Black College Students' Choice of STEM Major: Analyzing Influences on Their Decision-Making Process

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Purpose
Prompted by the need to increase diversity in STEM, I have made it the purpose of my present research study to better understand how Black college students who are initially interested in STEM upon college entrance choose to declare (or not to declare) and persist (or exit) from STEM majors. My longer term goal is to add to the knowledge base which can inform educational programs and interventions that promote higher numbers of Black college students entering and completing STEM degrees.

Framework and Research Questions
Relevant empirical scholarship and selected theoretical perspectives suggest that potential influences on Black students’ choice of STEM major include the following: (1) pre-college educational experiences; (2) college learning and opportunity; (3) social cognitive factors (i.e., self-efficacy and outcome expectations); and (4) racialized college experiences (i.e., microaggressions). Much of the research on STEM and college students’ choices examines the choice as consisting of at least 2 main parts: (1) an initial choice to enter a STEM major, and (2) the choice to persist and complete a STEM degree (e.g., Elliott et al., 1996). The figure below is a decision tree depicting the potential choices within the scope of my study (e.g., the scope of my study excludes the choice to discontinue as a full-time undergraduate student).

Consequently, my research questions and related sub-questions are as follows:

1. How do Black undergraduate students- who self-report as having been interested in STEM at college entrance- describe their academic major choice process (a) with respect to declaring or not declaring a STEM major, and (b) with respect to persisting in (until completion) or exiting from a STEM major?

2. To what degree and in what ways do these students see the following potential influences as relating to their choice process?
a. pre-college STEM experiences
b. post-secondary STEM opportunities and experiences
c. their sense of self-efficacy and coping efficacy in post-secondary STEM
d. their outcome expectations for obtaining a STEM degree (and entering a STEM career field)
e. any experiences of microaggressions in college STEM contexts

3. How do these students’ self-reported experiences and perceptions, pertaining to the aforementioned five potential influences on their choice process (i.e., research question 2 a-e), relate to the following:
a. Whether they attend an HBCU or a PWI
b. Whether they have persisted in STEM until their senior year or have instead decided to complete a non-STEM major

Embedded within my research questions are preliminary hypotheses; I am conjecturing that students will likely consider the five areas of influence articulated in research question #2 as impacting their choice process. In question #3, I am also hypothesizing that there will be patterns of difference in participants’ experiences pertaining to these influences- which patterns may relate to participants’ university racial context and their STEM persistence.

Methods
Qualitative methods are employed to capture the “array of reasons” and the “balance of positive and negative factors” which may impact students’ post-secondary academic choices (Hilton, Hsia, Cheng, & Miller, 1995). Study participants are Black undergraduate students at an HBCU and a PWI (both ranked in the top 20 in their categories by U.S. News and World Report) who self-report as having been interested in STEM majors upon college entrance (both those students who have persisted in STEM majors and those who have exited STEM).
Interviewed participants take part in two types of focus groups: (1) groups with students who declared a STEM major and have persisted in STEM until their current, senior year; and (2) groups with students who entered college with an interest in STEM but either did not declare a STEM major or declared a STEM major and exited it for a non-STEM major by their senior year. Focus group interview questions pertain to students’ perceptions of how their pre-college experiences, their college learning experiences, their sense of self-efficacy, their outcome expectations for obtaining a STEM degree, and their experiences of any microaggressions in STEM may have impacted their choice of college major. In addition to focus group interviews, students complete a biographical questionnaire to gather background information pertaining to whether they have family members in STEM occupations, high school details, and their career plans, for example.

Preliminary Findings
At the AERA poster session, I will present preliminary findings from focus group interviews pertaining to several areas including, but not limited to, the following: (1) Black students’ theories as to why they chose to persist or not persist in STEM majors; (2) the potential connection between racial microaggressions and students’ sense of self-efficacy in their STEM field; (3) how K-12 interactions with educators impacted students’ college STEM trajectories; and (4) how the racial demographics of an institution (HBCU or PWI) relate to students’ STEM experiences.

Author

• Lydia Bentley, Vanderbilt University