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HLNS#1307199, VOL 00, ISS 00
ARTICLES
Digital Youth Divas: Exploring
Narrative-Driven Curriculum to Spark Middle
School Girls’Interest in Computational
Activities
NICHOLE PINKARD, SHEENA ERETE,
CAITLIN K. MARTIN, and
MAXINE MCKINNEY DE ROYSTON
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TABLE OF CONTENTS LISTING
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below:
Articles
Digital Youth Divas: Exploring Narrative-Driven Curriculum to Spark
Middle School Girls’Interest in Computational Activities
Nichole Pinkard, Sheena Erete, Caitlin K. Martin, and
Maxine McKinney de Royston
Digital Youth Divas: Exploring
Narrative-Driven Curriculum to Spark
Middle School Girls’Interest in
Computational Activities
5Nichole Pinkard and Sheena Erete
DePaul UniversityQ2
Caitlin K. Martin
10Digital Youth NetworkQ3
Maxine McKinney de Royston
University of Wisconsin, MadisonQ4
INTRODUCTION
Q5 15
Q23
Q24
Most women use technology as a critical mediator of their professional and
personal lives, yet few are involved in designing and creating computational
devices and programs. Although science, technology, engineering, and math
(STEM) career opportunities have increased over the past decade, the majority
of young women pursue non-STEM fields of study, with these disparities being
20even greater for women from nondominant communities (e.g., Corbett & Hill,
2015; DuBow, 2011; Klawe, Whitney, & Simard, 2009). Participation rates on
Advanced Placement computer science exams, a gateway to college-level
courses, likewise reveal stark race and gender contrasts: Recent studies found
that less than 20% of test takers were female, and approximately 11% were boys
25and girls of a nondominant ethnicity (College Board, 2014; Ericson, 2014). In
Correspondence should be addressed to Nichole Pinkard, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60604.
E-mail: nicholepinkard@gmail.com
Q25
Color versions of one or more figures in the article can be found online at http://www.tandfonline.
com/hlns.
JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 00: 1–40, 2017
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1050-8406 print / 1532-7809 online
DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2017.1307199
fact, despite doing well in STEM classes early on, many girls (but not all; see
Allen & Eisenhart, 2017/this issue
Q26 ) eventually take on an anti-STEM identity
that persists throughout life (see Hill, Corbett, & St Rose, 2010). These large-
scale disparities reflect widespread racial and gender imbalances in learning
30opportunities within formal and informal STEM learning environments as well
as the underlying, persistent systemic social and economic inequities that create
such imbalances in society.
Unfortunately, early opportunities to experience and become interested in
STEM are not readily available to all students (Goode, 2007; Margolis, Estrella,
35Goode, Jellison Holme, & Nao, 2008). In particular, nondominant girls and youth
from areas of lower socioeconomic status have limited access to in- and out-of-
school opportunities and resources that have the potential to build their computa-
tional fluencies (Goode, 2007; Margolis et al., 2008; Margolis & Fisher, 2002;
Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010; Watkins, 2012). For many environments and
40opportunities that do exist, there are often persistent negative stereotypes about
girls and nondominant students’STEM abilities and interests, a lack of a well-
developed sense of community and belonging within STEM classrooms and
fields, and a population that is predominantly White and male in terms of both
who is participating and who is teaching (e.g., Johnson, Brown, Carlone, &
45Cuevas, 2011; Ko, Kachchaf, Hodari, & Ong, 2014; Malcom, Hall, & Brown,
1976; Margolis et al., 2008; Margolis & Fisher, 2002).
A sense of fit becomes particularly salient in the middle grades, when students
begin to have more authority to select what opportunities they participate in and
are at a stage of identity development when many are critically concerned with
50fitting in. Indeed, it is in the middle grades that nondominant girls show declining
STEM interest (Maltese & Tai, 2010; National Science Foundation, 2003a),
which suggests that the racialized and gendered realities within STEM learning
settings may make it difficult for many nondominant girls to develop a sense of
belonging there (e.g., Johnson et al., 2011; Ko et al., 2014; Malcom et al., 1976;
55Margolis & Fisher, 2002). A growing body of research suggests that the percep-
tions and positioning of learners have implications for their participation and that
the development of learner identities should be a focus of educational interven-
tions (e.g., Bell, Tzou, Bricker, & Baines, 2012). These issues are particularly
salient in middle school, as decisions about participation in computing and
60engineering subjects have been related to prior experience, interest, and sense
of fit with community (Johnson et al., 2011; Ko et al., 2014; Margolis et al.,
2008; Margolis & Fisher, 2002), and youth frequently make decisions to parti-
cipate in STEM prior to high school (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002; Hulleman
& Harackiewicz, 2009; Renninger, Nieswandt, & Hidi, 2015; Tai, Qi Liu,
65Maltese, & Fan, 2006).
In this article, we describe Digital Youth Divas (DYD), an out-of-school
program designed to address issues of prior experience, community, interest,
2PINKARD ET AL.
and identity development in computer science and engineering for nondominant
middle school girls. In particular, we explore how alternative STEM storylines
70might provide counternarratives that upend more prevalent, stereotypical, and
recognizable storylines that permeate formal and informal learning settings to
instead positively influence youth’s perceptions of themselves and their abilities
as domain-specific learners (Nasir, Snyder, Shah, & Ross, 2012; Varelas, Martin,
& Kane, 2013). Building on a 10-year history working with and designing
75learning opportunities for urban youth (Barron, Gomez, Pinkard, & Martin,
2014), we hypothesize that a narrative-driven, blended (face-to-face and online)
learning environment can spark nondominant girls’STEM interests and identi-
ties. Using data from the first year of program design and implementation, we
examine the intentional design components of the DYD model and focus on two
80primary research questions: How can narrative stories support engagement and
building community within informal STEM learning environments? What pro-
gram components and practices, including narratives, connect to girls’develop-
ing STEM-related interests and identities?
The article is broken into four major sections. First, we outline the theoretical
85concepts—interest development and identity resources—to ground our narrative-
centered, blended learning design. Second, we introduce the DYD program and
explain our unique design and the tensions inherent in integrating race and
gender counternarratives into e-textile and programming design activities through
online and in-person offline mechanisms. Third, we present methods and quali-
90tative results from a study of our pilot implementation, focusing on how girls
identified with the narrative story and took on a designer role in the DYD
program. Fourth, we discuss the importance and implications of these findings
and ideas for future directions of study and design.
Developing Interest Through Engaging Experiences
95Hidi and Renninger (2006) defined interest as a state of heightened affect and a
predisposition to reengage a subject again based on one’s knowledge, value, and
feelings about it. They outlined a four-phase continuum of interest development
from situational to well-developed interest in which extrinsic motivation is
required to spark interest and both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are neces-
100sary for self-sustained participation in STEM activities. For instance, the situa-
tional interest of a student may be sparked by the task environment—objects,
activities, peers, instructors—yet when these environmental factors are removed,
the student may disengage. By contrast, the final phase—a well-developed
interest—is typified by one’s intrinsic interest and motivation to participate,
105which may still benefit from extrinsic or environmental motivators (e.g., role
models, praise) but does not hinge on them.
XXXXQ1 3
Hidi and Renninger’s(2006) model is useful for thinking about how to
construct a task environment that may spark interest in a novel activity or domain
and what may be necessary to shift that initial interest into a longer term interest.
110At the same time, it is limited in its utility for designing an inclusive learning
environment for racially nondominant youth and girls who have historically been
marginalized and isolated in STEM. Although their model appreciates that
engagement emerges from interaction between individuals and their environ-
ment, it does not account for the diversity of people’s environment or the
115sociality of how their participation is influenced by their histories, sense of
future, or social or interactional goals that might coincide with or supersede
their interest development in a particular domain or topic (Azevedo, 2013).
Building on interest development and communities of practice perspectives
(e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991), Azevedo (2013) introduced lines of practice to
120clarify conceptually that the ebbs and flows of interest development reflect the
shifts in interaction between one’s past, present, and future preferences and the
conditions of practice. His conceptualization offers a more nuanced view of
environment (including material, communal, status, and access-oriented dimen-
sions) and of an individual’s history and preferences that has implications for
125how to design learning environments that are authentically interest driven.
Research on short-term and long-term interest development (e.g., Azevedo,
2013; Barron et al., 2014; Hidi & Renninger, 2006) reveals the importance of
creating a diverse landscape of supportive learning environments in and out of
school that afford participants the time, activities, peers, and expectations to
130explore unfamiliar potential areas of interest. Nonetheless, few STEM learning
settings meet these criteria for nondominant girls, and the literature is still unclear
about how to develop STEM learning environments that both spark nondominant
students’and female students’situational interests and cultivate their well-devel-
oped interests and engaged participation. We argue that this is because STEM
135learning environments rarely build off of nondominant girls’current interests, nor
do they acknowledge or intentionally debunk racialized and gender stereotypes
that might alienate nondominant girls from participating in and identifying with
STEM. In this work we build on Hidi and Renninger’s(2006) model to view
interest development and youth participation as linked with identity construction.
