Supporting the Emergence of Science Capital in Minoritized Youth Through Guided Experiences as Facilitators of Science Outreach

Abstract

This study explored how minoritized youth-guided experiences as facilitators of science outreach activities in their community can become a powerful pathway to developing their science capital. The educational setting was the Gap-Year Program run by Alrowad for Science and Technology. Alrowad is a grassroots non-profit organization founded by Arab academics in Israel. This organization aims to empower Arab students and enhance their participation in STEM learning and practice in schools, universities, and the workplace. Alrowad recruits about 10-15 outstanding Arab high school STEM graduates yearly for its Gap-Year Program before they start their undergraduate education. These individuals work as Young Arab Instructors (YAIs) who facilitate the organization's STEM outreach activities in Arab schools all over Israel while attending a year-long extensive professional development course. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the alumni of the 2015 cohort (N = 9). The analysis employed a constructivist approach to Grounded Theory. The findings illustrate how epistemic agency, relational agency, and critical agency were developed through the participants' guided engagement in facilitating science outreach in their community. They show how this multifaceted agency became a valuable resource of science capital for the participants that had long-term effects on their learning, work, and practice in undergraduate and graduate school and the workplace, by providing the means to actively carve out their place in STEM, shape it, and make it their own.