ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the work with refugee youth in an afterschool STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) club as people engage in critical, community-engaged scholarship, grounded first and foremost in responding to the needs of refugee youth. Through engaging in critical ethnography, it presents the nodes of criticality located across the research process, sharing insights, conundrums, and implications raised as endeavored to negotiate the non commodified knowledge of refugee youth and community-engaged scholarship. Informal science settings have been shown to be effective in helping minority youth increase their science epistemic knowledge, cultivate enduring interest, and author positive identities in science. Four methods of data collection are employed to address research questions: mind notes detailing our observations and informal interactions with youth participants during the Science and Engineering, SE sessions; lesson outlines; semistructured interviews with select youth; and informal conversations with the Americorp adult mentors at the center. All persons and places are referred to using pseudonyms.