140Supporting Participation and Interest Through Identity Construction
Recent literature in STEM education suggests that interest development, parti-
cularly for marginalized and stereotyped youth, is not simply an individual
accomplishment or a discrete activity but a social and interactional process that
is often mediated by how students perceive the valued ways of knowing and
145being of a given practice or discipline in relation to the ways of knowing and
being with which they already identify (Bang & Medin, 2010; Varelas et al.,
4PINKARD ET AL.
2013). The limited interventions that do exist frequently attend to how racialized,
gendered stereotypes limit these girls’participation, interests, and identities in
STEM. Indeed, recent interventions such as CompuGirls, Black Girls CODE, and
150Techbridge offer nonisolating, identity-rich learning spaces for nondominant girls
to experience and participate in rich STEM activities (e.g., Mosatche, Matloff-
Nieves, Kekelis, & Lawner, 2013; Scott, Sheridan, & Clark, 2015; Scott &
White, 2013). These interventions are built on an understanding of the racialized
and gendered nature of learning and participation, particularly within domains of
155knowledge like STEM that are privileged in society. This work suggests that to
support interest development, it is important to understand the types of racial and
disciplinary identities that are also being negotiated.
Many inclusive STEM learning spaces are characterizable by their efforts to
broaden participation in computing and technology by targeting racially diverse
160students, by including racially diverse role models or instructors, and by both
acknowledging students’intersectional and multiple identities and dispelling
stereotypes that may constrain students’willingness to participate (Margolis
et al., 2008; Margolis & Fisher, 2002; Scott et al., 2015). Although these
interventions may eventually become “affinity spaces”or “a place or set of
165places where people affiliate with others based primarily on shared activities,
interests, and goals, not [only] shared race, class culture, ethnicity, or gender”
(Gee, 2004, p. 67), there is an awareness that it is necessary to create learning
environments that overcome the various and distinct design challenges of spark-
ing racially nondominant girls’interest in STEM.
170First, designers have to mitigate stereotypes and nondominant girls’concerns
about fit and/or marginalization within STEM. Second, these environments must
create learning experiences that engage these youth in high-quality STEM
activities that spark their participation and STEM interests. Third, to deepen
nondominant girls’STEM interests, designers have to develop ways to keep
175these girls engaged in STEM activities beyond the narrow physical and temporal
confines of the intervention. This requires considering their broader learning
interests and ecologies and exploring mediums that can be exploited for con-
tinued engagement. Finally, to monitor interest development, designers should
develop fading environmental scaffolds that initially serve as motivators but
180decrease over time as the girls’levels of participation and interests deepen.
Using Narratives to Address Stereotypes and Spark Interest
Educational designers have begun to examine the affordances of narrative-cen-
tered learning environments for educational purposes and relative to STEM
(Baker & Leary, 1995; Dickey, 2011; Grimaldi, Fokkinga, & Ocnarescu, 2013;
185Ketelhut, 2007; Lloyd, 2000; Pruitt & Adlin, 2006; Rowe et al., 2009; Squire,
2006). Although the use of counternarratives has been found to increase girls’
XXXX 5
engagement and retention of interest in STEM fields (Baker & Leary, 1995;
National Science Foundation, 2003b), less is known about the design features of
narrative-centered learning environments that might support interest development
190for nondominant girls.
Our approach is based on an understanding that while individual youth may
gain interest in a topic or domain, interest development occurs alongside pro-
cesses of learning and participation. Indeed, these processes are mediated by
social others and students’perceptions of what ways of being and knowing are
195valued for that domain and whether those perceptions align with who youth see
or foresee themselves to be (Bang & Medin, 2010). Likewise, we view learning
environments as spaces in which participants’social roles and identities, and
perceptions about them, influence their own participation and often dictate how
they are positioned relative to participation (Cole, 1996; Gutierrez & Rogoff,
2002003; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Lee, 1997; Wenger, 1998; Wortham, 2006).
Learning-in-practice views argue that learning is determined by shifts in one’s
participation (i.e., practices, use of artifacts) and that learning is intertwined with
identity formation as one’s continuing participation in a practice or a particular
domain becomes integral to who one is (e.g., Lee, 1995,1997; Nasir & Hand,
2052008; Varelas et al., 2013). In order to see how interest, participation, and
identity processes co-occur in DYD, we draw on the framework of Nasir and
Cooks (2009) to outline three types of identity resources—ideational, relational,
and material—that are made available in learning environments. Ideational
resources are the ideas that are offered up in the discourse and interactions in
210the specific learning setting about what is valued and who one is and can be.
Relational resources are the ways in which
Q27 the relationships with others in the
setting, such as peers, mentors, and instructors, provide people with information
about who they are (and are not) and the types of identities they support. Finally,
material resources are the ways in which artifacts and other physically tangible
215objects (e.g., curriculum) in the setting tell people about who they are and who
they can be (Nasir & Cooks, 2009). These resources accumulate over time in
ways that can positively or negatively influence youth’s participation, identity,
and learning trajectories relative to a practice or set of practices that constitute an
activity or discipline.
220Research on the intertwining processes of learning and identity also indicates
that particular storylines, or stereotypical narratives that are discursively repro-
duced, are prevalent within society and learning settings. These storylines narrate
how youth perceive themselves and their abilities, particularly in domains like
STEM (Allen & Eisenhart, 2017/this issue
Q28 <PQ>Production Editor: Note refer-
225ences to articles in this issue. Please include page numbers in references once
issue is paginated.</PQ>; Varelas et al., 2013), and have implications for the
types of identities youth are afforded access to within learning environments
(Nasir et al., 2012; Varelas et al., 2013). Storylines are powerful because they
6PINKARD ET AL.
define the parameters of a single identity construct (e.g., racial identity, learner
230identity) and shape how that identity is viewed in relation to an individual’s other
real or perceived identities (Givens, Nasir, Ross, & McKinney de Royston, 2016;
Nasir, 2011). This is because identities operate functionally in sets, such that one
aspect of one’s identity has implications for other aspects. For example, stereo-
types about scientists or techies often evoke a cluster of identities (including
235White, male, nerdy, good at science) while excluding others (like stylish, popular,
or artistic). Well-known persons like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Bill Nye become
static, one-dimensional representations of who is assumed to be interested in or
good at science or technology (Visintainer, 2015). Yet these stereotypical “iden-
tity constellations”
Q29 do not reflect intragroup or intraperson diversity and see-
240mingly foreclose the possibility that alternative identity constellations exist or
can be developed (Givens et al., 2016).
THE DYD PROGRAM MODEL
DYD is an out-of-school program developed to engage middle school girls in
design-based engineering and computer science activities, with a special focus on
245recruiting and retaining girls from underrepresented urban communities, espe-
cially girls who have not expressed interest in STEM. The environment addresses
the design challenges outlined previously using the DYD situational framework:
a narrative storyline that is based on nonstereotypical characters, in-person
activities led by racially diverse female mentors and involving interactions with
250racially diverse female peers, and an online platform that extends beyond the
confines of in-person activities. This framework builds on 10 years of design-
based implementation and research in formal and informal youth learning envir-
onments across Chicago by the Digital Youth Network (DYN), founded by the
lead author.
255DYD is a 2-year program sequence that is scaffolded to offer girls increasing
levels of expertise, creative freedom, and learning opportunities as designers,
programmers, electrical engineers, and computer scientists. The first year, orga-
nized to spark an initial first stage of interest (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), relies
heavily on the situational components of the project-based curriculum, narrative
260stories, online platform, and mentors. The final year, by contrast, is driven by the
individual youth learner’s interests and project design ideas. In this article, we
focus on the first year of the program, designed to bridge connections between
girls’existing interests and STEM using the DYD situational framework. This
interconnected framework is integrative in its design and delivery, and it is
265mediated by intentional instructional and social practices. Here we describe the
four primary components of the framework, highlighting the design and interac-
tion features intended to debunk adverse racialized and gendered stereotypes and
XXXX 7
expose youth to a myriad of computational practices as technological creators
and designers to support youth identification with computing and engineering
270topics.
Project-Based Curriculum
Research suggests that project-based curriculum intentionally positions girls as
creators and designers through the making and creating activities they engage in
that support youth in developing STEM-linked interests and identities (e.g.,
275Barron & Martin, 2016; Barron, Wise, & Martin, 2013; Blikstein, 2013; Vos-
soughi & Bevan, 2014). Given that many engineering and computational making
domains remain male dominated (e.g., Blickenstaff, 2005; College Board, 2014;
Ericson, 2014), the DYD project-based curriculum is designed to counter these
trends by inviting participation from nondominant, female youth. The modular
280curriculum is clustered into three project families (e-fashion, e-paper, and
e-dance) that interweave computational and digital literacies through the devel-
opment of creative artifacts. Girls who participate in DYD transform everyday
items (e.g., hair ornaments, bracelets, and greeting cards) and practices (e.g.,
dancing) into unique, personalized objects and experiences through the integra-
285tion of circuitry, fabrication, programming, and design.
The e-paper and e-fashion work builds on the Grinding New Lenses e-craft
series developed by Kylie Peppler and colleagues (Peppler, Gresalfi, Tekinbas, &
Santo, 2014), and the e-dance unit utilizes Virtual Environment Interactions, an
introductory programming platform developed by Shaundra Daily and colleagues
290(Daily et al., 2014). Each curricular unit promotes independent work and pro-
blem solving through complex design projects that are broken down into smaller
activities (see Figure 1). Each project is accompanied by learning resources such
as how-to guides, troubleshooting tips, and related extension activities. Activities
are designed to support community development (e.g., showcase events) and
295identity reflection (e.g., video diaries).
