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Afterschool staff are critical to youth’s experiences in activities and shape what youth garner from activities. This study focuses on undergraduate students’ experiences working with adolescents in an afterschool activity through a community-university partnership in an effort to understand the challenges afterschool staff face and the strategies that helped them address those challenges. Undergraduate students, who are referred to as mentors in the activity, ( n = 15; 11 female; 8 Latine, 7 non-Latine) are the staff for a math enrichment afterschool activity serving largely Latine youth. The undergraduate students were interviewed to understand (a) the challenges they encountered when working with adolescents, (b) the strategies they leveraged to respond to these challenges, and (c) the extent to which the themes varied by racial/ethnic cultural backgrounds. Undergraduate students felt they experienced challenges with promoting motivation, teaching math content, navigating group instruction, building connections with adolescents, and establishing authority or respect. To respond to these challenges, they sought help from experienced undergraduate students, attended trainings, facilitated collaborative learning, integrated real-world examples, engaged in structured non-math related conversations, and leveraged students’ sociocultural assets. Results provide key stakeholders with insights on how to design trainings to better support undergraduate students who work with diverse youth. 

Abstract IntroductionParents' science support and adolescents' motivational beliefs are associated with adolescents' expectations for their future occupations; however, these associations have been mostly investigated among White, middle‐class samples. Framed by situated expectancy‐value theory, the current study investigated: (1) the associations between parents' science support in 9th grade and Latine adolescents' science intrinsic value, utility value, and STEM career expectations in 11th grade, and (2) whether these indicators and the relations among them differed by adolescents' gender and parents' education. MethodsStudy participants included Latine adolescents (n = 3060;M_age = 14.4 years old; 49% female) in the United States from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. ResultsAnalyses revealed a significant, positive association between parents' science support and Latine adolescents' science utility value. Additionally, there was a significant, positive association between parents' science support and Latinas' science intrinsic value, but not for Latinos' science intrinsic value. Latine adolescents' science utility value, but not their science intrinsic value, predicted their concurrent STEM career expectations. Though there were no significant mean level differences in adolescents' science utility value or parents' science support based on adolescents' gender, the measure of adolescents' science intrinsic value varied across girls and boys. Finally, adolescents whose parents had a college degree received greater science support from parents compared to adolescents whose parents had less education than a college degree. ConclusionFindings suggest parents' science support and adolescents' intrinsic and utility values have potential associations with Latine adolescents' STEM career expectations near the end of high school. 

The aim of this study was to use sociocultural perspectives to elaborate on Eccles’ parent socialization model and create a culturally grounded, multidimensional model of parent support among Mexican-descent families. Given Latinx underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers, we focus on science as an important domain in which to study parent support. Using a qualitative approach, this study examines (a) what forms of parent science support do Mexican-descent parents and adolescents perceive as best practices and (b) what are the social, cultural, and contextual barriers parents face and in what ways do parents continue to support their adolescents in science in spite of those barriers? Seventy-four parent (mean age: 40 years; 23% U.S.-born and 77% Mexico-born) and 73 adolescent (mean age: 15 years; 41% female) nterviews were analyzed using inductive and deductive approaches. Findings suggest that parents use traditional and nontraditional culturally grounded forms of support: involvement at home, providing words of encouragement (e.g., échale ganas), and leveraging resources (e.g., kin support). Participants felt work-related barriers, linguistic barriers, and limited science knowledge shaped parents’ support. Results highlight the unique ways parents support their adolescents’ science education as well as the need for educators to consider how parents’ sociocultural experiences shape their support.