Welcome to our INSITE video page. We are currently in Phase I of our project in which we are co-designing a STEM transition curriculum with teachers and youth from the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections. We are also addressing barriers to successful STEM employment for incarcerated youth by engaging local employers in identifying potential knowledge or skill gaps in the curriculum.

We plan to analyze the impact of the curriculum on STEM career knowledge, interest, competencies, readiness, and employment. We also plan to explore Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as it relates to incarcerated learners. 

What are your thoughts? What gaps do you see in STEM career preparation for youth? How do you think the context of juvenile justice impacts STEM career development? 

Please comment or ask questions.  Thank you for viewing.

I'm not sure if you all are working on this, but share the outcomes of this project with policy makers. The youth can share their own stories and the impact of this work. It's important that the social justice focus shapes not only the individuals, but the larger systems as well. 

Thanks for your work in this area. I  like the career exploration app allowing youth to identify and align their values (and skills?) to possible STEM careers.   Can you tell us more about the steps being developed or offered to transitioning youth? Will you offer job fairs?  Are they able to earn credits or badges while incarcerated?  Is there assistance in community college or technical school applications? Resume writing, interview skills, etc?

Here is the Re-Entry Education site for the US Dept of Education https://cte.ed.gov/initiatives/juvenile-justice-reentry-education-program and the Youth Diversion site https://cte.ed.gov/initiatives/young-adult-diversion-project

Hopefully, these can be useful to others working in this space.

Thanks for your video and your work. Where do you see youth values aligning with STEM careers? Where are there challenges? In other youth development program (not with incarcerated youth) I know that's a key element to understand.

Thank you for your question Marjorie.  We've found that incarcerated youth generally lack awareness of and exposure to STEM careers, which is one of the challenges. Another challenge is that this population typically has limited or no job experience. We intend to explore how values incarcerated youth identify differ from those of their non-incarcerated peers. Many of the values embedded in the INSITE course (creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and math/science) are those that are critical in STEM careers.

I vote for this 

I vote for this 

Thank you for your support Helen!

Working with incarcerated populations is important work. Can you share a little about how you identified the particular topics and/or skills in the app? For example, were they informed by engaging industry? 

Thanks for the question Jameela. All of the career fields, topics and information has come from our years of work with local employers and workforce development organizations. As part of a previous project we also conducted an "Employer Perceptions" survey that focused on Arizona employers and their perceptions of employing young adults with juvenile justice records. 

This is wonderful and important work!  I'm curious how certain values align with certain careers.  What are some examples of specific values and the careers with which they align?