Narratives
In the DYD model, narratives are used to motivate participation and interest,
launch project activities, and explicitly connect girls to a larger (albeit fictional)
community of racially diverse female computational makers. The DYD narra-
300tives were co-designed by the team and middle school girls in the pilot program
(described in more detail later in this article) and written by professional chil-
dren’s authors. The narrative centers on a group of students in a parallel middle
school DYD club. Each narrative episode is aligned with a curricular unit (e-
fashion, e-paper, e-dance) and focuses on a different character in the fictional
305club. Narrative episodes are made up of multiple chapters, with each chapter
8PINKARD ET AL.
FIGURE 1 Youth participants working on the artistic and circuitry design of their e-cuff project.
9
scaffolding project activities within the curricular unit. In each chapter, the main
character encounters a situation, challenge, or design-thinking prompt that
requires the creation of a physical artifact or written solution. The characters
work together through projects, often relying on one another for support or
310competing with one another as they navigate academic, technical, and social
issues that impede their project’s progress and their sense of well-being. The
action takes place within the context of relatable middle school settings and
experiences, including classrooms, cafeterias, libraries, computer labs, and school
dances. To support multiple learning modalities and multiple opportunities for
315exploration and connection, the text of the narratives texts is available through
the online platform and in hard copy, and dramatic animations of selected
segments of the narratives are also available in the platform.
The narratives encourage interest and engagement through elements of con-
temporary young adult fiction (mystery, clues, social and emotional issues) that
320elicit youth curiosity (e.g., Dickey, 2011; Malone, 1981). At the level of week-to-
week implementation, these stories provide girls with an unfolding incentive to
initiate and continue participation, as their work and progress drives the unlock-
ing of subsequent chapters and allows them to follow the thread to a conclusion.
As material and ideational resources, these stories offer alternative storylines
325about race, gender, and computing that deviate from dominant stereotypes. The
main characters are middle school girls with a variety of racial and ethnic
backgrounds, skills, interests, and technological experiences who, like the
DYD participants, are similarly engaged in computational activities and chal-
lenges that shift over time. Characters are designed to present diverse representa-
330tions of intersectional realities, identity possibilities, and stylistic nuances rather
than stereotypical tropes (e.g., the nerdy programmer, the stylish girly girl, the
athletic tomboy) as a way to ideationally position participants as capable of being
interested in and succeeding in STEM irrespective of their perceived identities or
identity constellations. Likewise, character body types are meant to reflect the
335diversity of heights, weights, and physical features (eye color, hair length and
type) of adolescent girls. Nonstereotypical combinations of character interests,
appearances, and storylines are designed to mirror the complexity of middle
school girls’multiple identities, potential STEM interests, and social realities
within schools.
340Project activities are purposefully embedded in the stories to connect the
fictional and real worlds. Girls are assigned projects that mirror those in the
narratives, and technical language is used throughout the stories. This contextual
project placement builds on work that has found that clearly communicated work
and concepts can be relayed through project narratives (e.g., Putnam, 2010)in
345ways that allow users to apply the rules of their own existence in relatable worlds
to figure out solutions (Dickey, 2011). In the animations, illustrations are
10 PINKARD ET AL.
embedded with visual representations of the projects and processes students work
through in the face-to-face environment (see Figure 2).
Prompts for projects are launched from within the narratives, as are invitations
350for showcase opportunities such as competitions, positioning participants as
creators and contributors in part of a larger community of digital makers (Barron
et al., 2014; Martin, Barron, Austin, & Pinkard, 2009). For example, in one
episode the girls in the narrative come up with the idea for a project that is then
passed on to the girls in the program. The following excerpt reveals how the
355narrative blends the third-person fictional DYD story with a second-person
STEM activity prompt:
“Duh!”Sylvia pointed at her conductivity kit. “What if we could make the flowers
light up? It would be a really cool effect, and everyone could see them.”“Yes!”
Roshonna grinned. “That’s an amazing idea. How do we figure out how to get the
360lights to work?”She asked. “You guys focus on refining the design. Leave the
lights to me,”Sylvia grinned. “Alrighty then,”Roshonna clapped her hands. “Let’s
get to work!”
Now it’s your turn: Use a 3 V battery to light 1 LED; Create a series circuit using 1
LED, a 3 V battery and alligator clips; Continue to add LEDs and alligator clips to
365create a series circuit; Use aluminum foil as a switch to turn your series circuit on
and off.
Online Social Learning Network
The curriculum and the narratives unfold in an online platform in order to
immerse the girls in the story and provide additional opportunities to interact
370with one another outside the face-to-face environment. The DYD platform uses
FIGURE 2 A screenshot from a Digital Youth Divas narrative video showing a character
holding her paper prototype for the e-cuff design project.
XXXX 11
iRemix, a private online social learning network utilized during face-to-face
DYN programs and accessible during out-of-program hours. The site supports
youth to post work, receive feedback from mentors and peers, view and critique
the work of others, and develop and manage a portfolio of projects (Martin,
375Nacu, & Pinkard, 2016). The platform was designed to extend access and
opportunities to digital learning to students who do not traditionally have them
beyond the confines of a physical program or classroom. The platform thus
supports the broader learning ecology of youth across multiple locations, such
as home, school, and community (Barron, 2006; Barron & Bell, 2015; Barron
380et al., 2014), and acts as an affinity space (Gee, 2004) in which participants at
different levels of expertise are engaged around common interests and projects.
For the DYD, participation on the site allows girls to build profiles and
portfolios of work and to start cultivating a desired social reputation within the
private and safe community of digital creators. In turn, they are viewed, cri-
385tiqued, and positioned by others, gaining recognition both internally and outside
the program if they choose to use the online space to showcase their work to
family members, relatives, or friends outside the program. This is linked to the
conceptualization of identities as being essentially stories about persons (e.g.,
Sfard & Prusak, 2005) that are a dynamic work in progress that is developed by
390time, individuals, and social practice (e.g., Holland, 2001). In this way, one can
think of the girls constructing their own narratives within the online environment
as they follow along with the virtual narrative world.
Distributed Online and Offline Mentors
Nondominant girls, like other learners, are influenced by the actors within a
395learning environment. Findings from previous work (Barron et al., 2014) high-
light the fact that mentors play changing and varied roles that shift according to
child, environment, and situation. Successful programs that show promise often
are difficult to replicate or scale/spread (Coburn, 2007
Q6 ) because they are reliant
on maverick mentors who are difficult to replicate. In addition, a critical issue
400when delivering STEM content to underrepresented populations compounded by
repeating cycles of inequities is that often the best person to impart computa-
tional content and assess work is not the same person who can foster a safe and
encouraging environment that promotes a sense of fit for the intended audience.
To address these issues, mentorship in the DYD program is distributed online
405and offline. Each mentor type has overlapping roles to support youth in learning
and development, adapted from those found to be critical for developing young
people’s technological fluency at home, at school, and in the community (Barron
et al., 2014; Barron, Martin, Takeuchi, & Fithian, 2009; Ching, Santo, Hoadley,
& Peppler, 2015; Martin et al., 2009) and online (Nacu, Martin, Pinkard, & Gray,
4102014). Mentors who lead the DYD face to face are not engineers but share
12 PINKARD ET AL.
cultural connections with the girls and have gone through curriculum and
pedagogical training. These female mentors support and work alongside girls,
attending to specific practices during interactions. Mentors encourage participa-
tion and completion, troubleshoot work, develop community through discussion
415and collaboration, orient student goals and monitor progress, create a safe
environment, and regularly communicate with families online. These practices
help mentors model a female engaged in STEM activities and provide insight
into potential career pathways. At the same time, adults online, including online
mentors and program leads, who have some expertise in the project-based
420curriculum and computational making activities, offer feedback on submitted
work, offer formative troubleshooting guidance on projects and questions, and
suggest future work and unlock next steps, allowing girls to level up.
Based on the assumption that learning and identity development requires
being in ongoing dialogue with the learner, the program model includes dedi-
425cated time for conversation. Unstructured conversation while girls talk among
themselves as they work is combined with more structured mentor-prompted
activities such as check-ins at the beginning of each session to explore how girls
are feeling that day and what is going on in their world and circle time when
mentors facilitate discussion with the girls around the identity themes raised
430through the narratives and showcase work.
METHODS
This work is grounded in design-based research (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992;
Hoadley, 2002) to understand learning environments in real-world contexts using
a process of design, implementation, and iterative refinement. Using narratives as
435a mechanism for engagement and interest development requires that the narra-
tive-based curriculum resonate with the target population. Thus, we engaged
participants as co-designers to inform the design of narrative materials and
practices and to explore potential relationships between the narratives and the
girls’sense of agency, identity, and interest as related to STEM. Decades of
440participatory design literature has introduced the notion of involving users
throughout the entire design process as equal stakeholders who have a say in
the creation of systems and tools (Muller, 2003). Druin and colleagues’frame-
work focuses
Q30 co-designing with children (Druin, 2002; Druin et al., 1998). Their
work informed our approach to engaging the girls as design partners (who
445informed our approach to creating the narratives), testers (who provided feedback
on the narratives), and users who engaged with the narratives during their
experience in the DYD program (Druin, 2002). We used a co-design approach
to creating the narratives because it provided a lens into the users and shifted
traditional roles of power and positionality (i.e., in which teachers or adults make
XXXX 13
450the decisions) to instead allow the girls to help craft narratives that best suited
their (and their peers’) interests.
