March
12 ,
2004
Packard
Receives Grant to Study Low-Income Urban Youth
|
Becky Wai-Ling Packard |
Becky Wai-Ling Packard, assistant professor
of psychology and education, has been awarded a $441,530 National
Science Foundation grant to study how low-income urban youth
develop and pursue interests and careers in science and technology.
Through the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program grant, Packard
will examine three interconnected topics: the social negotiations of educational
and career aspirations, including how the students’ science and technology
aspirations develop over time and across social contexts; the nature of effective
mentoring strategies, including ways students and teachers can optimize students’ access
to mentors; and patterns of science and technology learning and motivation across
contexts.
Through her five-year project, “Educational Trajectories of Low-Income
Urban Youth in Science and Technology,” Packard and her team of ten student
researchers will seek answers to these important questions, working with youth
from Springfield and Holyoke, two nearby cities with high ethnic minority populations.
Much of the research she and others have done on science career aspirations has
focused on college-bound students, or those already enrolled in college, Packard
said. But beyond that group, she said, are many young people who may have interests
in science and technology, but are following a nontraditional educational path.
These students, she said, may spend their post-high school years in the workplace
before returning to higher education through the community college system. “Are
we interested only in people who are engineers, doctors, and Ph.Ds, or might
we be interested in what influences a young person to decide between being a
video technician and being a nail technician?” In nearly every field, she
said, a higher use of science and technology is connected with higher pay and
prestige.
Packard said much of the literature on low-income urban youth focuses on negative
factors, such as delinquency, gang involvement, and teenage pregnancy. “No
one is really looking at educational planning, educational trajectories, successes.
In what ways are young people participating in their educational planning? Many
just assume they’re not,” she said.
Another major element of the research will involve effective mentoring strategies,
and an examination of how youths are able to take responsibility for their own
mentoring. Packard plans to incorporate her theory of “composite mentoring,” which
argues that a student unable to connect with a peer in her field may be able
to obtain the support she needs from a group of mentors, each reflecting a different
facet of her identity. “We cannot have one mentor that fits our every need;
we need to develop a composite that fits that framework,” she said. For
women and students of color, “since the (science and technology) field
is such that there are not that many demographically similar mentors out there,
then you basically have a catch-22: how do you get more people out there to serve
as mentors for the people who are underrepresented? You can’t.” A
composite mentoring strategy may be one effective solution.
The study will also examine how learning takes place outside the classroom, and
how home, school, and community organizations can come together to support motivation
and more positive effects for students. “I believe that young people will
naturally develop in a positive way when provided with the support and resources
to do so,” Packard said.
Packard said she hopes her work will challenge stereotypes about urban low-income
youth and raise awareness that many are actively involved in their own education,
helping to identify ways for schools, parents, and community organizations to
support them.
According to the National Science Foundation, the Faculty Early Career Development
(CAREER) Program is a foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science
Foundation’s most prestigious awards for new faculty members. The CAREER
program recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those
teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the twenty-first
century. CAREER awardees are selected on the basis of creative career-development
plans that effectively integrate research and education within the context of
the mission of their institution, and should build a firm foundation for a lifetime
of integrated contributions to research and education.
Packard is the fifth CAREER awardee at Mount Holyoke College. Others who have
received CAREER awards are Jill Bubier, assistant professor of environmental
studies; Craig Woodard, associate professor of biological sciences; Janice Hudgings,
Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics; and Sean Decatur, associate
professor and chair of chemistry.
e
un
he
counter is
3,776
|
