The YESTEM project

The tools and resources on this website were developed in the Youth Equity and STEM project (2017-2022), an international research-practice partnership focused on understanding and supporting equitable practice in informal STEM learning.

The materials are based on extensive mixed-method research with young people aged 11-14 and informal STEM learning practitioners, and were co-developed by a team of academic researchers and informal STEM learning organisations in the UK and the US.

Background of the YESTEM project

The Partnering for Equitable STEM Pathways for Youth Underrepresented in STEM Project (YESTEM) built understanding about how youth who historically have not participated in free-choice/informal STEM learning gain access to these experiences. We worked with paid youth researchers to understand how and under what conditions they participate, how they connect experiences in ways that build their own STEM pathways, and what educator practices best support youth in STEM exploration. YESTEM, funded by the US-NSF and UK-Wellcome Trust, supported research-practice partnerships in four cities: London & Bristol in the UK and Lansing, MI and Portland, OR in the US. Results were co-analyzed across sites, allowing for cross-national and international comparisons.

The YESTEM responded to three challenges at the intersections of ISL research and practice in the United Kingdom and United States:

1. lack of shared understanding of how youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds perceive and experience ISL opportunities across national contexts, and the practices and tools needed to support empowered movement through ISL
2. limited shared understanding and evidence of core high-leverage practices that support such youth in progressing within and across ISL
3. limited understanding of how ISL might be equitable and transformative for such youth seeking to develop their own pathways into and through STEM. 

Through working with youth through design-based implementation research, survey and critical ethnography, the major goal of this partnership was getting practitioners and researchers to develop new understandings of how and under what conditions youth participate in informal STEM learning (ISL) over time and across settings, and how they may connect these experiences towards pathways into STEM. 

Working across conceptual frameworks and ISL settings (e.g. science centers, community groups, zoos) and universities in four urban contexts in two different nations, the partnership produced a coherent knowledge base to strengthen and expand research and practice partnerships, build capacity towards transformative research and development, and develop new models and tools in support of equitable pathways into STEM at a global level.