Program and Participants
The DYD pilot was held as an after-school program at two urban public charter
schools once a week for 2 hr from January through May (16 sessions per school)
455and led by two female African American digital media mentors trained in the
curriculum. Both women, one in her 20s and the other in her 30s, had significant
experience with and ties to previous DYN youth-serving programs and the local
communities served. A group of middle schools on the West and South Sides of
Chicago with whom DYN had prior partnerships were considered for the Divas
460co-design year. To minimize logistical implementation challenges, we intention-
ally sought to launch the DYD co-design implementation in an environment
where we had existing relationships with school personnel and where DYN was
recognized as part of the after-school culture. The two schools were selected
based on principal interest, space and support staff availability, and student
465demographics. Both schools had majority nondominant students who resided in
underserved neighborhoods, but they were unique in comparison to each other.
One school (that we refer to as Cedar Elementary) was predominantly Latino
(91%), and the other (Elm Elementary) was predominantly African American
(85%). Both schools had a high proportion (more than 89%) of students classi-
470fied as low income.
Cedar was very invested in technology-driven programming, including a
history with our programs during out-of-school and in-school time, an after-
school digital video club, and a middle school game design elective. Elm did not
have the same technology emphasis but had a unique focus on identity develop-
475ment, particularly in its mission and programming on cultural identity through
African heritage and history. A total of 17 girls signed up to participate: six at
Cedar and 11 at Elm. The girls were representative of the target population of the
program. A total of 76% defined themselves as African American (two girls at
Cedar and 11 girls at Elm), and 24% defined themselves as Latino
Q31 (four girls at
480Cedar and none of the girls at Elm); 24% were from bilingual English–Spanish
households. We did not collect data on individual girls’socioeconomic status but
instead used their school’s demographic data as a proxy.
Data Collection Strategies
Researchers worked closely with mentors to incorporate co-design strategies
485throughout the sessions at both schools. To capture these moments and to get
an understanding of how the program was unfolding on a classroom and
14 PINKARD ET AL.
individual level, we conducted in-person observations of the sessions, summaries
of online activity, and semistructured interviews with individual girls.
Co-Design Strategies. Specific co-design activities during the sessions
490were primarily discussion based, including sessions when adult mentors
provided student co-designers with drafts of narratives and prompted
conversation for participants to offer feedback on the storylines and character
development. Furthermore, mentors regularly led discussions regarding how
students connected with characters—in terms of both plausibility (i.e., Did the
495narratives remind girls of aspects of themselves and their lives?) and interest (i.e.,
Were the girls interested in what happened in the story?). Mentors also explicitly
asked about sensitive topics such as race, ethnicity, and gender issues; in most
cases, student discussions regarding these topics were verbose and lively with
little probing. Focal questions and timing for specific conversations were
500coconstructed during regular meetings between the mentors and research team,
but the conversations were also organic and emergent within the specific
classroom implementations. Mentors reflected on these sessions with
researchers, which contributed to decisions for adaptations and revisions of the
narrative design and corresponding practices.
505Field Observations and Digital Ethnographies. Members of the four-
person research team attended regular sessions at each school (approximately
every other week) and recorded observations through field notes, often with
embedded photographs. In total, 13 field documents were developed, seven
from Elm and six from Cedar, representing 125 pages of typed notes. Two
510members of the research team also engaged in weekly digital ethnographies
(Hine, 2008) to qualitatively document online activity and interactions
unfolding on the platform over the course of the study. Twelve digital
ethnographies were generated of the DYD iRemix instance (representing
activities on the platform for participants of both physical locations) totaling 44
515pages of notes. We captured 235 images, representing both photographs of the
physical environments and screenshots of the online platform.
Semistructured Interviews. To learn more about the individual girls in the
program, including their prior experiences and ideas for their future, building on
the idea that interest and engagement often happen across longer timeframes and
520confluences of experiences and opportunities (Barron & Bell, 2015), we
identified a subset of girls as focal case studies representing higher and lower
prior experience with fluency-building experiences (Barron, Walter, Martin, &
Schatz, 2010
Q7 ). We conducted short interviews with these seven girls (four at
Cedar and three at Elm) at two time periods during the program. Interview
XXXX 15
525protocols were adapted from existing instruments used in prior work: a learning
ecologies interview the explored youth histories with technology and learning
across spaces and time (Barron et al., 2009) and an artifact-based reflection
interview using the student profile and portfolio as a shared reference point to
discuss the girls’work, contributions to the site, and plans for learning more
530(Barron et al., 2014). All interviews occurred during regularly scheduled DYD
programming and were audio recorded; the artifact-based interviews were also
videotaped. The learning ecologies interviews were approximately 20 min, and
the artifact-based interviews (summary check-ins after completed projects) were
approximately 5 min long. Transcribing all interviews resulted in 67 pages.
535Throughout this article, pseudonyms are used to identify individual learners to
ensure confidentiality.
Analysis
We used an inductive process (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to analyze the extensive
qualitative field notes, digital ethnographies, and youth interviews and connect
540data to the theoretical ideas of narratives and interest development, which led us
to iterate on the narratives themselves. This set of data amounted to 39 text
documents totaling 236 pages.
We began by conducting a line-by-line analysis (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw,
1995) of the observation field notes, interview transcripts, and online ethnogra-
545phies. Focusing on a random set of roughly 10% of the data collected, three
senior members of the research team (two professors and one senior researcher)
inductively applied codes to the data, which led to the development of an initial
codebook with 64 codes. Examples of codes were group learning, motivation,
student–student interaction, student–instructor interaction, STEM interest, race,
550and stereotype. Three graduate research assistants then applied the initial code-
book to the corpus of data. In cases in which several codes defined a phrase,
researchers used multiple nested codes to label data, ranging from phrases to
multiple sentences that best illustrated the codes. The entire research team, which
consisted of the senior members and graduate research assistants, met weekly to
555mediate inconsistencies and uncertainties in the coding and discuss modifications
to the codebook, which included adding new codes and collapsing existing codes
that were repetitive. The final codebook consisted of 77 codes grouped into 11
hierarchical categories so that we could better see patterns and themes. After
creating the final codebook, the graduate students then iterated, applying the
560codebook to the entire corpus of data until the team reached a verbal agreement
of saturation (i.e., no new phenomena were identified and the codes were
correctly applied). Though our analysis showed various phenomena that offer
insights to the learning sciences field
Q32 , in this article we present data from the
codes and categories that related most closely to our research questions and
16 PINKARD ET AL.
565frequencies of application (see Table 1). In the following section, we present
quotes that illustrate unique ways in which the co-design process impacted girls’
feelings of agency, social and STEM identity, and situational interest.
RESULTS
This section summarizes results from inductive coding of our corpus of data for
570the duration of the pilot DYD program at the two locations. Data used in this
section include field notes from the face-to-face implementation at both schools,
weekly ethnographic descriptions of activity in the online iRemix space, and
transcripts of interviews with focal case learners. Our findings address the
narratives as a type of unique artifact girls encountered as part of the DYD
575program, the practices that situated the narratives in the program, and the specific
co-design aspect of the implementation. The section is broken into three parts
that represent primary themes of youth agency, interest, and identity.
Agency Through Co-Design and Making
…every opinion that I had, they did it. [20150515_Interview_Elm_Maarika]
580Our findings suggest that participants both accepted their roles as contributors
and exhibited agency as co-designers of the narratives. They did not hesitate to
make comments about potential improvements that could be made to the narra-
tives and took seriously their responsibilities and contributions.
Participants demonstrated agency by identifying themselves as designers of
585the narrative as opposed to user testers (Druin, 2003
Q8 ). One participant commen-
ted on an initial version of a visual narrative that only consisted of black-and-
white sketches, saying,
I really liked it, but I thought it would be more than just sketches. I think a way we
can make it better is to add color and so we can see the people, it looked like all the
590same people. [20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm]
Use of collective language like we, us, and our exemplifies the extent to which
the girls felt a part of the design process and recognized how their comments
could effect change. Participants’comments about the narratives also reflected an
awareness of audience for the narrative story beyond themselves. For instance, a
595participant explained her rationale for suggesting a change to the visual narrative
sketches, saying, “The story isn’t boring, but nobody would stay up just watching
drawings. It would be better if it had color and features like eyes and nose”
[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm].
XXXX 17
TABLE 1
Q22
Code Description n
Social ideologies
STEREOTYPE Thoughts or beliefs that essentialize or problematically characterize
certain types of people or certain ways of doing things (which are
often proxy for talking about certain groups of people)
10
Divas program
NARRATIVES Reference to the Diva narratives 52
CHARACTERS Reference to the characters in the Divas narratives 40
Learning practices
ENGAGEMENT Any reference to the level of engagement with any aspect of the DYD
program
32
MOTIVATION Any reference to the reason anyone (mentor or youth) does something
related to the DYD program (e.g., complete a project, use the iRemix
platform)
51
Identity
LEARNER_ID Relates to or positions a student’s identity as a learner, someone who
develops new knowledge, figures things out, uses resources, etc.
