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This study investigates how youth from two cities in the United States engage in critical data practices as they learn about and take action in their lives and communities in relation to COVID-19 and its intersections with justice-related concerns. Guided by theories of critical data literacies and data justice, a historicized and future-oriented participatory methodological approach is used to center the lived lives and communities of participants through dialogic interviews and experience sampling method. Data were co-analyzed with participants using critical grounded theory. Findings illustrate how youth not only aimed to reveal the dynamic and human aspects of and relationships with data as they engage with/in the world as people who matter but also offered alternative infrastructures for counter data production and aggregation toward justice in the here and now and desired possible futures. Implications for studies of learning with/through data practices in everyday life in relation to issues of justice are discussed. 

Abstract This study explores ways to support girls of color in forming their senses of selves in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) during the middle school years. Guided by social practice theory, we analyzed a large data set of survey responses (n = 1,821) collected at five middle schools in low‐income communities across four states in the United States. Analyses focus on the extent to which key constructs that inform girls’ development of senses of self and relations among those indicators of STEM identities varied by their race/ethnicity. Though the means of indicators sometimes varied across racial/ethnic groups, multigroup structural equation modeling analyses indicate no significant racial/ethnic differences in the relations of STEM identities, suggesting that similar supports would be equally effective for all girls during the middle school years. Girls’ self‐perception in relation to science was the strongest predictor of their identification with STEM‐related careers, and this self‐perception was positively and distinctively associated with their experiences with science at home, outside of school, and in school science classes. This study argues for strategically expanding girls’ experiences with science acrossmultiplesettings during middle school in a way that increases their positive self‐perception in and with STEM.