Pathways to STEM Among Low-Income Students of Color in Four Denver High Schools

• In Event: 26.036 - Pathways to STEM Among High-Achieving Low-Income High School Students of Color in Two Cities

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to describe and analyze pathways in and through the STEM opportunities available to and taken up by high-achieving students of color in 4 Denver high schools. The presentation contrasts the pathways of male and female students, those of students attending STEM-focused and comprehensive public high schools, and those planning to pursue STEM (or not) in college.
Our conceptual framework uses the concepts of “figured worlds” and “spaces of authoring,” based in Dorothy Holland et al.’s social practice theory of identity and agency (1998). We use these concepts as a means of exploring individual variation and group patterns in how students take up the structural opportunities and make sense of them in light of their own abilities, interests, and future plans.
The data we report come primarily from twice yearly open-ended interviews with 48 focal students from their sophomore through senior years of high school (2010-2013) and from the students’ final high school transcripts. Interview questions focused on focal students’ views of their high school, kinds of students who attend, student groups, teacher characteristics, and the kinds of people who are really good at math or science. We also asked students to talk about their courses, grades, college and career plans, and how they viewed themselves in the context of these activities over time. School transcript data were used to verify students’ actual course-taking and grades during high school. In follow-up surveys at the end of high school (spring, 2013) and the following fall (2013), we obtained information about plans for college attendance and major, actual college matriculation, and choice of major on entering college. Data were analyzed by compiling and reading through all the data by individual student, coding for representations of STEM, self, high school, college, and future plans. After examining each coded category for each student by time (grades 10, 11, 12, end of high school, and beginning of college), we then wrote and compared case studies of each student’s pathway over time.
Preliminary results suggest that among the Denver students in this study, there were few differences in course-taking trajectories between males and females or between students who attended STEM-focused and comprehensive schools. However, the students’ trajectories were quite varied at each school and did not, for the most part, match the stereotypes or the statistical trends for underrepresented students in STEM. Comparing those students who did and did not decide to pursue STEM in college, we are finding that while grades are a significant differentiator (McFarland, 2006), they do not fully explain student choices. Our approach draws attention to the aspects of opportunity structures that students actually respond to and answer as they orchestrate identities, how and when these identities shift and interconnect, and how they carry individuals forward into the future.

Authors

• Margaret A. Eisenhart, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Carrie D. Allen, University of Colorado - Boulder