(including self-positioning)
29
CREATOR_ID Relates to or positions a student’s identity as a creator, someone who has
innovative and new ideas, is able to make things he or she imagines,
etc. (including self-positioning)
28
STEM_ID Relates to or positions a student’s STEM identity as someone who
engages in science, technology, math, and engineering work
(including self-positioning)
22
DESIGNER_ID Relates to or positions a student’s identity as a designer, someone who is
artistic, can visualize and organize designs, etc. (including self-
positioning)
16
AGENCY Youth being conscious of their ability to do something 14
ARTIFACT_ID Youth connecting a specific artifact or material object (e.g., DYD
project work) to some aspect of their own identity
6
NARRATIVE_ID Youth connecting a specific story or character from the DYD narrative
to some aspect of their own identity
4
Relationships
STUDENT–
CHARACTER
Reference to some interplay between youth and characters (e.g., online
interactions between girls and characters, girls talking about
characters in the narrative)
31
STUDENT–
NARRATIVE
Reference to the relationship between the student and the narrative (e.g.,
any discussion or reflection of the narrative by girls in the program)
25
Interest
INTERESTS Reference to youth personal interests, desires, or hobbies (can be related
or not to DYD components or topic areas)
120
STEM
INTEREST
Reference to youth interests, desires, or hobbies related to STEM
(circuitry, programming, etc.)
25
(Continued )
18 PINKARD ET AL.
One of the main suggestions made that demonstrated the agency girls felt was
600to include themselves in the storylines and to reauthor their own stories. One girl
said, “I don’t know if you make the stories or not, but you should add some of us
into the story, like us in this room.”Another girl suggested that “one way to
make it better”would be to make it a series in which actual students acted out the
storyline, allowing them to redefine the narratives as they related to their current
605lives [20150206_Fieldnotes_Cedar].
These quotes begin to illustrate how students embraced the narratives, made
the story their own, and exerted their agency as co-designers to make improve-
ments. These findings led to direct changes in the narrative, including articulating
character details as opposed to using the initial intentionally vague character
610sketches (see Figure 3) and adding projects that allowed girls to tell their own
story after the initial narratives were launched early in the program. For example,
starter assignments such as the About Me video project and the construction of
an online profile page enabled girls to tell their own story through video and
writing. These assignments were shared through the online platform and were
615added to the community contributions from other girls in their cohort as well as
the virtual characters.
Although some evidence of agency through co-design was evident in field
notes from both schools, individual learner perspectives within the two environ-
ments were different. In response to interview questions directly about their
620contribution to the DYD narrative design, the girls from Elm were confident
about their influence, whereas the girls from Cedar responded with more caution.
These girls told us that they offered their opinions about the story in class but
they did not think these opinions would be used to modify the actual narrative
artifact: “It wouldn’t make a difference because they already made the story, it
625was already made, and they don’t got time to change it”[2015_LEinterview_-
Cedar_Siena]. This variability between school learners may be a random result of
the particular subset of girls who were selected to be interviewed, but it also may
TABLE 1
(Continued)
Code Description n
FASHION
INTEREST
Reference to youth interests, desires, or hobbies related to fashion-
related things (art, modeling, sewing, etc.)
24
Other
AFFIRMATION Expressed agreement, affirmation, confirmation 8
PERSPECTIVE
SHIFT
Reference to a change over time in their views of themselves, STEM
work, or the program
5
Note. DYD = Digital Youth Divas; STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Q52
XXXX 19
FIGURE 3 Images showing three stages of character development during the co-design process.
20
suggest something about the general culture of each school. Elm’s emphasis on
African American identity and self-efficacy perhaps positioned its students to
630more easily take on the role of contributor, whereas at Cedar it took significantly
more effort to elicit student opinions. In addition, girls from Cedar were imme-
diately willing to engage in the co-design process, whereas girls from Elm were
more reserved in their initial comments. This required mentors to apply power
transfer techniques from the co-design process, such as reminding girls that there
635were no wrong answers, they were the experts, and others would benefit from
their opinion (Druin, 2002; Muller, 2003).
Though school cultural differences may have impacted students’perception of
their impact on the narrative design process, field notes illustrated that girls at
both schools exhibited agency as digital creators. Many shared their ideas for
640domain-related work beyond what was required, including new projects and
ideas for revision. During a session, one girl reflected, “I would like to [make
a] headband just like this and make it light up and stuff. And other things like
shirts we will be making and bracelets, and bows and stuff”[201502_ABInter-
view_Elm_Maarika], and another was overheard saying, “I wish I could make it
645so it would only light up when you push a button”[20150217_Fieldnotes_Ce-
dar]. Although these are suggestions, they represent how the girls were indepen-
dently assessing the small next step in their learning pathway and connecting that
step with their personal interests or goals. Even the girls who did not yet assign
themselves an identity as a creator described their creative experiences: “I don’t
650create stuff. I just do what they tell me to do and create …I try to create it and
then try my best”[20150516_LEinterview_Cedar_Siena]. There is a direct rela-
tionship between youth’s identity as a creator and their appropriation of the
learning process, as they make plans to learn more and seek out resources to
do so (Barron et al., 2014). These statements reflect how the girls may have been
655moving along the stages of interest development and shifting from something
that was asked of them toward doing something that they initiated. This also
suggests that the co-design process itself could also be a catalyst for creating
situational interest than can then transform into more well-developed interests
(Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Although this was not our intent, future studies could
660explore the impact of co-design on interest development.
Recent work has called out the importance of articulating, recognizing, and
fostering agentic strategies for women of color in the computer science field,
highlighting professionals who have used “their own agency to create success for
themselves”
Q33 (Hodari, Ong, Ko, & Smith, 2016). For these middle school girls,
665working through complex design projects and having a voice that impacted
program design supported them in developing a sense of themselves as agents
in the DYD environment. It is important to note that mentors explicitly posi-
tioned the girls as contributors to the program, addressing their efforts in the co-
design process and acknowledging successes in challenging STEM activity work.
XXXX 21
670[Mentor] A. walks through the thought process of how to use apps like that, a lot of
the time people design things to solve problems. “Who is asking girls your age from
the south side of Chicago about what kind of apps they want to see or make?”A. is
up front with them about the goals of the program, about how girls often don’tgo
into these fields. She tells the girls that they are in a new program, and that they
675want to be able to expand this program to other schools, and they are going to help
us do that. [20150116_Fieldnotes_Elm]
Throughout the year, the mentors revisited the girls’contribution to the
program, specifically highlighting the changes made to the narrative as a result
of their participation.
680
[Mentor] S. says “You remember how we watched that video, and you said that you
wish they had faces?”S. explains that there are illustrators working on the new
version of the story, and that we have some drafts for you to look at.”
[20150327_FieldNotes_Elm]
Q34
The practice of positioning builds on previous DYN work (Barron et al.,
6852014). Programmatic iteration included DYD professional development articu-
lating specific mentor practices to position girls as creators, community
members, and long-term STEM learners, highlighting the importance of
encouraging student contributions online and offline and regularly showing
girls how they were shaping the program. Although this was tailored to the
690co-design process in this iteration of DYD, this approach is relevant to all
design activities youth learners are engaged in during the DYD program.
These design activities also are related to the emergent narrative in specific
instances as youth design artifacts and contribute their work to the online
community.
695Narrative and Situational Interest
The story added funniness, flavor …[without it] it would be like what am I doin’
this for? [20150515_LEInterview_Elm_Melanie]
Overall, results indicate that narratives may trigger situational interest in
STEM learning activities for middle school girls. Girls demonstrated
700engagement with the narrative stories within the DYD environment and
indicated that the stories offered some girls motivation to continue engaging
with the story. In field notes of program sessions, girls frequently were
described as wanting to know more from day to day: “While discussing,
Elaine asks if they will get to read the rest of the story”[20150116_Field-
705notes_Elm]. Also,
22 PINKARD ET AL.
[Mentor] A. asks if they liked it, they both say yes, one girl says that she would like
to hear the 2nd part now. A. asks if they would like to read it on their own, and one
girl says that she would like to keep reading on her own because it’s interesting.
[20150116_Fieldnotes_Elm]
710In a voluntary after-school or out-of-school program, these types of motivators
that can establish links from one program day to the next are especially valuable,
as learners have choices about what they continue to participate in, and they can
also anchor a connection to previous sessions, allowing for a more seamless
continuation of work if girls are absent. In this way, the narratives in the DYD
715program were a situational component (Hidi & Renninger, 2006) that was able to
connect with or trigger interest with some of the program participants.
