program, that elucidated how identity development was also salient as scientists learned about evidence-based teaching practices. The studies are united by sociocultural perspectives on identity development and learning, collection and analysis of ethnographic, reflective, and quantitative data, and a focus on how the design of learning environments impacted collective outcomes. Implications of this work span across disciplines, by situating graduate student identity development as a complex phenomenon rather than a narrow trajectory of socialization, and providing design principles and exemplars that can be leveraged in other contexts for youth to interact with scientists and scientists to learn how to teach.