Understanding Informal Science Educator Support and Peer and Sibling Positioning through the lens of Identity Work in an Informal STEM Learning Community

Informal science educators play an essential role in creating supportive science learning environments for minoritized youth. While many studies have identified their importance, little attention has been paid to how this support is developed and how it interrelates with youths' local identity work. In this study, we sought to identify the discursive practices one instructor used to support refugee-background youths' identity work as they participated in a cosmic ray research project. Utilizing a linguistic ethnographic case study approach, we examined interactions among six refugee youth, three of whom were siblings, and an informal science educator during a series of cosmic ray calibration sessions. We leverage a language socialization framework (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984, 2011) and Wortham's (2005; 2008) notion of identity trajectories or pathways as a theoretical framing (Ochs & Schieffelin, 2011; Wortham, 2005; 2008). Video data were transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis and triangulated with interview data. We identified seven instructor discursive practices which deployed collectively supported the participation and identity work of the youth, and particularly the sibling group, who engaged in a cosmic ray research project. When used together, these practices supported learner autonomy and created a local culture where all you were expected and supported to become local experts. By showing how his discursive practices enabled each youth to construct their own local identity of expertise in doing physics over time, we pull back the curtain to reveal the types of interactions that supported one group of refugee youth and siblings in one learning community. The study concludes with implications for practice in informal science education contexts and for research on how sibling relationships may relate to STEM-identity formation.