Building on the idea of motivation through narrative, the co-design process
explored modes of dissemination. Although the narrative was an intentionally
developed artifact within the DYD environment, the way it was introduced and
720practices of how it was used were highly impactful and became a focus of co-
design discussions. For example, as the following excerpt from field notes
highlights, girls shared that community and collaborative reading practices
were appreciated:
[Mentor] A. asked the girls if they would rather read the book on their own, or have
725her read out loud. [The girls] said that they would rather her read it. A. begins
reading the story. They sit close together, huddled around A. and [mentor] S. They
seem engaged in the story. Girls are smiling as A. reads, they have leaned in a bit
since it began. It seems like they are interested. One girl claps when it’s finished!
[20150116_Fieldnotes_Elm]
730This excerpt begins to highlight how narratives were one part of the DYD
environment but that their connection to other situational components of the
program, in this case the community of peers and mentors, was important in how
the narratives actually played out in situ.
One girl went a step further in the interconnectedness of the narratives and the
735actual DYD community and described a desire to act out the story instead of
simply reading it, saying, “It’s easy to follow the story, but I just want to [act it
out] for fun”[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm]. Although role playing was not a part
of the DYD objectives, the students’desire to “be”the characters prompted
questions about the function of role-playing narratives in interest and identity
740development. Although one intention of the narratives was to provide an alter-
native reality in which recognizable characters girls could relate to were engaged
in STEM activities, building on visibility and identity work by Lee (1995,1997)
and Nasir (Nasir & Cooks, 2009), the girls wanted to write themselves directly
XXXX 23
into the story. This finding prompted us to iterate on various portions of the
745program model to allow girls to role play.
One change was to use the online platform to incorporate opportunities for
participants to interact with the narrative characters. iRemix profiles were created
for a few key characters from the narratives (two teachers and five girls), and
DYD mentors managed these avatars. Teacher characters could launch assign-
750ments and assess submitted work. The story could prompt a required online
interaction with characters, such as sending girls messages. For example, in one
narrative installment the main character, Roshonna, receives a mysterious color-
coded note in her locker. The girls responded to Roshonna in the online environ-
ment to help her decode the message using color theory. This approach yielded
755engaged responses in which girls both solved the problem and included a
personal message, such as “hi Roshonnah im [participant name] i read the
story and what i think the preson [sic] is trying to tell you is that you should
be more nice, friendly, calming, cheerful, and dont let Mackenzie and Caitlin or
anger get to you”and “Be calm and don’t care what people say”
760[20160113_OnlineEthnography]. Girls also were observed interacting with one
another in the face-to-face environment around these online messages to virtual
characters: “Most of the group is finished writing the message, Saria and Amaya
are still working, Saria asks what the subject of the message should be. They are
discussing their messages, Saria looks at Amaya’s screen to see what she wrote”
765[20150127_Fieldnotes_Cedar].
The concept of a learning system that enables educators to engage with youth
through character avatars was part of the Fifth Dimension after-school clubs, in
which a mythical wizard character helped to resolve conflicts in individual and
community learning activities through e-mail exchanges. As with DYD, research
770into the Fifth Dimension found this strategy to impact both community and
individual motivation to continue work and persist through problems (Kaptelinin
& Cole, 1997). In one narrative DYD installment, a competition was seeded in
the online environment that effectively brought girls into the narrative, generating
collaboration and community across schools:
775
Students initially posted their flower designs as submissions to the competition,
then, in this same blog, began commenting on each other’s work and congratulating
the winners. They are using “@”to identify who they are communicating with.
Girls from each face to face site are communicating with each other, so the
interactions aren’t limited by site. [20150309_OnlineEthnography]
780These examples highlight how the design process allowed for iterations to the
program model, both to the specific narrative artifact but also in the development
of social practices around the use of the story to increase nondominant girls’
participation.
24 PINKARD ET AL.
In addition to becoming immersed in and engaged by the story and sharing
785practices related to narratives, girls specifically expressed connections to project
work and how narratives incentivized their participation in domain-specific
STEM assignments. One girl stated, “They were really interesting and really
…They’re not just stories that aren’t at all relevant to what we’re doing—they’re
really relevant …[to] the projects that we did”[20150519_LEinterview_Cedar_-
790Flora]. Another specifically identified a specific project that showed up in the
story (see Figure 2): “[The story] goes along with what we do …It was
interesting, ‘cause the girl made her own e-cuff. That’s why we made e-cuffs,
from the story”
Q35 [20150519_LEinterview_Cedar_Siena]. During an interview near
the end of the year, one participant explained, “It made me wanna get really,
795really into Digital Divas because as I was reading the stories, I figured out that
the things that they’re doing in the stories are what we’re gonna be doing in the
club”[20150515_LEInterview_Maarika]. This girl went on to differentiate nar-
rative-driven learning from school learning:
Because it’s fun. We’re learning. It’s like how we learn in school when we read. In
800Digital Divas, we read and then we do hands-on. So if we were just doing hands-on,
we wouldn’t know what to do. And then it’d be boring because [the lead DYD
mentors] will always be talking. “Do this, do that, you wanna do this.”
[20150515_LEInterview_Elm_Maarika]
Again, this reveals how the narratives were perceived in connection to another
805primary component of the DYD program, in this case project-based learning.
Field notes revealed how the mentors purposefully framed the narrative in
relation to activities and project work and how students took up that framing:
Mentor A. asks, “does this make sense why you’re doing this?”[researcher note:
They are making mood flowers—not glowing ones, that correspond with the color
810wheel] Group responds with “yes.”A. asks, “But, why do you think you’re doing
this?”Filomena says “Relate to Roshonna and to be a part of the story.”
[20150210_Fieldnotes_Cedar]
Toward the end of the school year and program cycle, girls were asked to post
an online reflection of their experience. Despite not being prompted to discuss
815any specific aspect, girls differentiated unique components of the program model,
including narratives, projects, and mentors, calling each out as uniquely impor-
tant to their experience:
I think Digital Divas was extremely fun. The stories were engaging and it was
awesome to be able to make what the characters were making. This year was a lot
820different from last year but I like it. My teachers are some of the nicest ones I’ve
XXXX 25
ever had and they were just like friends to me. I could not have been happier in this
club and I hope the girls that join next year will have as much of a good time as I
had. DIVAS ROCK!!!! [20150524_OnlineEthnography]
These quotes from the co-design pilot implementation, found across different
825data sets (online traces and in-class observations from the cohort, and interviews
with individual girls) offer encouraging evidence that narratives may incentivize
not only participation but also situational interest by providing context and
purpose for girls to complete activities associated with STEM learning. Although
we did not survey every girl individually about her perspective, we consider this
830positive perception of the stories widespread, as more than one third (37%) of
excerpts coded as narrative mentions were combined with a code of motivation
or engagement.
Narrative and Identity
[The main character is] a teenage me, I see her as myself.
835[20150210_Fieldnotes_Cedar]
One of our main objectives in this work was to understand the role of
narrative in developing positive STEM-related interests and identities. When
we examined aspects of the multidimensional nature of identity in relation to
the DYD through coding of the corpus of qualitative data, three themes emerged:
840(a) how the narratives connected with the girls themselves and their immediate
world; (b) how the narratives, especially as part of the co-design process, brought
up issues of race and ethnicity and opportunities for direct discussion around
STEM stereotypes; and (c) how the narratives connected with engineering and
computer science content and practices.
845The written narratives initially revealed few details about the outward appear-
ance of the characters as a way to connect with girls through character actions
and interests as opposed to physical attributes. When discussing this version,
participants immediately made statements about how they envisioned the char-
acters. Their descriptions included comparisons to themselves, people they knew,
850and familiar media characters. One participant described the main character as
“relatable”[20150210_Fieldnotes_Cedar] and another shared, “Roshonna is my
favorite character because, isn’t she the one who built the icicle crowns for the
dance? I would do something like that. I like to create things”[20150515_LEIn-
terview_Elm_Maarika]. One girl identified Roshonna as her favorite because of
855her fearless and capable personality: “‘Cause she’s like, this girl, she’s not afraid
of anything. She can take on anything she wants to take on”[20150515_LEIn-
terview_Elm_Melanie]. Our goal in creating the narratives was not only to
introduce STEM activities but also to present characters that were physically
26 PINKARD ET AL.
similar to the target audience and that challenged gender stereotypes in hopes of
860connecting participants with personas that positively influenced their self-effi-
cacy. As exhibited in these example quotes, the girls’initial opinions about the
characters were generally positive and connected to some of their perceptions of
themselves as creative and capable.
There were numerous comments relating characters to people girls knew or
865recognized. The recognition included characters and actions that were less than
ideal, including what one girl described as “the drama,”but for many girls such
challenging characters and situations made it an authentic portrait of middle
school. Showing how the girls connected with the characters and projected
onto them personality and physical characteristics not included in the narrative,
870one student said,
I think Ms. G is a big old mean lady, because she has to deal with theater and kids
…She has glasses and wrinkles, average height. Sometimes she is nice, but mostly
she mean, and she don’t smile a lot. Short hair, gold necklace.
[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm]
875Another girl referenced a former teacher in her description: “I think she looks
like a teacher that used to work here, Mama April. She was my complexion”
[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm].
They also saw connections between characters in the narrative and characters
in contemporary media:
880
Like, when Jayla stole Roshanna design, I was watching Pretty Little Liars that day.
This girl stole her design for her prom dress …It compares because they all work
as a team, and I was thinking about Empire, because even though they fight a lot, at
the end of the day, they still work as a team to get the job done.
