New Study Identifies Three Culturally Responsive Practices That Define Effective STEM Mentors

Sánchez, B., Sanford-Dolly, C., Chung, H., Garcia-Murrillo, Y., Thursby Bourke, K., Jarvis, N., Arsenault, A., & Kennedy, M. (2026). Culturally responsive practices in a science mentoring program serving racially minoritized youth. Youth, 6, 66. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth6020066

Introduction

Black and Latinx students remain significantly underrepresented in STEM, earning fewer degrees than their share of the broader workforce would predict (Pew Research Center, 2018, 2021). STEM mentoring programs have emerged as one response to this gap, but the field has paid far more attention to outcomes for youth than to the practices that actually drive those outcomes. Sánchez and colleagues (2026) address this directly, asking: what do effective, culturally responsive scientist-mentors actually do when working with racially minoritized youth—and what do they gain from doing it? Grounded in Ladson-Billings’ (1995) culturally relevant pedagogy framework, the study examines both the mentor practices and the mindset shifts that emerge from sustained community engagement.

Methods

This mixed-method retrospective study drew on 142 scientist-mentor alumni from a community-based afterschool science program serving primarily Black and Latinx middle school students in Chicago, recruited from a pool of 217 contacted by email, phone, or text (65% response rate). Participants averaged 5.4 program quarters of involvement, with 87% enrolled for one year or more—well above national volunteer retention rates of 12–20% (Raposa et al., 2017). A subset of 35 alumni participated in one-hour qualitative interviews conducted between 2020 and 2021. Open-ended survey responses were analyzed using a top-down and bottom-up coding approach, while interview transcripts were analyzed through thematic analysis using Dedoose software, with consensus coding across multiple research team members.

Results

Three culturally responsive mentoring practices emerged from the data: social-emotional support (reported by 88% of interview participants), role modeling (65%), and youth-oriented science communication (57%). Two significant mentor mindset shifts also emerged: increased awareness of inequities in education (80%) and a stronger commitment to community engagement (57%). Social-emotional support was the most consistently reported practice—built through weekly check-ins, sustained presence over multiple years, and genuine curiosity about mentees’ lives beyond science. Role modeling was particularly salient for mentors who shared racial or gender identities with their mentees, offering youth a concrete vision of who can be a scientist. Youth-oriented science communication—translating complex concepts into accessible language connected to students’ real-world interests—was the third practice, one that mentors credited the program for teaching them, since graduate training rarely provides it. Effective STEM mentoring with racially minoritized youth it takes time, consistency, and a genuine willingness to know young people as whole persons, not just science students.

Discussion

The authors argue that mentoring relationships are reciprocal. Getting to know racially minoritized youth over time pushed scientist-mentors to examine their own assumptions, confront their privileges, and develop what the culturally relevant pedagogy literature calls critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). This finding is consistent with prior work showing that mentors develop cultural humility through sustained cross-racial relationships (Anderson et al., 2024; Jones et al., 2023a, 2023b). Notably, not all mentors developed this awareness as one participant explicitly expressed a color-evasive ideology, a finding the authors present honestly.

Implications for Mentoring Programs

This study carries direct, practical weight for program design. First, relationship duration matters: the practices and mindset shifts documented here emerged from sustained, year-long commitments rather than not one-time interactions. Programs that cycle through short-term volunteers should reconsider that model. Second, scientist-mentors need training in culturally responsive practices before they work with youth; content expertise alone is insufficient. Third, the documented reciprocal benefits suggest that recruiting and retaining STEM volunteers is not just about youth access, but about developing a more equity-conscious scientific workforce over time.

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