Saving the "Small n": Some Challenges Inherent in STEM Equity Research

• In Event: Applying Cultural Construction Frameworks in Engineering Education Research

Abstract

Purpose

This research is based on a project that strives to understand structural reasons for why American undergraduate engineering education remains so white and male, despite considerable efforts to diversify it.

Framework

We use insights from Queer Theory (Fifield and Letts 2014) and Crip Theory (McRuer 2006) to problematize the very categories by which we assess and strive towards a more equitable STEM educational system. Greatly simplified, Queer Theory suggests that identities themselves are fluid, that considering identity categories as “natural” and inherent to individuals is theoretically problematic; Crip Theory notes that differences between bodies are highlighted based on context, and differences deemed relevant in one context are not so judged in others. What both of these theories problematize is the need to count “things” - such as certain numbers of “types” of people, noting that to count brings the very categories of interest into being. What are other ways that we might conduct STEM educational equity research, in recognition of how gender, race, sexuality, and disability have structured many aspects of educational policy and practice, but without succumbing to the theoretical shorthand that such categories necessitate?

Methods

We collected 17 interviews from a variety of undergraduate engineering students who identified themselves as having “interesting stories” to tell. The second author analyzes them narratively (Polkinghorne 1995; Mauthner & Doucet, 1998) to be able to focus our attention on the intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989) of their experiences. Through a series of 4 analytical passes, we try to preserve the complexity and detail present in students’ stories, rather than lose resolution through aggregating their experiences together and collapsing them into themes, but while also maintaining a focus on how their experiences are structured by their educational institutions themselves. We look for evidence of students bumping up against ruling relations (Smith 1990, 2005), the complex web of social relations that coordinate “how things are done around here.”

Results and significance

For the sake of increasing the numbers of white women and women and men of color, many of us (including the authors) have tended towards overlooking the theoretical and methodological problems with identity categories. But this has given us a false sense of clarity as to the source of the “problem” of underrepresentation, focusing more on the characteristics of individuals in various identity groups than the characteristics of ruling relations that structure our institutions in raced and gendered ways. By preserving the detail of participants’ open narratives and rejecting the methodological simplifications necessitated by many quantitative approaches, we hope to offer an illustrative case to generate new insights for revising engineering educational institutions into more equitable organizations for all shapes of lives. However, many theoretical and methodological challenges remain even for this study, and we offer this study for public scrutiny to help us collectively discuss how to acknowledge complex social theory while advocating for a more just STEM educational environment.

Authors

• Amy Slaton, Drexel University

• Alice L. Pawley, Purdue University