[20150515_LEInterview_Elm_Melanie]
885Another girl at a different school also referenced the American teen drama Pretty
Little Liars (and perhaps even the same episode), referring to a plot narrative of
someone stealing someone else’s idea, and mentioned also that the characters on
the show had a similar focus on fashion: “they make stuff, and they wear like
style”[20150519_LEinterview_Cedar_Siena].
890Related to the girls’character analysis and identification, throughout the co-
design process there were frequent mentions of race and ethnicity when partici-
pants described how they imagined the characters. Initially we intentionally did
not define characters in this way, yet participants seemed to link certain person-
ality traits to physical attributes. One student said that she thought that the main
895character was “Caucasian.”When asked why, she responded, “I don’t know how
to describe it …she wasn’t snooty; she was like regular and girly”
XXXX 27
[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm]. Another student chimed in and said, “She might
have been mixed, because sometimes she acts black and sometimes white”
[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm]. Another said that the main character had to be a
900“blue-eyed blonde”[20150210_Fieldnotes_Cedar]. When reflecting on a char-
acter that was initially antagonistic to the protagonist, one girl described the
character as “real, real, real light skinned and she thinks she is everything, but
really she not, and she needs to talk to somebody and she wants all the attention”
[20150206_Fieldnotes_Elm]. At the beginning of the program, these conversa-
905tions were sometimes tentative, perhaps indicating that this type of frank discus-
sion was not often encouraged in formal learning settings: “‘I knew she was …’
she trails off and [mentor A.] says ‘Why are you whispering?’Monica says ‘I
knew she was white.’Julie says ‘She is bougie and rich and white’”
[20150327_Fieldnotes_Elm]. Comments such as these that link personality traits
910to particular phenotypes indicate that participants had previously encountered
racialized and gendered stereotypes, whether or not they consciously endorsed
them. These comments signal the importance of designers deeply understanding
the stereotypes that nondominant girls experience in order to create counter-
narratives and images that lead to positive self-images and STEM identities.
915Although our initial narrative representations intentionally did not address
race or gender, we subsequently redesigned them to create a set of characters
whose racial, gender, and personality compositions were more varied and more
directly visually addressed. Using the narrative representations in this way, we
sought to offer students a range of ideational resources and diverse constellations
920of racial and gender identities and personalities that were explicit counternarra-
tives to the types of stereotypes students had articulated. It is interesting that
these perceived character race and ethnicity descriptions were explicitly con-
nected not to STEM knowledge and learning stereotypes but rather to certain
behavior characteristics and personality traits. The girls identified with the idea of
925the characters as makers and designers but also paid greater attention to some of
the social aspects without including the STEM aspect as part of these initial
discussions about the narratives.
How did the girls’identification with the characters shape their project-related
activity and learning? To explicitly draw in STEM and address students’and
930address any intersectional stereotypes
Q36 , we also iterated on the need to have open
discussions about issues such as stereotyping and inherent biases with young
girls in STEM programming. As before, the aim was to offer a variety of
ideational resources that attended to the intersectional identities, including
those related to STEM, that might emerge for the students. The girls saw much
935about the narrative characters that they related to themselves or related to others
in their everyday life, while at the same time these characters were regularly
engaged in complex STEM activities. During an interview, one girl discussed
28 PINKARD ET AL.
how watching the girls enact a project within the narrative allowed her to see that
as a model for something she was able to do:
940
After you read a challenge, like if you read a story and they say that Roshanna and
Lisa design something new for the [competition] …and then [the platform] they
give you a competition, so it’s like, okay I’m doing this, I thought I wouldn’tbe
able to do it, but I’m doing it for real. [20150514_LEInterview_Elm_Melanie]
This recognition of the characters as models for their own activities is encoura-
945ging, and the program iterations explore questions about who can and should
pursue STEM learning and what the different opportunities and challenges look
like for different groups of people. Specific program modifications include more
explicit support of mentor-led discussions with girls about one another’s experi-
ences through built-in discussion prompts that are offered both online and offline.
950In addition, the stories of the mentors are highlighted to share strategies for
overcoming challenges faced by nondominant women and girls, especially in
STEM. To further connect issues of identity and stereotype specifically to STEM
activities, new activity resources were developed, including troubleshooting
videos and how-to guides featuring technology and engineering help from people
955who looked and sounded different than traditional stereotypes of STEM experts
(see Figure 4).
DISCUSSION
Evidence of Narratives and Supporting Practices as a Way to Encourage
Engagement and Interest
960In this article, we share the framework of the DYD program as a model that is
intentionally designed to disrupt the racialized and gendered disparities in parti-
cipation and interest and identity development in STEM fields. We highlight the
FIGURE 4 Screenshots from two Digital Youth Divas (DYD) video learning resources featuring
the DYD program manager.
XXXX 29
four components of our design framework, namely, the project-based curriculum,
interactive narratives, an online social learning network, and adult mentors. We
965also share findings from the pilot year of the DYD program focused on the
development of interactive narratives that allow connections for nondominant
girls. These findings offer evidence that nondominant girls’STEM engagement
and interest was sparked through the DYD program and that iterative refinements
resulting from the co-design process further deepened participation and interests.
970In particular, the interactive narratives motivated girls to continue with the
challenging STEM activities and contributed a sense of authentic purpose to the
work. The narratives also provided a relatable fictional community of girls highly
engaged with STEM-focused activities that showed promise for supporting
racially and economically nondominant girls’practice-linked STEM identities.
975Our analysis suggests that the narratives served as material and ideational
resources for identity development that were even more powerful when coupled
with the relational resources of the social and instructional practices present in
the blended DYD program design. Specifically, our qualitative data reveal that
the nuanced nature of how the characters were presented and visualized created
980natural opportunities for students to make public their own stereotypes or their
awareness of limiting racial, gender, and intersectional storylines, which ener-
gized discussion and conversation within the program. At the same time, parti-
cipants continuously wrote themselves into the narrative, wanting to be
represented as characters and making connections to their own lives. This can
985be seen as a form of self-positioning, as girls try on STEM participation in ways
that may feel safe, potentially leading them to incrementally more dedicated
participatory practices (i.e., within their DYD small group, within their DYD
program, and outside of DYD altogether).
Through the lens of Nasir’s (2009)
Q37 framework, our analysis demonstrates that
990the narrative in its various forms, including written, video, and imagery, provided
youth with material resources that supported the girls’engagement and interest
development. Likewise, the utilization of tangible representations of characters
and situations that were recognizable and relatable to them offered up ideational
resources that similarly supported the girls’participation and identification with
995STEM activities and practices. When the narratives were aligned with creative
and challenging multiweek STEM project work with a community of learners
and mentors, they offered up counternarratives about identity, interest, and ability
that were catalysts for discussions about identity and STEM. At the same time,
these occasions drew on the relational resources of the mentors in the program
1000who encouraged and supported the girls’engagement, interest, and identification
with the domain. It is not surprising that these interactions also further deepened
relationships across students and mentors. As we show, the ideational resources
from the narratives, the various material resources that facilitated the presentation
of the narratives and the challenging STEM activities, alongside the relational
30 PINKARD ET AL.
1005resources in DYD supported face-to-face and online discussions about social-,
project-, and domain-specific identity stereotypes. The narrative artifacts pro-
vided girls across program locations and mentors online and offline with a shared
resource that energized conversation and relationship development. Mechanisms
such as youth–character online interactions further strengthened the relational
1010value between the fictional DYD cohort and the girls in the DYD program.
Significant programmatic changes resulted from the pilot implementation and
co-design work, including iterative revision of character art and storylines to
make the characters and their physical and personality characteristics more
explicit and to purposefully offer a more expansive array of racial and gender
1015identity options. A design outcome of this work is the importance of attending to
how and why girls connect their stories to narratives. The online platform
enhanced how girls interacted with the narratives, emphasizing personal connec-
tions through fictional profiles and messaging.
Program redesigns emphasized girls’own narratives, including promoting
1020communications with characters in the online environment and seeding reflection
of self and STEM experiences at various points during the program. We also
trained mentors to engage in practices that more explicitly defined and supported
the process of positioning girls as creative and agentic contributors and in
promoting frank discussion of their lives and communities and families as they
1025related (or not) to STEM, including time for discussion of racialized and socia-
lized issues in the fictional and real worlds. These findings are encouraging
evidence of the first stage of interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006)
that is linked to the situational components of the environment and of how
narratives added specific elements of motivation and sense of connection. It is
1030important to note that the narratives are contextualized within interrelated com-
ponents such as adult mentorship, project-based assignments, and the online
platform.
