Co-Design as a Pathway to Science Identity Development: Fifth-Grade Girls’ Experiences in an Afterschool STEM Club

Despite recent progress, women remain underrepresented within the sciences, a trend rooted in longstanding intersection of gendered and racialized barriers that begin long before postsecondary education. Research shows that girls’ interest in science and their science identity begin to decline in late elementary and middle school, a period when early perceptions of competence, belonging, and future career possibilities start to solidify. Building on theoretical frameworks of science identity (Carlone & Johnson, 2007) and the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) (Spencer, 1995), this dissertation investigates how co-design—a participatory, student-centered approach to curricular design—can support science identity development among fifth-grade girls. This study positions fifth-grade girls as co-authors of their science learning by engaging them in an afterschool STEM Club where they collaboratively transform an existing science curricular unit and later teach this co-designed unit to peers. Through this process, students draw on their lived experiences, exercise agency, and participate in hands-on inquiry meant to foster competence, performance, and recognition in science. Utilizing qualitative methods, the study explores three research questions: (1) How do the science identities of fifth-grade girls shift over their STEM Club participation? (2) How do “critical incidents”—key moments or prior experiences—shape their science identity development? and (3) How do participants perceive their STEM Club experiences as influencing their long-term engagement with science? Findings aim to illuminate how informal science spaces can cultivate positive attitudes, agency, and sustained interest in science, particularly for girls who are navigating sociocultural messages about who can be a “science person.” By examining co-design as an intervention in a vital academic period, this work contributes to underexplored scholarship on co-design within elementary science spaces and offers insight into culturally responsive, student-centered approaches that may strengthen the pipeline for women in science.