Building STEM Identity Through YouthQuake

Consider for a moment how you think about yourself in relation to science, technology, engineering, or math. If you’re a STEM teacher, instructional designer, or researcher, you may identify as someone who knows about, cares about, and contributes to STEM pursuits. You may have developed these feelings as a child who was encouraged to question how things worked, just as engineers do. On the other hand, you might have originally shied away from math and science, thinking that those subjects were for other people, but not for you.

Research suggests that strengthening STEM identities can help students who are traditionally underrepresented in STEM, including girls and disadvantaged students, feel like they belong in these fields. The YouthQuake project brings authentic learning experiences in computational geoscience to students at a critical point in the development of their STEM identity—middle school.

Starting close to home

Central to developing STEM identity is building on students’ own experiences. Most students in California live within 30 miles of an active seismic fault. Many have experienced, or know someone who has been affected by, an earthquake. The YouthQuake project team and teachers have co-designed a curriculum unit about earthquakes from both scientific and community perspectives. One focus is on the many careers related to earthquakes—from geoscientists who track GPS land movement to firefighters who help communities prepare for and respond to natural disasters.

**Figure 1.** GeoCoder allows students to explore GPS motion data in California. Students add simple code blocks (left) and observe the output on the simulation (right).

At the core of the YouthQuake curriculum is a five-activity online module that guides students through a series of increasingly complex investigations of earthquake risks and hazards in California. Students are introduced to block-based coding using the GeoCoder and real-world GPS data to investigate how the land in and around the state moves and deforms (Figure 1). Students also examine the locations of plate boundaries along the West Coast and investigate earthquake epicenter data using Seismic Explorer (Figure 2). By giving students the opportunity to use authentic geoscience tools and practices to explore the land movement and earthquake history of their community, we hope to foster students’ awareness of and interest in computational geoscience careers.

**Figure 2.** Students investigate earthquakes with Seismic Explorer.

Role models

Equally important to using the tools of the trade is meeting practicing scientists, including people of the same gender and racial identities who can serve as role models. Through the YouthQuake curriculum, students were introduced to early-career geoscientists, who Zoomed into their classrooms and answered questions about their jobs, school experiences, and career aspirations. The scientists – four women and one man from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds—described taking different paths to their STEM careers. One African American scientist told the students that she wished she had had a scientist talk to her class when she was in middle school because she didn’t know that there were jobs in science for people who looked like her. After the virtual visit, a student told her teacher, “I didn’t know women could have these kinds of jobs.”

Co-designing additional STEM identity activities

Following the implementation of the module in spring 2025, we held a summer institute with the three pilot YouthQuake teachers and three new teachers, focusing on new hands-on science activities (Figure 3) and additional approaches for nurturing students’ STEM identities (Figure 4). We began by looking at the results of our STEM identity survey, designed to measure students’ attitudes and thoughts about STEM as well as their knowledge of STEM careers (specifically in science, Earth science, and computer programming) and practices.

**Figure 3.** The project team tests a snappy hands-on activity about deformation using rubber bands before adding this activity to the YouthQuake curriculum.

**Figure 4.** Small groups of teachers and curriculum developers share potential STEM identity-strengthening activities.

Many students showed significant improvements in their attitudes toward Earth science, knowledge of earthquakes and scientists’ practices, and their thoughts about “people like me” in Earth science. While our survey results were generally positive, it was clear that we could do more to build students’ STEM identities and make connections to future careers.

The teachers described how the YouthQuake curriculum connected to students’ developing STEM identities. For example, the block coding appealed to some students who had previously participated in a robotics afterschool program and thought of themselves as “coders.” For other students, including the girl described above, the virtual visits from young scientists were the most transformative. Finally, other students were most engaged by an in-person presentation from firefighters about earthquake safety and preparedness.

The curriculum co-design team of pilot teachers and project partners then looked inward, thinking about our own STEM identities. We paired up and shared our own personal journeys into STEM careers. As self-aware adults, we were able to look back and describe how our identities have grown and been shaped over time.

Recognizing that middle school students are just beginning to build their identities, teachers felt that they needed to directly address STEM identity with their students. Students, they argued, should have the opportunity to reflect on their STEM identity and explore the next steps in their STEM identity formation, as well as the multiple pathways that could lead to a range of STEM careers.

A sense of belonging in STEM

Beginning early in the school year, these science teachers plan to explicitly discuss STEM identity with students, asking the not-so-simple question, “What is an identity?” They expect to return to this question throughout the year and to have students construct roadmaps to different careers, including researching the necessary coursework or other training to reach that career.

During the YouthQuake module, teachers plan to prompt students to think broadly about the different jobs that go into everything from installing GPS stations to monitoring earthquake activity to building shake-proof buildings. Teachers also plan to integrate STEM identity into the YouthQuake end-of unit-project.

To foster curiosity about STEM careers, students will each take on the role of an “expert” on a team of geoscientists, selecting a traditional STEM or STEM-adjacent job involving earthquake science, preparedness, or recovery—from a seismologist to a com- puter programmer or EMT. Students will research the career and career path and present what they learned from the YouthQuake curriculum to parents at the school science night or to students in younger grades.

Through such opportunities, we hope that students stop thinking “science is not for people like me” and begin to align their current identity with who they want to be. A strong STEM identity is more likely to result in continued coursework in STEM subjects and eventually the pursuit of STEM-related careers. Importantly, more diverse perspectives can lead to more innovation solutions, and in this case, better understanding of and preparation for natural hazards that California may face in the future.

Trudi Lord (tlord@concord.org) is a senior project manager.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-2241021. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.