The Need for Visible Pathways and Overlapping Opportunities
Appreciating the centrality of situational factors for sparking interest (Hidi &
1035Renninger, 2006) and the case for developing interest and identities over time
and across locations (Barron & Bell, 2015), the environmental ecosystem for
DYD was inspired by the model of young men’s engagement with basketball. In
basketball youth develop their core mechanics across formal and informal spaces
and build on the resources of peers and mentors by frequently practicing and
1040playing with and against the same cohort. Young men whose interest in basket-
ball is sustained over time often transform their personal identity to pattern
themselves after a famous basketball player whose life narrative drives their
process for developing as a basketball player (e.g., students follow the practice
regimen that they believe LeBron James used as a kid). Hence, this visible
XXXX 31
1045community of basketball players serves as face-to-face and virtual role models
and mentors who cultivate youth’s basketball vision and support young players
as they learn the rules, challenge their abilities, and provide emotional and
technical support as needed. These coach–player relationships improve the
player’s ability and can afford a young player valued social and cultural capital
1050that can be leveraged within and outside of basketball communities. Although
multiple communities of practice exist around basketball within one city, and
each is designed for a unique context, the roles, exemplars, milestones, drills,
practice, and play structures are often shared across communities to allow for
movement, collaboration, and competition across these basketball communities
1055of practice.
We believe that it is both possible and critical to develop an infrastructure of
similar intersecting communities of practice intentionally designed to engage
girls across different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds in developing base
literacies in core STEM disciplines such as circuitry, programming, design, and
1060multiple forms of fabrication.
In the work of the DYD, we explore questions about application and
design to support movement along the stages of interest development, includ-
ing how to create environments that not only ignite but can sustain interests
and what types of situational factors create inhospitable learning environ-
1065ments. To answer questions of how we looked over a 10-year model of
creating learning ecosystems that support urban youth to develop digital
literacies through mentorship and intersecting opportunities. To answer ques-
tions of what we looked to Nasir’s work on racialized stereotypes and identity
resources.
1070A key goal of this work is uncovering design strategies that can make
DYD as sticky as basketball and to create the context for DYD participants to
practice their skills outside of program meeting time, similar to the way in
which youth interested in basketball practice by themselves between practices.
In this article, we explicitly discuss our use of narratives as one strategy. An
1075additional strategy we will use in our next program implementation is to use
mentor knowledge of students’strengths and weaknesses to have the narrative
characters send e-mails prompting girls to complete a specific mini-task
before the next session. These mini-tasks, similar to basketball drills, will
be aligned to instructional areas (e.g., parallel circuits, specific sewing
1080stitches) and assigned when specific girls need more practice in those areas
or as enrichment to supplement in-class work. The effectiveness of these
mini-tasks, similar to basketball drills, will be in ensuring that the mini-
tasks are designed to improve the girls’ability to create quality DYD projects
and that the narrative and communication strategies motivate the girls to
1085complete them.
32 PINKARD ET AL.
Narratives as a Way to Supplement and Support Mentorship
At the core of the model is the use of mentors to create engaging and inviting
learning spaces that rival the stickiness of basketball courts. As stated previously,
often the connective tissue with basketball is the role models/mentors/peers
1090whom youth look up to, pattern their games around and seek guidance from,
and ultimately compare themselves to. The model relies heavily on the ability to
find mentors with backgrounds in the focal content areas, passion for working
with young people, and some cultural or geographical connection to the target
youth population; who are open to deepening their knowledge; and who are
1095available to work in a variety of youth-facing organizations, often part time and
outside of regular workday hours. Our model has proven successful in these
terms (Barron et al., 2014), but the reality of the shortage of women in STEM
creates a conundrum for implementation of the DYD as an extension of the
model. This issue is not unique to our program. The importance of domain-
1100specific role models and mentoring for women in STEM fields is often reported
along with the relative scarcity of such relationships compared to men (e.g., Hill
et al., 2010; Rosser, 2004).
When designing the DYD, we started from the reality that in Chicago and
many urban communities with large numbers of Black and brown youth, there
1105simply is not the availability of women with STEM backgrounds who possess
the necessary pedagogical knowledge, technical skills, social capital, and avail-
able time to lead programs such as DYD. We refer to the difference between the
ideal mentor’s and a potential mentor’s command of this knowledge as the
mentor preparedness gap. Hence, our design challenge was to explore ways to
1110ensure that youth are regularly mentored and supported by trusted adults while
creatively exploring ways to use technological systems to provide youth with
access to domain-specific STEM advice, assessment, and modeling of people and
pathways. As described in “The DYD Program Model,”the narrative and the
online platform, in combination with practices of use, were components inten-
1115tionally designed to supplement the original model. Specifically, the online space
provided participants with easy access to content mentors who assessed their
work, resources such as how-to videos, and exemplars of work created by other
girls. The narrative-driven STEM design challenges were intended both to draw
girls into wanting to solve (in the real world) the STEM challenges faced by the
1120fictional digital divas and to spark conversation and reflection on their own
storylines through intentionally designed interactions with characters, planned
discussions with program mentors and peers, and learning tasks designed to
engage girls in seeing how their developing STEM knowledge could be applied
to their own lives.
1125Our findings show mentors as key in introducing, positioning, and sharing the
narrative stories within the DYD environment, whereas the narratives can be seen
XXXX 33
as a particular resource for the mentors that supplements their ability to share
information, community, and ideas that are part of a collective. In particular, we
highlight the use of narratives as one approach to chipping away at the racialized
1130and gendered socialization that encapsulates the daily experience of girls through
the creation of an alternative narrative that includes the girls, their friends, the
larger community of DYD, and the animate
Q38 DYD who, through careful writing,
bring to the forefront issues of socialization that need to be addressed to
empower girls to move beyond situational interest when they encounter STEM
1135informal environments that are not specifically created to appeal to them.
Future Work
The work of Nasir et al. (2012) suggests that the journey to becoming conscious
of one’s storyline and then actively changing it is a long one that requires
support. In combination with Nasir and Cooks’s(2009) identity resources frame-
1140work, the racial storylines frame helps us understand how to design interventions
that provide the ideational, material, relational, and project-based resources that
(re)position nondominant girls relative to STEM practices and identities and also
to reframe what counts as STEM (e.g., Gieryn, 1983). It also challenges the
participating girls and the adults in their lives to question, critique, and change
1145the storylines that consciously and subconsciously mediate the ways in which
they communicate and participate in informal STEM settings (even girl-friendly
spaces) and integrate their newly developed STEM literacies into other spaces in
which they spend their time.
Reflecting on our design and implementation, we envision three primary
1150directions for future research and design that focuses on deepening our under-
standing of how to build technologies and create social practices around the
narratives and how to share design and research outcomes with broader commu-
nities. First, we will further develop a technology design component that further
facilitates communication and interaction in iRemix (i.e., messaging, featuring
1155work, tagging, commenting, recommendations) to support mentors in providing
contextualized just-in-time guidance, motivation, and support to help girls over-
come technical and motivational roadblocks that face-to-face mentors may not be
equipped to address. A second direction is attending to girls’social networks to
better support adult mentors, parents, and other caring adults in the lives of
1160young women to actively reframe their own narratives of women and minority
populations in STEM and simultaneously bolster the growing computational
knowledge of girls in the program during and beyond their participation. As
part of our next DYD iteration, we are designing workshops for caring adults
based on our mentor professional development materials to engage parents in this
1165work and discussion, helping them to broker next steps for their children. Third,
we intend to pay close attention to intersecting opportunities for girls to move
34 PINKARD ET AL.
through their pathway of interest development. The future DYD program will
specifically connect and help to guide and maintain connections for girls and
their families to local programming and online opportunities to help them to
1170connect their newly gained experiences to next steps. Combined, we see our
future work as part of a larger effort by the learning sciences community,
especially research and practice partnership initiatives, to articulate and share
promising models to engage underrepresented youth in STEM activities that will
contribute to the establishment of transferable design principles.
1175Returning to our metaphor, girls need their equivalent to basketball courts.
Although some distributed efforts exist for girls and STEM, many of these
communities of practice are discrete opportunities or contexts rather than
intersecting ones. Would basketball be as enticing to young men if all of
the well-known players were of a different racial background than theirs, if
1180they were the only boy on the court, if the majority of coaches were women,
or if the media coverage only featured WNBA players? Likely not, yet this
scenario is akin to that which racially nondominant girls encounter in con-
sidering STEM. Girl-centric STEM communities of practice are needed in
elementary, middle school, high school, college, and professional spaces both
1185to create spaces for work and development and to grow and make accessible
narratives of women engaged in STEM at all levels, over time, and in
sustained ways.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the staff of the Digital Youth Network and are especially grateful to
1190Asia Roberson, Digital Youth Divas program manager, and Jim Sandherr and
Elaina Boytor, Digital Youth Network research assistants, for their contributions.
We also thank the editors and reviewers of this special issue for their expert and
insightful critique of our work through multiple rounds of revision. Finally, we
acknowledge all Digital Youth Divas mentors, youth, parents, and other caring
1195adults who contributed their valuable time and perspectives, without which this
work would not have been possible.
The section titled “The DYD Program Model”is a reprint of the Digital Diva
Model that appears in Erete, S., Martin, C. K., & Pinkard, N. (2017). Digital
youth divas: A program model for increasing knowledge, confidence, and per-
1200ceptions of fit in STEM amongst Black and Brown middle school girls. In Y.
Rankin & J. Thomas (Eds.), Moving Students of Color from Consumers to
Producers of Technology (pp. 152–173). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/
978-1-5225-2005-4.ch008. Reprinted by permission of IGI Global. Permission to
reuse must be obtained from the rightsholder.
XXXX 35
1205FUNDING
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation
(#1433838). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the National Science Foundation.
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